Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

I''ve been thinking a lot lately about scaling sales. . Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. How do I build a repeatable, scalable sales process that is like an industrial machine - not a crafts project? 1) Enterprise Sales.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

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

JULY 22, 2010

Startup CEO’s can’t delegate sales and expect it to happen. Customer Validation needs to have the CEO actively involved. Here’s an example in a direct sales channel. Customer Development Diagnostics over Lunch. He went through his product feature by feature and matched them to the customer problems.

Forecast 270

Forecast Sales Customer Customer Development 270

The Next Web

DECEMBER 30, 2012

How to Build a Startup (EP245) by Steve Blank: You’ll learn the key steps of the Customer Development process. How to identify and engage the first customers for your product, and how to gather, evaluate and use their feedback to make your product, marketing and business model far stronger.

Artificial Inteligence 156

Artificial Inteligence Founder Private Equity Ruby 156

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of the 21 st 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. Given this set of characteristics, how should a market be defined?

Customer 420

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 420

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. For example, many of the Australian sports tech business models shared common elements.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2014

For those who don’t know, I wrote the book Open Innovation in 2003, and followed it with Open Business Models in 2006, and Open Services Innovation in 2011. A startup is a temporary organization in search of a repeatable, scalable business model. When companies want to innovate a new business model (vs.

Startup 327

Startup Business Model Lean Russia 327

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

In this post we’re going to offer a new definition of why startups exist : a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. A Business Model. Ok, but what is a business model ? A business model describes how your company creates, delivers and captures value.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

So the departments either didn’t have the capacity to pay or it would be an endless sales-cycle, where we would spend lots of time on the sales, but it still wouldn’t close. In the end the revenue simply wasn’t enough to make a sustainable business and so we had to switch gears once more (in today’s parlance that would be a “Pivot”).

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

These new entrants disrupted their food categories by offering high quality proprietary recipes, outsourcing their manufacturing, and using their cash and resources on sales and marketing to build distribution and a differentiated brand. They ran 10 in-store demos, which got them talking to 100s of more customers.

North America 120

North America Lean Customer Development Distribution 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

billion for a company with less than $50 million in sales. It may just be that the message of building companies that have predictable revenue and profit models hasn’t percolated through the VC business model. On its first day of trading, Netscape stock closed at $58/share, valuing the company at $2.7

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Startups that are searching for a business model need to keep score differently than large companies that are executing a known business model. Yet most entrepreneurs and their VC’s make startups use financial models and spreadsheets that actually hinder their success. Managing the Business. Here’s why.

Balance Sheet 298

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 298

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2010

To get to this Transition stage, the company needed passionate visionaries who can articulate a compelling vision, agile enough to learn and discover in real time, resilient enough to deal with countless failures, and responsive enough to capitalize on what they learned in order to secure early customers. What’s Next.

Agile 120

Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

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

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Reply steveblank , on September 16, 2009 at 7:00 pm said: Greg, The Google Group “Lean Startup Circle&# at [link] is a wonderful repository of Customer Development/Lean Startup success and failure. It’s more reference material. Thus, these pages. I’ll add more as time goes on.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Fairchild Semiconductor became the progenitor of a flood of Silicon Valley chip companies and at the same time the adoption of the limited partnership as the model for Venture Firms gave VC’s their own profitable business model. But these VC’s aren’t Lean because they fund startups with web-based distribution models.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

What matters is proving the viability of the company’s business model, what investors call “traction.&# Of course this is not at all true of many profitable small businesses, but they are not what I mean by startups.) For a startup, having great sales DNA is a wonderful asset. They are closing orders.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

The one-page pitch format is also more suitable for SaaS businesses that are constantly testing new ideas. Your pitch is going to cover your strategy (what you’re going to do), your tactics (how you’re going to do it), your business model (how you will make money), and your schedule (who is doing what and when).

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

However, in catching up with the VP of Sales of Ardent last night, I was reminded one of the few times I did return for closure. We had support from the scientists and researchers who had bought one of our machines and were beginning to see that distributed computing would ultimately triumph, but bureaucracy marched on, and we lost the bid.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 185

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2010

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. Students formed teams, came up with a business idea then talked to customers, vendors and sales channel partners to validate their business model.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley Business Model Customer Development Engineer 126

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 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

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. No startup will ever succeed without a persuasive and visionary sales leader.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

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 have they distribute their product? Do you know the archetype of their customers? This is easy to test.

Silicon Valley 181

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181

market-by-numbers.com

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Market By Numbers on Twitter | Entries RSS | Comments RSS Market By Numbers High-Tech Marketing and Customer Development Home What is Customer Development? The driving force helps shape technology choices, importance of design, market segment, and business model as well as company culture, growth plan and exit strategy.

San Diego 40

San Diego RSS Lean Elevator Pitch 40

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

Do that – nothing else but one product / company / focus and get to $1M in sales with atleast $15% net profit. what are the most crucial steps to be taken by a new tech startup when outsourcing major part of the tech to IT firms or outsourcing “product development” eg new social media website project? do something else.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. turn customer feedback into action. turn customer feedback into sales and relationships. customer feedback, vote, comment, manage. live customer chat. free, distributed source code control management system. SaaS Sales Team Compensation â??

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

I too am looking for someone to work with that knows the manufacturing and distribution end of a solid product. Twitter is an excellent distribution channel for us. (B) Nosake From nothing to losing money every month with no business model in sight. Cant wait for more posts on Techcrunch [link] ? How to get there.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84