Steve Blank

DECEMBER 2, 2013

We talk a lot about Customer Development, but there’s nothing like seeing it in action to understand its power. Here’s what happened when an extraordinary Digital Health team gained several critical insights about their business model. They estimated their Average Revenue per User (ARPU) would be about $36 per year.

Customer 326

Customer Churn Rate Customer Development Lean 326

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. If they’re not busy looking at their Blackberry’s/iPhone’s.)

Customer Development 266

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 266

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. That kicked off this long conversation about how you might try to leverage this evolution of education technology to create scalable impact in places where tuition couldn’t be the driver of growth. It’s too hard.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 145

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

But businesses are finding that Continuous Deployment not only changes engineering but has ripple effects on the rest of its business model. And these changes may have unintended consequences leading to customer dissatisfaction and confusion. The Old Days – Waterfall Product Development.

Continuous Deployment 331

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 331

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. That kicked off this long conversation about how you might try to leverage this evolution of education technology to create scalable impact in places where tuition couldn’t be the driver of growth. It’s too hard.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

When the results were compared with ordinary product development projects at 3M, the differences were dramatic: Lead-user innovations achieved average revenue of $146 million in their fifth year, compared with $18 million for internally generated innovations. Connect with your prospects (a.k.a., their peers).

Customer 168

Customer Social Media Retention Canada 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. That’s because the model is based on assumptions about customers that are totally unproven.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

. - Customer content and engagement built rapid growth in the success of Intel ’s social media and Web-based marketing efforts, increasing “customer contacts” by a factor of tenfold and overall page views by 100x. At first, Livengood and his team tried traditional pdf customer success stories on the corporate website.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

If you look at the top 3 online retailers by conversion rate, none of these are award-winning designs : [link] [link] [link] However, they convert ~25% of visitors to customers. Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

ConversionXL

JANUARY 28, 2013

Usability testing is the black horse of boosting conversion. If your site is difficult to use or understand (= has usability problems), it kills conversions. Website usability testing helps you identify all the main sources of friction, and thus boost conversions. This in turn will also lead to increase in conversions.

Conversion 106

Conversion Silicon Valley Matching Design 106

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

In the Udemy course, Alistair and Ben expand these basics into a description of how to create empathy, stickiness, virality, revenue, and scale. Stickiness, Ben and Alistair say, is where people move on too quickly--they don’t make sure they really have a product that has the right features and functionality to meet their customers’ needs.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. You dive deep into a customer development process, working closely with a few customers who feed you requirements and are willing to trial an imperfect product that is evolving quickly.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

ConversionXL

JUNE 14, 2021

They developed features with their specific audience in mind. million in monthly recurring revenue (at time of writing). It allows customers to peer in and find out if what you’re offering is for them—and if they should stick around to learn more. Go into your customer interviews armed with only a handful of questions (e.g.

Software Review 158

Software Review Audience Differentiation Framework 158

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

The Ultimate Combination of Startup Business Development Methods - ArcticStartup , November 16, 2010 I've been a huge fan of Steven Blank's Customer Development methodology for a long time. few years ago I also started following Alexander Osterwalder in his blog about his Business Model Generation -mantra.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Occam's Razor

APRIL 8, 2013

One thing the cycle can't do is help you understand your own business. You need to know what the most important aspect of your business is, and how you need to change it. It means you're relevant to the business, and if your trip around the cycle is successful, you'll have helped the organization get closer to its goals.

Metrics 156

Metrics Analytics Lean Churn Rate 156

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

It requires separating the product launch from the marketing launch (see Dont Launch ) as well as other staple Lean Startup tactics: minimum viable product, split-testing, customer development and the pivot. ’&# They removed the core plan, and conversions went up. That is customer development.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

The art of entrepreneurship and the science of Customer Development is not just getting out of the building and listening to prospective customers. He got my attention when he said, “following your customer development stuff is making my company fail.” Then I asked, “Satish, what’s your business model?

Customer 328

Customer Business Model Customer Development Startup 328

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. The one-page pitch format is also more suitable for SaaS businesses that are constantly testing new ideas. The business model.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

So conversion rate percentage, of course it can always be higher and we’re doing a lot of stuff to make that higher, but it’s in line with other applications. Jason: Yeah, one percent conversion rate is pretty normal. I have schools and businesses. Now most of the businesses are small to medium- sized businesses.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So be sure to make a free user account and participate in the offline conversation there. Jason: get into customer development and it’s a big waste.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

ConversionXL

APRIL 30, 2014

They’re using ecommerce tracking to measure revenue and sales, and they’re using Goals to measure a number of macro and micro conversions. Keep in mind that the amount of authenticated users can, and will, vary greatly depending on your business model and your different digital experiences. Device Overlap Report.

Analytics 97

Analytics eCommerce Software Review Campaign 97

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2013

On Wednesday and Thursday, splash pages were launched; email addresses captured, cost structures and revenue streams explored. By Thursday noon each team knew, through hypothesis testing and customer interviews, the single feature behind its MVP and they headed out of the building one last time.

Lean 308

Lean SCRUM Ohio Cleveland 308

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

I would focus on one product and set a goal to generate $1M in yearly revenue from it. Near shoring development with your team (ex: your team is based in Canada / India) is cool, but not outsourcing. Outsourcing is something a big company, with a known customer / problem (that has revenue & traction) does to save cost.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2013

On Wednesday and Thursday, splash pages were launched; email addresses captured, cost structures and revenue streams explored. By Thursday noon each team knew, through hypothesis testing and customer interviews, the single feature behind its MVP and they headed out of the building one last time.

Lean 200

Lean SCRUM Ohio Cleveland 200

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

The art of entrepreneurship and the science of customer development is not just getting out of the building and listening to prospective customers. He got my attention when he said, "following your customer development stuff is making my company fail." Then I asked, "Satish, what's your business model?

Business Model 127

Business Model Customer Development Revenue Customer 127

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

i understood what seth was saying because i’ve been thinking about the same thing and getting the same advice from business people, designers, engineers, etc…i don’t really know what you’re arguing against. if you have some thoughts on this you could add to the conversation and provide some advice. good post.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 16, 2013

Seems like every third startup nowadays is using the “Freemium” business model: The lowest service tier is free, and the business is designed to get those users hooked and then upgrade to a paid plan. Which means it costs 20-100x as much on marketing campaigns to achieve the equivalent revenue.

Marketing 318

Marketing Viral Campaign Business Model 318

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

They asked for my advice, and we went through a number of recommendations that readers of this blog will already be able to guess: adding revenue opportunities, engagement loop optimization, and some immediate split-testing to figure out whats working and whats not. I thought we were having a successful conversation.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

I have come to believe during my time as an operator, entrepreneur and investor that the balance of these skills is so important to the long-term health of a business that if balance is not achieved early then the impact later can be profound - sometimes terminal. Developers who understand and can execute on a business model.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51