Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

The Founder’s New Insight Smart founders are never satisfied with simply executing their current business model, they are constantly observing, orienting and deciding whether their current business model can be made better.

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 216

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

The key things I want students to take from the class are: Understand that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a profitable business model. Learn how to put together a business model , not a business plan. Class Logistics. Teaching Assistants.

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Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 235

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 229

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Are there customers for what you are building?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

In every startup I did, every new course I created, and everything I’ve taught, the phrase “make every day count” took on new meaning when I knew how many were left. When I retired after 21 years working in 8 startups, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the business school at the University of California Berkeley.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Startups in Bend.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Startups and Sales If you read this post you can come away with the impression that every startup with a direct salesforce needs a consultative sales team. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? what Market Type is your startup?

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2011

Second, to share how my how my thinking about entrepreneurship as a distinct practice and how Customer Development as one of its central components has evolved over the last decade. Fourth, as a public official in the State of California , to offer a window on how public policy on California Coastal protection gets made.

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Silicon Valley California Vertical Customer Development 216

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. The data from the classes seem to indicate that we’ve found have a method how to make scalable startups fail less. Serendipity.

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Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 311

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

” I see at least one or two startup teams a year in this space.). We’re now piloting our application with Tree Farmers in California and working with crop specialists at U.C. We think we have a real business.” Build continuous customer discovery into your company DNA. ” It was a fun coffee.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Many thanks, you’ve changed my startup a hundred times already. Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) Keep ‘em coming.

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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. A kite-boarding startup? Only in California!

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 284

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

An existing market is one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. Startup 2 Entrepreneur -“I’m competing against Company x and we are going to offer a lower-cost, web-based version. Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

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Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 206

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

Over 1,000 students a year are learning lean startup concepts. The Lean LaunchPad class teaches students how to build a Lean Startup using business model design, customer development and agile engineering. Teams have to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week.) Student Impact.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

In a startup, your ideas turn into reality really, really fast. A startup founder needs to never lose sight of the vision, but be extremely adaptable to pretty much everything else. In a startup, you don’t fight the system; you are the system. Lots of people have visions. Most are hallucinations.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

In a startup, your ideas turn into reality really, really fast. A startup founder needs to never lose sight of the vision, but be extremely adaptable to pretty much everything else. In a startup, you don’t fight the system; you are the system. Lots of people have visions. Most are hallucinations.

Cofounder 280

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 280

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

There is no certainty about a startup on day-one. You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. At each startup I couldn’t wait to do this. No building, no money, no customers, no market? Great, sign me up.

Silicon Valley 234

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 234

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

– Cornell University; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center at Carnegie Mellon University; and the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California at San Diego. Cray called two years ago and bought it back for parts for an unnamed customer still running one.

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Steve Blank

JULY 19, 2016

Startups aren’t only for twentysomethings. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Prezi’s founding team is a classic startup mix of hacker, hustler and designer. In Sweden, he founded omvard.se

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Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. 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.

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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.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

BMNT , a new Silicon Valley company, is combining the Lean Methods it learned in combat with the technology expertise and speed of startups. One OSRD project – the Manhattan Project – the development of the atomic bomb – was so secret and important that it was spun off as a separate program. In World War II the U.S.

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SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ?

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Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

For the first 25 years HP’s business model was static. Of course HP did ship new products and innovate, but their center of innovation was sustaining innovation , around the core of their existing business. Elephant Graveyard Reinvention of large companies, while making for great case studies are rare.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 186

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

Fourth , would the same Lean Startup methodology (business model design, customer development and agile engineering) used in the Lean LaunchPad and NSF I-Corps class work here? Multiple teams have been engaged by government, prime contractor and VC firms for follow-on discussions/engagements. Result: Hell yes.

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Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 130

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

Fourth , would the same Lean Startup methodology (business model design, customer development and agile engineering) used in the Lean LaunchPad and NSF I-Corps class work here? Multiple teams have been engaged by government, prime contractor and VC firms for follow-on discussions/engagements. Result: Hell yes.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 120

Hippoland

JUNE 19, 2018

People often ask me what startups I want to fund. This is because beyond business ideas, there are so many factors that make a great business. Costs : I’ve seen a lot of startups attempt to reduce medical costs. For example, in 2018, I’ve championed and completed 7 deals at Hustle Fund.

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San Francisco California Cost Software 48

Hippoland

JUNE 19, 2018

People often ask me what startups I want to fund. This is because beyond business ideas, there are so many factors that make a great business. Costs : I’ve seen a lot of startups attempt to reduce medical costs. For example, in 2018, I’ve championed and completed 7 deals at Hustle Fund.

San Francisco 48

San Francisco California Cost Software 48

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

It’s why all of you operated so well in the unpredictable environment that all startups face.” What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. Therefore, I’ll posit one possible path for a startup founder – the dysfunctional family theory.

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Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 310

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Reply Mark Essel , on July 2, 2009 at 9:14 am Said: Reality distortion field isn’t the basic technique covered in startups 101? Reply steveblank , on July 2, 2009 at 12:22 pm Said: Aamir, The game business is different from the tech business in some obvious and non obvious ways. - I love all these war stories.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. Hype before shipping any product is an obvious flaw, but what about hyping products that have shipped but have zero business model?

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Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Almost every university, region and car wash now has a business plan competition; the rules, who can participate, how large the prizes and who are the judges vary by school. Over scrambled eggs and diet coke, I listened to this seasoned startup veteran describe the excitement of his students who came to the U.S. to compete.

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Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

The best entrepreneurship textbooks and blogs assume that advice to startups is generalizable. But as I learned from my students this “one-size-fits-all” approach does not work for all startups. Different market opportunities present radically different startup risks and costs.

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