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.).

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Jeff Katzenberg has a great track record – head of the studio at Paramount, chairman of Disney Studios, co-founder of DreamWorks and now chairman of NewTV. The mantra of “ first mover advantage ,” the idea that winners are the ones who are the first entrants in their market, became the conventional wisdom of investors in Silicon Valley.“

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ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

This is a customer development problem. By the end of this article, you should have a better understanding of how to develop new products or tweak your existing offerings by working with existing or prospective customers to incorporate their feedback to create viable solutions to their problems, and clearly communicate their value.

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Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

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. (I

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Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 248

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

business models. But for the last decade “innovation” in Chinese software meant something different than it did in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Perhaps it’s the weather.

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China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. A Day in the Life of A Founder For those of you who’ve never started a company, let me assure you that it never happens like the pleasant articles you read in business magazines or in case studies.

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Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 297

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

business models. But for the last decade “innovation” in Chinese software meant something different than it did in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Perhaps it’s the weather.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

The Founder’s New Insight Smart founders are never satisfied with simply executing their current business model, they are constantly observing, orienting and deciding whether their current business model can be made better. It’s a natural part of learning about your customers and business model.)

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10 weeks. While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ), Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique. He runs H4X Labs.

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Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? The core idea behind customer development is that the assumptions you make about a target market are only guesses. sustainable business.

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Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2023

Now at Imperial College Business School and Co-Founder of the Wicked Acceleration Labs , Cristobal and I wondered if we could combine the tenets of Lean (get out of the building, build MVPs, run experiments, move with speed and urgency) with the expanded toolset developed by researchers who work on Wicked problems and Systems’ Thinking.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

This week, the startup tribe from Harvard Business School is making their annual trek to Silicon Valley. It’s a common refrain around Silicon Valley to disparage the role of MBA’s in entrepreneurship. As a result, founders get removed prematurely or even entirely exiled. I also frequently see the reverse.

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Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

If you’re a technical startup founder, one of the painful lessons is that it’s not enough just to build a great product. You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). Clay Hebert , founder of Crowdfunding Hacks. Clay Hebert.

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Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

I teach potential founders a hands-on, experiential class called the Lean LaunchPad at Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia and Caltech. The class teaches the three basic skills all entrepreneurs need to know: business model design. customer development. Some general customer development slides click here.

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Open Source Silicon Valley Lean Customer Development 335

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

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. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing.

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Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back. Order Here.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

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. Job creation in Bend is everyone’s business.

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Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

However, in meeting some of the sports startups one of the things that struck me is that most of the founders who said they wanted to grow big hadn’t given much thought about how they would go about building size and scale. For example, many of the Australian sports tech business models shared common elements.

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Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ) Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. He runs H4X Labs.

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Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

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

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

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. Silicon Valley, New York).

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Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

The key things I want students to take from the class are: Understand that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a profitable business model. Learn how to put together a business model , not a business plan. Class Logistics. As described in the previous post , this is a hands-on class.

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Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

At a university business plan competition, for the first time they can swim in the sea of expertise that we/I take for granted in the middle of Silicon Valley. I love business plan competitions (and with my valley-centric bias, I think Berkeley and Stanford have two of the best.) I now think that was a mistake.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. Alex, vice provost for Innovation & Economic Development at Weber State University in Utah and completing his first year of teaching entrepreneurship.

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Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 305

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 2, 2010

I gave a talk last night to the Silicon Valley Product Management Association. startups search for a business model, large companies execute an existing one. They’re an asset to a startup if they understand that their job is to get the founder outside the building and in front of customers.

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Silicon Valley Management San Francisco Product 261

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Luckily (or maybe because we were in Silicon Valley where there was a domain expert for everything) there was a very smart consultant in the retail computer space, Seymour Merrin, who preached about the importance of packaging. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.)

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley , was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. Why It’s “Silicon” Valley. It might be its most important.

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Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

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. Silicon Valley, New York). Yet boards of large companies exist to monitor efficient strategy and execution of a known business model.

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Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

A startup founder needs to never lose sight of the vision, but be extremely adaptable to pretty much everything else. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. Lots of people have visions.

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Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

A startup founder needs to never lose sight of the vision, but be extremely adaptable to pretty much everything else. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. Lots of people have visions.

Cofounder 274

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

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. Silicon Valley, New York). Yet boards of large companies exist to monitor efficient strategy and execution of a known business model.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

In cohort one, 25 teams chosen from a field of 100+, worked fulltime for eight weeks to take their ideas from a “cocktail napkin” business idea to a viable, scalable business model. Second, technology education is more skill-based, graduating lots of smart coders and IT managers, but not a lot of true development visionaries.

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Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 321

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Home Books for Startups Guide Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Tools Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Email Subscription Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Categories Air Force (12) Ardent (10) Audubon (1) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (39) Business Model versus Business Plan (..)

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Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2014

It’s now been over 3 years since the team has left my classroom and I thought I’d share with you what the two founders, Jorge Heraud and Lee Redden, learned then and what they’re doing now. Like all great Silicon Valley companies they started with a technology and guessed who the customers will be.

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Lean Silicon Valley Customer Development Incubator 272