Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

One of the groups I spoke to was the Australian Sports Technology Network. They realized if they could develop and promote a well-coordinated sports technologies industry, they could capture their unfair share of the $300 billon sports consumer market. They intended to get scale for their business by growing in the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

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 253

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 253

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.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

business models. For the last few years, there really hasn’t been a demand to innovate on top of the ecosystem that’s been built. Though they’re familiar with technology in the valley, I picked up some important cultural difference from students and startup engineers I talked to. business models.

China 219

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 219

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2020

His message was that existing companies are great at sustaining technologies and products but were ignoring the threat of disruption. He explained that companies have a penchant for continually improving sustaining products by adding more features to solve existing customer problems, and while this maximized profit, it was a trap.

Lean 431

Lean Business Model Government Agile 431

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. Are there customers for what you are building? How many are there?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

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 316

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 316

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2014

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. Like all great Silicon Valley companies they started with a technology and guessed who the customers will be. Now they were figuring out how to create demand.

Lean 278

Lean Silicon Valley Customer Development Incubator 278

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

If there was any doubt among the teams about the value of what they’re learning, Blinken put it to rest with a compelling overview of how so many of today’s complex global problems – from stopping Ebola to monitoring cease-fires and improving food security – demand innovative, tech-based solutions.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

If there was any doubt among the teams about the value of what they’re learning, Blinken put it to rest with a compelling overview of how so many of today’s complex global problems – from stopping Ebola to monitoring cease-fires and improving food security – demand innovative, tech-based solutions.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

Alice and Bettina had taken an idea they had tested in the class – building toys for young girls to have fun with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, and started a company. Bettina said, “We want to drive customer demand into our channel.” Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Marketing , Teaching.

PR 319

PR China Lean Channel 319

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. Your design or ad agencies can impress you with their awards, but if you’re not moving product or creating demand, you’ve missed the point.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 The three drivers of growth for your business model. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?) He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2010

One of the classes I teach in the engineering school at Stanford is E145: the Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship , an introduction to building a scalable startup. 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.

Intellectual Property 257

Intellectual Property Business Model Customer Development Distribution 257

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Silicon Valley, New York). Here’s how. The Wrong Discussion s.

Silicon Valley 297

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 297

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

In fact, at the time (1996-1997) we offered both a downloadable product, that our customers could install on their own servers, and a “hosted-offering”, which came to be known as “On-Demand”, then the “ASP” (Application Service Provider) model, and today we call it “SaaS” (Software as a Service).

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Silicon Valley, New York). Here’s how. The Wrong Discussion s.

Silicon Valley 270

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 270

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

They used Customer and Agile development to search for a scalable and repeatable business model to become a large company. A “ scalable startup” takes an innovative idea and searches for a scalable and repeatable business model that will turn it into a high growth, profitable company. Not just big but huge.

Hockey Stick 299

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 299

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

What does your Chief Technology Officer do all day? When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. Heres my take.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

Alice and Bettina had taken an idea they had tested in the class – building toys for young girls to have fun with Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math, and started a company. Bettina said, “We want to drive customer demand into our channel.” Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Marketing , Teaching.

PR 211

PR China Lean Channel 211

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

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.) I gave Frank the same advice I offered all the other universities who asked. Make it Better.

Lean 274

Lean New York City New York Customer Development 274

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

Most of the startups they invested in either died by running out of money before they found a scalable business model or ended up in the “land of the living dead” by never growing (failing to Pivot.). The public markets for venture-backed technology stocks never really recovered after the collapse of the dot-com boom.

Venture Capital 303

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 303

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

But the bubble mantra of get “big fast” and “first mover advantage” demanded tens of millions more to create a “brand.” Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. That requires building a company using Agile and Customer Development.

Internet 335

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2010

The Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship course at Stanford taught undergraduates how to take a technical idea and turn it into a profitable and scalable company. By getting out of the building on a team project, the class helped students viscerally understand that a startup is a search for a profitable business model.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley Business Model Customer Development Engineer 127

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 237

Cloud Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 237

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

As CEO, Ryan has grown Qualtrics to one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the world. In the early days of building Qualtrics, Ryan tried giving the product away to entice customers to use it. No MBA business model would ever come out with, “Hey we’re going to go target the academics.”

Cofounder 149

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 149

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

A few of the detailed case studies include: Tech legend Bill Gross building an MVP in 1999 to test demand for online car sales, which grew into CarsDirect.com. Scott Summitt iteratively leveraging the emerging technologies of digital fabrication and 3d-scanning to change people's lives. The result: a new idea I called The Lean Startup.

Lean 167

Lean Entrepreneur Agile San Francisco 167

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 125

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Some of the conversations went like this: Startup 1 Entrepreneur -“I’m competing against Company x and have been following the Customer Development process and I’ve talked to lots of customers.” Do you know how they create demand? Do you know the archetype of their customers? This is easy to test.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 206

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

As CEO, Ryan has grown Qualtrics to one of the fastest-growing technology companies in the world. In the early days of building Qualtrics, Ryan tried giving the product away to entice customers to use it. No MBA business model would ever come out with, “Hey we’re going to go target the academics.”

Cofounder 120

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. Customer Development This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process.

Silicon Valley 234

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 234

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 13, 2011

Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. The process, which Blank detailed in his book, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany," uses customer feedback to refine and improve a product before scaling a business.

Silicon Valley 117

Silicon Valley Balance Sheet Metrics Early Stage 117

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. Everyone wanted some.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

I reminded her that all the Lean tools she learned in class–Customer Discovery, business model and value proposition canvases– contained her answer. For example, our goal could be: Create demand for our products and drive it into our sales channel. Filed under: Customer Development , Marketing.

Marketing 316

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 316

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Cray called two years ago and bought it back for parts for an unnamed customer still running one. Was Ardent’s business model flawed from the start for being so short on potential customers with deep pockets? I liked to fail fast, move on, and not [.] [.] Was it your error or cruel fate? Story here. [.]

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 210

www.startuplessonslearned.com

MAY 4, 2012

At the company level, founders learn about the flaws in their initial plans and adjust the startup’s strategy, business plan,and business model. percent) of new firm founders indicated that their business ideas [had] changed between the time they first identified them and the time when they were surveyed about them.”

Equity 72

Equity Founder Technical Cofounder Cofounder 72

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

These traits of a software engineer are always in demand by a great number of companies. Business people have it tougher. A business person may have equal or more valuable skills than a software person, but they are not universally understood in the simplistic way that software people’s skills are.

Technical Cofounder 42

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42