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. Get Out of the Building and test the Business Model. This post is part one. to get hard-earned information.

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Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

corporation – starting a new technology division bringing disruptive technology to market at General Electric. One of GE’s new divisions – GE’s Energy Storage – has been given the charter to bring an entirely new battery technology to market. This battery works equally well whether it’s below freezing or broiling hot.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

As I looked around at other schools, I saw pretty much the same landscape – business plan classes, business plan competitions and loosely coupled accelerators that focused primarily on mentoring. Traction and evidence from customers were what investors were looking for – even in “slow” sectors like healthcare and energy.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

It’s a paradox, but early sales success in a startup can kill its chances of becoming a large successful company. The cause is often sales and marketing execs who’ve become too comfortable with an initial sales model and panic at the first sign of a Pivot. Integrated circuits were a new market. What could go wrong?

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Silicon Valley Technical Review Spain Engineer 239

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

In the last five years “ Lean Startup ” methodologies have enabled entrepreneurs to efficiently build a startup by searching for product/market fit rather than blindly trying to execute. However in practice most companies treated the Three Horizons like they are simply incremental execution of the same business model.

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Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 9, 2018

They use the Business Model (or Mission Model ) Canvas to keep track of their key hypotheses and then rapidly test them by talking to customers and iterating their Minimal Viable Products. This allows them to quickly find product/market fit. Except when they’re in a regulated market. Regulation.

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Marketing Startup Government SEC 321

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

But things like vendor introductions are only needle-movers at the earliest stages. Similarly, customer introductions are invaluable in the early days, but become less valuable once a company has a fully-formed go to market function.”. Customer Development. Fundraising. Celebrity Relationships.

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Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# Reply Why Startups are Agile and Opportunistic -- Pivoting the Business Model , on April 14, 2010 at 6:32 am Said: [.]

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Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

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?

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Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Different market opportunities present radically different startup risks and costs. The time to product and scale of investment is radically different than other startup markets.&# Intellectual Property At the next class I said, “You all ought to get out and start talking to customers on day one, and get early feedback on your idea.

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Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 149

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Yet for every founder there are 10-20 other employees who take the near-equivalent risks in joining an early-stage company. If you’re not a founder (by choice, timing or temperament,) you may be an early employee or a later stage startup employee. This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

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.

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Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. He came up with the concept to simply the search for product/market fit by using an MVP Tree.

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Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. — An experienced team made all the difference to 2U finding success, Jeremy said: We had a phenomenal early group of people that were brought together to try to address the problem. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

Class III devices are generally the highest risk devices and must be approved by the FDA before they are marketed. Class III medical devices that are high risk or novel devices for which no “predicate device” exist require clinical trials of the medical device a PMA (Pre-Market Approval). Business Model Issues.

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Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on?

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. — An experienced team made all the difference to 2U finding success, Jeremy said: We had a phenomenal early group of people that were brought together to try to address the problem. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

A lot of my time is spent helping early-stage companies get to proof points so that they can raise capital. They might have some seed money and are thinking or raising a Series A based on success of an early release (MVP). Think about how you can prove your business model with an MVP. is a requirement.

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Valuation Revenue Pre-Money Valuation Early Stage 198

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

When you take money from investors their business model becomes yours. Sigh… What I should have been hearing is the search for the business model, specifically the progress on product/market fit, but I hear the fund raising story first at least 90% of the time. How do we attract, keep and grow customers?

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 333

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

As Peter began to speak extemporaneously our mouths slowly fell open as he described the video game market, its size, its demographics, the state of the technology, and the state of games. He took us through a day (and a night) of a hardcore gamer and told us about the new class of CD-ROM based game machines about to hit the market.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. He was constantly in front of customers, listening, selling, installing and learning. I got to spend time inside his company while I was using their software to analyze early-stage ventures. Filed under: Customer Development.

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Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 316

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing. Our “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” story played great in Silicon Valley, they ate it up in Hollywood, and the business press tripped over themselves to talk to us. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to listen to customers.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

The role of a founding CEO in a startup searching for a business model is radically different than a CEO building and growing a company. What startup stage do they typically invest in? Do they “get&# Customer Development ? What Startup Stage Do they Invest In? Your potential business model?

Founder 231

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. 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. Early stage board meetings are often clones of large company board meetings.

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I hate business plan competitions – when they encourage students to write a “winning plan&# rather than teaching them how to get out of the building and use locally available resources to start a company. MootCorp in particular has an impressive track record of putting early stage tech companies on the right path towards funding.

Business Plan 140

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

When you take money from investors their business model becomes yours. Sigh… What I should have been hearing is the search for the business model, specifically the progress on product/market fit, but I hear the fund raising story first at least 90% of the time. How do we attract, keep and grow customers?

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 225

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. 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. Early stage board meetings are often clones of large company board meetings.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 26, 2013

Vitruvian is a good example of a great early stage therapeutics idea with animal data missing and many key components of the business model still needed to verify. Market Type. Or should we position our product as one that’s Resegmenting an Existing Market? Look at their Lesson Learned slides below.

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Lean Customer Development Video Early Stage 237

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

. ———– The National Institutes of Health recognizes that Life Science/Health Care commercialization has two components: the science/technology, and the business model. The Lean Launchpad® for Life Sciences (the I-Corps @ NIH ) uses the Lean Startup Model to discover and validate the business model.

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San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 261

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

Pre-launch customer development data is another way, sometimes in the form of user surveys for consumer companies or interviews with potential beta customers for B2B businesses. it’s understandable that investors will want to see how your product is doing in the market. B) Post-Product Companies.

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Seed Stage B2B Seed Capital Revenue 149

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. Do your customers really read TechCrunch? If not, do not launch there.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? But all things are never equal.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

MAY 13, 2010

They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. So I met the entrepreneur and asked him how his search for a business model was going. Great, but we’re having a bit of a problem getting traction.” Here’s what I told him: A startup exists to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.

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Founder Cofounder Business Model Customer Development 199

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2010

Yet at their early stages, they are not small versions of larger established companies. The good news is this team found a business model, product/market fit and a repeatable sales model. If the founders and early executives leave, that’s OK; we don’t need them anymore. All of this is often true.

Agile 120

Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2010

If you read the academic literature or business press, you might believe that large companies and their business models are brought by the stork. This series of posts are going to offer a new three-stage model of how startups grow into large companies. Stage 2: Metamorphosis – the Transition.

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Laos Startup Business Model Early Stage 286