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 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

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

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. VC’s sit on 6 – 12 boards at a time.

Silicon Valley 297

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 297

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

A lot of entrepreneurs think that their startup is the next big thing when in reality they’re just building a small business. A first order filter is whether the founders are aiming for a scalable startup. The question was: what did the founders want to do? Lets take venture capital and grow this thing into a real business.”.

Hockey Stick 299

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 299

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. VC’s sit on 6 – 12 boards at a time.

Silicon Valley 270

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 270

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

Customer Development 284

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 284

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

. —– I’ve lived through several technology infrastructure waves; the Unix business, the first AI and VR waves in the 1980’s, the workstation wave, multimedia wave, the first internet wave. Each of our teams in this class followed the canonical Lean model: Articulate your hypotheses using the business model canvas.

Artificial Inteligence 323

Artificial Inteligence Lean Exit Strategy Startup 323

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

What matters is proving the viability of the company’s business model, what investors call “traction.&# It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. They are busy too, but they are not creating value for the company.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" For example, how are you going to explain that component drive architecture like.NET isn't going to work for cross platform open open source business models? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

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.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

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

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

. —– I’ve lived through several technology infrastructure waves; the Unix business, the first AI and VR waves in the 1980’s, the workstation wave, multimedia wave, the first internet wave. Each of our teams in this class followed the canonical Lean model: Articulate your hypotheses using the business model canvas.

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Lean Exit Strategy Startup 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

One way to conceive of our goal in an early-stage venture is to incrementally “fill in the blanks&# for the business model that we think will one day power our startup. For example, say that your business model calls for a 4% conversion rate – as ours did initially at IMVU.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 27, 2009

It uses principles of agile software development, open source and web 2.0, and lean manufacturing to guide the creation of technology businesses that create disruptive innovation. This presentation will empower entrepreneurs and managers to: -Identify a profitable business model faster and cheaper than your competitors.

Lean 60

Lean Austin San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

He begins by explaining how he arrived at his conclusion: I began the hunt to find a technical co-founder – a software engineer who works for no cash – to help me build my dream website. Twelve months into my startup journey I had four half-built websites that had been built by my four ex-technical co-founders.

Technical Cofounder 42

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2010

That process involves rapid hypothesis testing, validated learning about customers , and a disciplined approach to product development. internet/consumer software companies. Truth: The Lean Startup methodology applies to all companies that face uncertainty about what customers will want.

Lean 167

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 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. This is often a tough concept for engineering founders who believe that if we just tell customers about the features that make their product faster, cheaper, etc.

Marketing 316

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 316

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

For example, IMVU’s early business model was made possible by Paypal’s easy self-serve and open access payment system. I think that if a web founder would come to me asking for an investment talking about how he's coding an immensly scalable, perfectly designed system, I will throw him out in an instant.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

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. Founders should understand what the customer hopes to accomplish , or what their job to be done is.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. And I tried to evaluate the idea and figure out: What did the founder really need here? Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? You got it.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

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. That is customer development. “But it never happened.&# [Alas, customers dont know what they want!

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# And this is true outside of games. Sorry about that.)

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 15, 2010

We have to continually invent new categories of products, new platforms, and new business models – all extremely risky bets. When private capital is available in sufficient quantities to satisfy investor and founder liquidity needs, why go IPO? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

IPO 166

IPO San Francisco Lean Silicon Valley 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

Many startups don’t innovate at all in the product dimension, but use other kinds of innovation: repurposing an existing technology for a new use, devising a new business model that unlocks value that was previously hidden, or even simply bringing a product or service to a new location or set of customers previously underserved.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Companies in the entertainment business around the world knew who we were, and were interested in meeting us, if only to see what the hype was about. Our VP of Business Development had no problems getting meetings and fund raising was easy. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

Id been on the internet since I was playing MUDs as a kid, but by 1999 I felt Id already missed the boat. No business model, either. In fact, I remember sending him and his obscure-to-me co-founder (aka Reid Hoffman ) a bug report early-on, instead of taking them up on their offer of an in-person meeting. And Google?

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 17, 2009

The Lean Startup is a practical approach for creating and managing a new breed of company that excels in low-cost experimentation, rapid iteration, and true customer insight. Eric Ries, a co-founder of IMVU, is a strong proponent of this process and very successfully used it at IMVU. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

In particular, we would cover customer development, continuous deployment, minimum viable product, and actionable metrics. I love the business model. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Lean 102

Lean Programming San Francisco Continuous Deployment 102

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. Patrick: Exactly.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

Other the years Kevin O’Connor, former CEO and founder of DoubleClick and I got to know each other. Lean Start-up Connection: Business Model Canvas. We assumed our customers would be any smart Internet users looking to make a decision—granted, an extremely broad customer segment. Validation.

Lean 299

Lean Agile Customer Development SEO 299

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. When I asked, “What are you working on?” What’s a Startup?

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 334

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Do some Customer Development instead. You have to know your business model. Most startups launch before theyve figured out what business theyre in. If the product needs to be tweaked just a little bit in order to convert users into customers, you want to figure that out before the launch. Gattiker said.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

I don’t have any formal business training and I actually think it’s served me well. Instead of spending 4 years at university, I spend 4 years starting 2 internet companies that failed. My goal is to some day get an honorary degree for kicking ass in business. Whats is the best way to find a co-founder for your startup?

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. Thats what business is designed to do.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

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. When I asked, “What are you working on?” What’s a Startup?

Venture Capital 226

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 226

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

Initially, IMVU sought to quickly build a product that would prove out the soundness of their ideas and test the validity of their business model. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131