Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

Business Plan Versus Business Models. Where did the idea that startups write business plans come from? A business plan is the execution document that large companies write when planning product-line extensions where customer, market and product features are known. initial business model hypotheses).

Business Plan 314

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 314

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. Instead we ended up with poorly written documents that looked like ransom notes.

Agile 332

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 332

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 158

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 158

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Product people are often messy, hate paperwork and prefer to spend their time creating stuff rather than documenting it. They’ll use government regulation and lawsuits to keep out new entrants with more innovative business models. People who manage processes are not the same people as those who create product.

Government 317

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 317

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 246

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 246

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 322

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 322

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 328

Startup Business Model Lean Russia 328

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

Tim Berry is the expert on business planning. In this book, you’ll get step-by-step advice on how to align strategy, tactics, milestones, and assumptions, without having to worry about creating a business plan document. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers.

Startup 80

Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

Steve Blank

MARCH 14, 2012

The DentalOptics customer discovery narrative blog is here. They spoke to 105 customers and surveyed 98 more. You can watch as this team pivots through Customer Segments by clicking through their business model canvases at the end of presentation. The MiCasa customer discovery narrative blog is here.

Lean 249

Lean Business Model Customer Development China 249

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

Agile is a tremendous advance in reducing time, money and wasted product development effort – and in having products better match customer needs. But businesses are finding that Continuous Deployment not only changes engineering but has ripple effects on the rest of its business model. —-. Lessons Learned.

Continuous Deployment 330

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 330

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 300

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 300

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 2, 2010

startups search for a business model, large companies execute an existing one. They’re an albatross if they perform as they do in a large company, and believe that they “own&# customer interaction, feedback to engineering and authoring market requirements documents. Filed under: Customer Development.

Silicon Valley 262

Silicon Valley Management San Francisco Product 262

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 13, 2011

Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology detailed in his book, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany." steve blank in finland sept 2011 View more documents from steve blank. 9-to-5 Venture Capital.

Finland 158

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 158

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Reinventing the board meeting may allow venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. for a business model. Victor Hugo.

Silicon Valley 284

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 284

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

Then summarize it in a brief – a one, max two-page document that you hand to prospective PR agencies. Not to turn them into channel sales people but to hear customer objections unfiltered. To get data that they – and only they, not a consultant – could turn into insight about iterations and pivots about their business model.

PR 316

PR China Lean Channel 316

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

Our Lean LaunchPad class teaches scientists and engineers that starting a company is another research project that can be solved by an iterative process of hypotheses testing and experimentation built around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Scientists Unleashed.

Silicon Valley 243

Silicon Valley Lean Customer Development Business Model 243

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. Yet boards of large companies exist to monitor efficient strategy and execution of a known business model. The Wrong Discussion s. That’s very, very wrong.

Silicon Valley 292

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 292

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

Then summarize it in a brief – a one, max two-page document that you hand to prospective PR agencies. Not to turn them into channel sales people but to hear customer objections unfiltered. To get data that they – and only they, not a consultant – could turn into insight about iterations and pivots about their business model.

PR 208

PR China Lean Channel 208

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. Yet boards of large companies exist to monitor efficient strategy and execution of a known business model. The Wrong Discussion s. That’s very, very wrong.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 263

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 4, 2012

In each case, the business plans were big, long, serious documents that had only a minor semblance to actual business that got created. In the 1990s, business plan competitions were all the rage. I was a judge early on at the MIT $10k Competition (now the $100k Competition) and read lots and lots of business plans.

Business Plan 193

Business Plan Lean Cofounder Venture Capital 193

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

But in the bubble, startups got creative and shortened the time needed to get a product to the customer by releasing “beta’s” (buggy products still needing testing) and having the customers act as their Quality Assurance group. The IPO offering document became the playbook for startups. Tools in the New Bubble.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

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 127

Silicon Valley Business Model Customer Development Engineer 127

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 15, 2011

Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. The process they use to guide that search is "Customer Development" ; and to track their progress startups now have a scorecard to document their week-by-week changes – the business model canvas.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Startup Early Stage Business Model 118

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

When I first started teaching customer development (searching, validating and executing a business model), one of my students pointed out that customer development was similar to the theory of a military strategist, John Boyd. The Gulf Wars.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Kuwait 120

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Struggling to explain the successes and failures of those companies, I discussed principles like continuous deployment, customer development, and a hyper-accelerated form of agile. Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits are among the earliest adopters of new ideas such as Lean Startup and customer development.

Lean 167

Lean Entrepreneur Agile San Francisco 167

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2016

— Although a February appearance on the reality TV show SharkTank brought Clean Sleep some brand recognition, Michael is struggling to find a scalable business model. Until I got the machine to work, I hadn’t even thought about the business plan. Then I realized, “Okay, this is a perfect franchise model.”

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Fort Worth America Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 26, 2016

Most discussion about innovation of defense systems acquisition using an agile process starts with writing a requirements document. Filed under: Customer Development , Science and Industrial Policy , Teaching. how to use an entrepreneurial mindset and Lean Methodologies to solve national security problems. Sign up here.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley North Korea Agile Lean 120

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

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. Me – “Have you used Company x’s product? Do you know have they distribute their product?

Silicon Valley 188

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 188

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

Fourth , would the same Lean Startup methodology (business model design, customer development and agile engineering) used in the Lean LaunchPad and NSF I-Corps class work here? Multiple teams have been engaged by government, prime contractor and VC firms for follow-on discussions/engagements. Result: Hell yes.

Silicon Valley 129

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 129

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Lean Planning is a set of tools for discovering a business model that works, building an action plan to test your assumptions, creating financial models and a plan for a viable business, and tracking your performance so you can adjust your plan on the fly, quickly and easily. Do startups have a manual?

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

Fourth , would the same Lean Startup methodology (business model design, customer development and agile engineering) used in the Lean LaunchPad and NSF I-Corps class work here? Multiple teams have been engaged by government, prime contractor and VC firms for follow-on discussions/engagements. Result: Hell yes.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 120

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. Those tools, combined with focused customer interviews, have turbo-charged the company’s ability to learn.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

I hear similar things for pre-revenue startups that are on schedule, on time, and on budget - even though they are busy building something that nobody wants. (In In fact, this crisis was at the heart of Steve Blank ’s original impetus to develop customer development as an alternative set of milestones to use for startups.)

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams can prove their competence and validate their ideas by showing investors evidence that there’s a repeatable and scalable business model. A Lean Startup methodology offers entrepreneurs a framework to focus on what’s important: Business Model Discovery. We focus on evidence and trajectory across the business model.

Oakland 327

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 327

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. Customer’s Job-to-be-Done.

Customer 421

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 421

Occam's Razor

APRIL 8, 2013

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. Another way to find the metric you want to change is to look at your business model. The business model also tells you what the metric should be.

Metrics 156

Metrics Analytics Lean Churn Rate 156