Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2014

It has three parts: a business model canvas to frame hypotheses, customer development to get out of the building to test those hypotheses and agile engineering to build minimum viable products. Tells you how to design new ventures with it. Teaches you how to use Customer Development to test it.

Business Model 335

Business Model Design Customer Development Lean 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

For decades this revered business magazine described management techniques that were developed in and were for large corporations – offering more efficient and creative ways to execute existing business models. The Four Steps drew the distinction that “startups are not smaller versions of large companies.”

Technical Review 327

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 327

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.

Lean 333

Lean Web Coder Business Model 333

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2012

When Bob Dorf and I wrote the Startup Owners Manual we listed a series of Customer Development principles. I thought they might be worth enumerating here: A Startup Is a Temporary Organization Designed to Search. for A Repeatable and Scalable Business Model. Pair Customer Development with Agile Development.

Customer Development 328

Customer Development Developer Customer Cofounder 328

Steve Blank

MARCH 12, 2014

Therefore we needed them to think and learn about two parts of a startup; 1) ideation - how to create new ideas and 2) customer development – how do they test the validity of their idea (is it the right product, customer, channel, pricing, etc.). Hawken students practicing Customer Discovery in a mall.

Lean 334

Lean Customer Development Startup Silicon Valley 334

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 30, 2012

The class teaches founders how to dramatically reduce their failure rate through the combination of business model design, customer development and agile development using the Startup Owners Manual. And you’ll learn about how to build a minimal viable product to get feedback early and often from customers.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

He gave my innovation team free reign on designing a new employee innovation program. The design challenge. Our challenge was to design a program that could: Teach participants on how to turn their ideas into fundable experiments. His only request was that we keep two of the original program’s goals: 1. What went right?

Programming 291

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 291

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

For decades this revered business magazine described management techniques that were developed in and were for large corporations – offering more efficient and creative ways to execute existing business models. The Four Steps drew the distinction that “startups are not smaller versions of large companies.”

Technical Review 219

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 219

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

He gave my innovation team free reign on designing a new employee innovation program. The design challenge. Our challenge was to design a program that could: Teach participants on how to turn their ideas into fundable experiments. His only request was that we keep two of the original program’s goals: 1. What went right?

Programming 283

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 283

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

Over the last three years our Lean LaunchPad / NSF Innovation Corps classes have been teaching hundreds of entrepreneurial teams a year how to build their startups by getting out of the building and testing their hypotheses behind their business model. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

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. The result?

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

Entrenched Innovation Model Issues : Qualcomm’s existing innovation model – wireless products were created in the R&D lab and then handed over to existing business units for commercialization – was wildly successful in the existing wireless and mobile space. Developing a program to generate new ideas is the easy part.

Programming 265

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 265

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Repeat, learning whether to iterate, pivot or restart until you have something that customers love. Waterfall Development. While it sounds simple , the Build Measure Learn approach to product development is a radical improvement over the traditional Waterfall model used throughout the 20 th century to build and ship products.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

Vision Synching in a Lean Startup The Fallacy of Customer Development Entrepreneurs, Lower Investors’ Risk by Validating your Start-up Company’s Business Proposition Lessons Learned: What is customer development? billion dollar mistake. billion dollar mistake.

Customer 227

Customer Fractional CTO Viral Lean 227

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. Would anyone even show up?

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Try innovating inside a large company where 99% of the company is executing the current business model, while you’re trying to figure out and build what comes next. Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? You think startups are hard? The short answer is no.

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. The Lean LaunchPad class uses the three “ Lean Startup ” principles: Alexander Osterwalders “ business model canvas ” to frame hypotheses.

Intellectual Property 281

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 281

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2012

Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or Customer Development there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. I want to tell you a story about how a team pivoted and succeeded by synchronizing product and customer development. ———-.

San Jose 256

San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 256

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

Our Lean LaunchPad class requires student teams to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week while they’re building the product. The class is designed for students who said they want a hands-on experience in what it takes to build a startup – not just writing a business plan or listening to lectures.

Lean 278

Lean Customer Development Business Model Email 278

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

clinical utility, customer, quality of data, reimbursement, what parts of the product are valuable, roles of CRO’s , and partners, etc.,) you make substantive changes to one or more parts of your initial business model, and this new data affects your biological and clinical hypotheses. Join the I-Corps @ NIH.

Lean 269

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 269

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. Now everyone can do design,” was the mantra. George Bernard Shaw.

Agile 332

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 332

Steve Blank

AUGUST 21, 2013

What we found is that during the class almost all of them pivoted - making substantive changes to one or more of their business model canvas components. In the real world a big pivot in life sciences far down the road of development is a very bad sign due to huge sunk costs. identify financing vehicles before you need them.

SBIR 314

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 314

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

HR processes, legal processes, financial processes, acquisition and contracting processes, security processes, product development and management processes, and types of organizational forms etc. All of these are great strategies and tools that business schools build, and consulting firms help implement.

Government 315

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 315

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

Founders of startups (and new ventures inside existing companies) are searching for product/market fit and a repeatable and scalable business model. An entrepreneur must start with the belief that all their assumptions are simply hypotheses that will undoubtedly be challenged by what they learn from customers.

Lean 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. This methodology forces rapid hypothesis testing and Customer Development by getting out of the building while building the product. Come up with a business model canvas for their startup.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2023

In contrast, designing AI-driven enterprise software or building dating apps are comparatively simple problems.) (Understanding and solving homelessness, disinformation, climate change mitigation or an insurgency are examples of wicked problems. Co mpanies also face Wicked problems.

Lean 294

Lean Chile Ukraine Spain 294

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

At best I think business plan competitions are a waste of time. Business Plan Versus Business Models. Where did the idea that startups write business plans come from? A simple way to think about it is that in a startup no business plan survives first contact with customers. What did you build/do?

Business Plan 312

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 312

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2020

The pandemic has upended the business models of most startups and existing companies. As the economy reopens companies are finding that customers may have disappeared or that their spending behavior has changed. Suppliers are going out of business or requiring cash-up-front terms. Here’s how.

Customer 436

Customer Marketing Customer Development Lean 436

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

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

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

MAY 7, 2019

Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of this century with the observation that startups aren’t smaller versions of large companies – large companies at their core execute known business models, while startups search for scalable business models. This new framework can act as the front-end of Customer Development.

Lean 333

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 333

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. Starting in the 1950’s, Stanford’s engineering department became “outward facing” and developed a culture of spinouts and active faculty support and participation in the first wave of Silicon Valley startups. Berkeley-wide. We’ve gone global as well.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

As someone who is trained in Human Computer Interaction, I had followed the concept of User Centered Design. I tell these stories to lay the groundwork for what I am going to call Revenue Development. But I’m going to contend that we’re still missing one leg of the stool, and that leg is Revenue Development.

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

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?

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

business models. websites that are sparse and slick, Chinese users currently expect complicated, crowded and busy web pages. However, there’s a growing belief that the “design preferences” of Chinese consumers are just bad design. business models. Unlike U.S.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Campus Entrepreneurship

APRIL 25, 2013

Received an email the other day about a celebration / competition focusing on business models and customer development. is an exciting global student startup competition designed to provoke and reward undergraduate students from any discipline who can. Check out the USASBE Launch competition website. USASBE Launch!

Customer Development 37

Customer Development Business Model Developer Customer 37