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.). Hawken students practicing Customer Discovery in a mall.

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Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I’ve seen the Valley grow from Sunnyvale to Santa Clara to today where it stretches from San Jose to South of Market in San Francisco. I’ve watched the Valley go from Microwave Valley – to Defense Valley – to Silicon Valley to Internet Valley. So how did this happen? Where is it going?

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Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

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. They’re used to using the web and increasingly the mobile web for everything, commerce, communication, games, etc. web site, they create another 100,000 VPN users.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

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. They’re used to using the web and increasingly the mobile web for everything, commerce, communication, games, etc. web site, they create another 100,000 VPN users.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley. Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. Corporate elephants can dance. So why this post?

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Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. He continued: “I’d like to convince my boss so our company can be your first customer.”

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Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

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

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 11, 2009

However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. By now the company may have found and settled on a repeatable business model.

Cofounder 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

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. Perhaps in direct proportion to the number of “freemium” and “eyeballs” web deals funded.) Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Order Here.

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Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

The trap most of them fell into (common almost everywhere): they were reading the blog posts and advice of Silicon Valley-based companies and believing that it uniformly applied to them. For example, many of the Australian sports tech business models shared common elements. It doesn’t. Born Global or Die Local.

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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. They set up and keep the class web site updated. Class Logistics.

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Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

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

JANUARY 21, 2016

You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). And going for crowdfunding before you do customer discovery with customers can lock you into the wrong idea too early. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

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Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

The guidelines I had originally proposed to my students worked for enterprise software or Web 2.0 Just for discussion, the markets I chose were: Web 2.0, You kids have to learn to do it the old fashioned way they did it before they new economy and Silicon Valley. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Vertical 149

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 149

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.

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Useful blogs and links for startups Click Here ————– 2.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

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

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

. - Local MVP (most valuable professional) customers are critical in helping Microsoft penetrate foreign markets affordably and effectively, providing the firm its most effective marketing communications and saving it hundreds of millions of dollars in support costs. You have to make it easy for them to do so. Wrong message, wrong audience.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

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

OCTOBER 3, 2016

These seem like small things, but they turn out to be really important, because as you’re pivoting, changing your business model and changing your product, there need to be some things that are stable to keep people on the same page. Companies like MySpace and LinkedIn became some of our biggest customers.

Cofounder 274

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

These seem like small things, but they turn out to be really important, because as you’re pivoting, changing your business model and changing your product, there need to be some things that are stable to keep people on the same page. Companies like MySpace and LinkedIn became some of our biggest customers.

Cofounder 274

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. VC’s invested in things that ran on electrons: hardware, software and silicon. Quickly iterate the product in front of customers. Here’s why.

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Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. This approach would shape Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial ethos: In startups, failure was treated as experience (until you ran out of money). See the NSF web page here. Yet this system isn’t perfect.

Engineer 278

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 278

Steve Blank

JANUARY 26, 2016

Introducing Hacking for Defense – Connecting Silicon Valley Innovation Culture and Mindset to the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. They don’t need an office in Silicon Valley to figure out what’s out there. They are experts in leveraging Web 2.0 It turns out that’s a massive mistake.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley North Korea Agile Lean 120

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

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?

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Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Cray called two years ago and bought it back for parts for an unnamed customer still running one. Was Ardent’s business model flawed from the start for being so short on potential customers with deep pockets? Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Was it your error or cruel fate?

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 185

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

Silicon Valley 117

Silicon Valley Balance Sheet Metrics Early Stage 117

Steve Blank

JULY 19, 2016

Jim Semick , co-founder of ProductPlan , which sells web-based software for building visual product roadmaps. Jim lectures at University of California Santa Barbara and elsewhere on the process of discovering successful business models. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. Peter Arvai.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Sweden 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

No MBA business model would ever come out with, “Hey we’re going to go target the academics.” Everyone comes up now — the VCs, the market – and they say, “Hey wow, that was a beautiful business model. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 145

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 1, 2011

Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. This approach would shape Silicon Valley's entrepreneurial ethos: In startups, failure was treated as experience (until you ran out of money). See the NSF I-Corps web page for details. Until today. Join the I-Corps?.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Balance Sheet Lean 118

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

No MBA business model would ever come out with, “Hey we’re going to go target the academics.” Everyone comes up now — the VCs, the market – and they say, “Hey wow, that was a beautiful business model. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 120

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.

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San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Amazon Web Services. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Web Tools: Hereâ??s We have an iOS SDK as well, for web-web, mobile-mobile, web-mobile video chat and video messaging. We have an iOS SDK as well, for web-web, mobile-mobile, web-mobile video chat and video messaging.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 15, 2010

His posts are born of tremendous research into the secret history of Silicon Valley , and if you haven’t read those essays, you should. We have to continually invent new categories of products, new platforms, and new business models – all extremely risky bets. Let me be clear: Steve is the historian.

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IPO San Francisco Lean Silicon Valley 166