Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

As part of our Lean LaunchPad classes at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and for the National Science Foundation, students build a startup in 8 weeks using Business Model Design + Customer Development. Read Business Model Generation pages 1-72, and The Four Steps to the Epiphany Chapter 3. Lessons Learned.

Lean 333

Lean Web Coder Business Model 333

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

First Movers” didn’t understand customer problems or the product features that solved those problems (what we now call product-market fit). To be fair, in the 20 th century, there really wasn’t a model for how to build startups other than write plan, raise money, and execute – the bubble was this method, on steroids.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Few entrepreneurs find this scalable and repeatable business model because it’s not easy. The cloud , open-source development tools and web 2.0 as a distribution channel have vastly reduced the amount of capital a startup needs at the early stage when the risk is greatest. Valley-sized VC funds don’t work.

Early Stage 286

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 286

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Learning could be about product features, customer needs, the right pricing and distribution channel, etc.) Rather it is the simplest thing that you can show to customers to get the most learning at that point in time. They are: value proposition, product/service the company offers (along with its benefits to customers).

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 2, 2014

Part 4: This Will Save us Years – Customer Discovery in Medical Devices. Part 5: Value proposition and customer segments in Life Sciences. Part 6: Distribution channels in Life Sciences. Part 8: When Customers Make You Smarter : Customer Discovery in Digital Health.

Lean 240

Lean Algorithm Customer Development IP 240

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. In an existing corporation, the business plan is the execution document for sustaining innovation.

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

JUNE 26, 2015

The first, the notion of the “ ambidextrous organization ” from O’Reilly and Tushman , posits that companies that want to do continuous innovation need to execute their core business model while innovating in parallel. Horizon 1 activities support existing business models. Horizon 1 is the company’s core business.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

The Customer Development process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model , reducing customer and market risk. The first step of Customer Development is called Customer Discovery. outside the building and test them in front of customers.

Burn Rate 248

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 248

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

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

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Disruption today is more than just changes in technology, or channel, or competitors – it’s all of them, all at once. They’ll use government regulation and lawsuits to keep out new entrants with more innovative business models. And these forces are completely reshaping both commerce and defense.

Government 315

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 315

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

Designing Your Business Model Crafting a business model is like building a blueprint for your venture. Then, consider how you’ll reach your customers and what kind of relationship you want to build with them. Revenue streams are another critical component of your business model.

Intellectual Property 132

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 132

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

APRIL 29, 2010

I’ve been teaching Customer Development at U.C. Berkeley’s Haas Business School since the fall of 2004 and in a joint MBA with Columbia since 2005. Back in 2004, Jerry Engel the head of the Entreprenuership program at Haas Business School at U.C. A lot has happened since I first authored and taught the class. Four Steps.

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Lean Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). And going for crowdfunding before you do customer discovery with customers can lock you into the wrong idea too early. Tune in Thursday at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET on Sirius XM Channel 111.

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

Business plans presume that building a startup is a series of predictable steps requiring execution of a plan which assumes a series of known facts: known customers, known features, known pricing, known distribution channel. The reality is that most business plans don’t survive first contact with customers.

Lean 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

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

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

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

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

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.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

Finally to have a better chance of a viable enterprise, they need to test all the other hypotheses in their business/mission model (pricing, demand creation, revenue, costs, etc.). The key principles of customer development are: There are no facts inside the building so get the heck outside. Which changes are temporary?

Customer 413

Customer Business Model Restful Video 413

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

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. Market segments drive your business model.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

The Roominate dollhouse building kits are being sold via their own website and soon, retail channels. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So So what would the retail channel consultant do?” They learned a ton.

PR 314

PR China Lean Channel 314

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

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

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. Yet by first customer ship most of the business model hasn’t been validated or tested. Pivots Versus Crises.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

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

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

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2013

Part 4: This Will Save us Years – Customer Discovery in Medical Devices. Part 5: Value proposition and customer segments in Life Sciences. Part 6: Distribution channels in Life Sciences. Part 8: When Customers Make You Smarter – Customer Discovery in Digital Health. Part 7: Revenue Streams in Life Sciences.

Lean 251

Lean Customer Development Business Model Channel 251

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. Here’s what happened: We got the product out; we got paying customers. The problem was had the wrong business model at the time. Our revenue model was wrong. Wanting to create impact is great.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. Or blame my MarCom department who approved it.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

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

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. Here’s what happened: We got the product out; we got paying customers. The problem was had the wrong business model at the time. Our revenue model was wrong. Wanting to create impact is great.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2012

Few of the Principal Investigators or Entrepreneurial Leads had startup experience, and few of the mentors were familiar with Business Model design or Customer Development. 2) Get the teams out of the building to test their hypotheses with prospective customers. Methodology. They left with very deep knowledge.

Lean 248

Lean Incubator Business Model Georgia 248