Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. We were positing that 20 years of teaching “how to write a business plan” might be obsolete. This post is part one.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

Alexander Osterwalder and I spent last week in Salt Lake City, Utah as judges at the 2 nd Annual International Business Model Competition , hosted by Professor Nathan Furr , and his team at the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship. The Business Plan ?- And your revenue plan is something more than a hallucination.

Business Model 263

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 263

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2015

Starting this Monday, March 9 th 4-6pm Pacific Time I’ll be on the radio hosting the Bay Area Ventures program on Sirius XM radio Channel 111 – the Wharton Business Radio Channel. Alex Osterwalder – Business Models. Mark your calendar for 4-6pm Pacific Time on Sirius XM Radio Channel 111 : March 9 th.

Channel 120

Channel Venture Capital Lean Business Model 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

This week they were testing who the customer, user, payer for the product will be (and discovering if they have a multi-sided business model , one with both buyers and sellers.) How can we attract buyers to our channel before they make purchasing decisions? The Business Model Canvas is a great way to diagram it out.

Customer 234

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 234

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

By the end of the 20th century, case studies and business plans had reached an evolutionary dead-end for entrepreneurs. The Rise of Business Schools – Management as an Occupation. The business school was invented in the first decade of the 20th century in response to a massive economic transformation in the U.S.

Lean 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

As we prepared for the new Hacking for Defense class at Stanford, we had to stop and ask ourselves: How do we use the Business Model Canvas if the primary goal is not to earn money, but to fulfill a mission? In other words, how can we adapt the Business Model Canvas when the metrics of success for an organization is not revenue?

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2016

To be honest I built the class out of frustration watching schools teach aspiring entrepreneurs that all they need to know is how to write a business plan or how to sit in an incubator building a product. using the business model canvas as the framework. in order to validate/invalidate their business model hypotheses.

Lean 120

Lean Incubator Business Model Channel 120

Steve Blank

JULY 14, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Alexander Osterwalder – inventor of the Business Model Canvas. What’s the Business Model Canvas? Because at the end of the day a business model only survives if it can be profitable.”.

Channel 120

Channel Business Model Cofounder Business Plan 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2014

A pivot can change any of nine different things in your business model. A pivot may mean you changed your customer segment, your channel, revenue model/pricing, resources, activities, costs, partners, customer acquisition – lots of other things than just the product. Business Model.

Business Model 330

Business Model Lean Customer Development Channel 330

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

The biggest mistake for most of these startups was not understanding that optimizing their business model for the 24 million people in the Australian market would not prepare them for the size and scale they needed to get to big. But other critical hypotheses such as activities, resources, partners, channels needed testing offshore.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 15, 2011

By now the nine teams in our Stanford Lean LaunchPad Class were formed, In the four days between team formation and this class session we tasked them to: Write down their initial hypotheses for the 9 components of their company’s business model (who are the customers? what distribution channel? what’s the product?

Business Model 236

Business Model Nebraska Peru Germany 236

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ?

Search 320

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

The revenue numbers and revenue model came from a startups original Business Plan. A business plan has a set of assumptions (who’s the customer, what’s the price, what’s the channel, what are the product features that matter, etc.) that make up a business model. Ritualized Crises.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Business schools teach aspiring executives a variety of courses around the execution of known business models, (accounting, organizational behavior, managerial skills, marketing, operations, etc.). In contrast, startups search for a business model. (Or Their objective is to get users, orders, customers, etc.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

In fact, you could say that all that remains from my last book are the four steps of Customer Development. Integrates Alexander Osterwalders “Business Model Canvas” as the front-end and “scorecard” for the customer discovery process. Startups search for business models, exisitng companies execute them.

Entrepreneur 289

Entrepreneur Lean Business Model Customer Development 289

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. Solving the "marketplace" business model - A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks , May 10, 2010 A sizable percentage of Capital Factory startup submissions take the form of the "marketplace." Here’s why. Your Process Doesn’t Work.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. Every large company, whether it can articulate it or not, is executing a proven business model (s).

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. We had validated our new assumptions by a set of orders, and we had pivoted on our business model.

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2010

One of the toughest problems for entrepreneurs is to keep score as they search for their business model. One of the key concepts of Customer Development is writing down your initial hypotheses (guesses) of all the parts of your business model, then updating them with the facts you find outside the building.

Customer Development 211

Customer Development Business Model Early Stage Channel 211

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

In this post we’re going to offer a new definition of why startups exist : a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. A Business Model. Ok, but what is a business model ? A business model describes how your company creates, delivers and captures value.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

The premise of the class is that startups, are not about executing a plan where the product, customers, channel are known. Startups are in fact only temporary organizations, organized to search –not execute–for a scalable and repeatable business model. Yet this isn’t an incubator.

Lean 256

Lean Business Model Agile United States 256

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 28, 2010

In a startup the search for a business model is chaotic, unpredictable and uncertain. Yet the Customer Development process uses a series of checklists to ensure that you walk through the Customer Discovery and Validation steps. Customer Hypothesis Checklist. Sharing the Checklist.

Business Model 239

Business Model Customer Development Engineer Vesting 239

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2014

Students need to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week. The next week they came back in class and presented this : Each week we’d teach them about one more part of what makes up a business model. They could have never figured this out sitting inside a classroom writing a business plan.

Lean 272

Lean Silicon Valley Customer Development Incubator 272

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

I suggested the best place to start the conversation is with the 21 st century definition of a startup: A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. That means in their core business, large companies have a series of knowns. and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2010

Our goal is to teach students the key concepts of the startup process and help them understand that a startup is a search for a profitable business model. Students formed 5-person teams, came up with a business idea then got out of the building to validate their business model. What is a business model?

Intellectual Property 226

Intellectual Property Business Model Customer Development Distribution 226

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

Do your research and validate your idea: You’re probably going to be doing this at the same time as you write your business plan. It’s the lean format of the business plan—the format that will allow you to adapt fastest as you progress through the startup phase. Your customer. The problem you are solving.

Curation 60

Curation Lean Software Review Finder 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2011

Week 3 of the class and our teams in our Stanford Lean LaunchPad class were hard at work using Customer Development to get out of the classroom and test the first key hypotheses of their business model: The Value Proposition. and report the results of face-to-face customer discovery. Syllabus is here.

Cloud 228

Cloud Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 228

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I hate business plan competitions. I Love Business Plan Competitions I had a breakfast with a friend who has founded a few companies in Thailand and started the New Ventures Program at one of their universities. For all the reasons why business plan competitions are wonderful for students from outside the U.S.,

Business Plan 140

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

(The concept of Partners , took some explanation as some teams confused partners with the Distribution Channel.). After a week of hectic customer discovery , the team further refined their new business model. His lecture covered: What resources do you need to build your business? The Nine Teams Present.

South Dakota 217

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 217

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2016

Instead, he yearned to channel his creative energies. — Although a February appearance on the reality TV show SharkTank brought Clean Sleep some brand recognition, Michael is struggling to find a scalable business model. Until I got the machine to work, I hadn’t even thought about the business plan.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Fort Worth America Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

How startup ideas are developed and nurtured was the focus of conversations with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on Sirius XM Channel 111. He had to write four business plans to get the OK to open his barbershop. ” I wrote a second business plan and it showed how I would pay them.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Channel Programming Customer Development 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

She has a separate team, with its own culture and office, and a mandate straight from top management to innovate without regard to the company’s historic products, channels, or supply chain. Certainly venture-backed startups don’t have this luxury – every business plan has a model in it. So far, so good.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

LSC: Tell us about the customer development you did for your book: Alistair: We''ve been thrilled at how Lean Analytics seemed to resonate with founders. As operators of an accelerator—and founders in our own right—Ben and I had constantly struggled with what the “right” numbers are for a business. Many companies like certainty.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

With an out-of-this-world business plan. When it was spun out as a a separate company, Iridium’s 1990 business plan had assumptions about potential customers, their problems and the product needed to solve that problem. A Business Plan Frozen in Time. This business plan was a static document.

Business Plan 335

Business Plan Customer Business Model Customer Development 335

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 11, 2016

And not keep investors informed about changes to your business model can have serious consequences. He was also on the team that wrote the business plan for BlackGirlsCode. In 2014, Business Insider listed Dan as one of the top 46 African Americans in Tech. With Freshsessions, Dan thought he was on to a great idea.

Columbus 245

Columbus Entrepreneur Ohio Cofounder 245

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Step 1: Start with a lean plan. Instead of sitting down to write a 40-page business plan, start with a one-page pitch. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74