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 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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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Posted on September 14, 2009 by steveblank Over the last 30 years Wall Street’s appetite for technology stocks have changed radically – swinging between unbridled enthusiasm to believing they’re all toxic. Large companies were acquiring technology startups just to get in the game at the same absurd prices.

Silicon Valley 217

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

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?

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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. We had validated our new assumptions by a set of orders, and we had pivoted on our business model.

Silicon Valley 225

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2011

Second, to share how my how my thinking about entrepreneurship as a distinct practice and how Customer Development as one of its central components has evolved over the last decade. And with the 30-year statute of limitations now passed, stories about who I worked for (and the names of agencies.).

Silicon Valley 195

Silicon Valley California Vertical Customer Development 195

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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand.

Sales 120

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. Customer Development This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process.

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 212

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? I liked to fail fast, move on, and not [.] [.] Was it your error or cruel fate?

Silicon Valley 185

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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 181

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Verticals Are Different I began to realize that entrepreneurs (and their professors) act like every vertical market and industry has the same set of rules. So the first heuristic is: do not assume the startup rules are the same for all vertical markets. Just for discussion, the markets I chose were: Web 2.0,

Vertical 149

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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. It does not change as the study of that market unfolds.

Customer 420

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 420

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

After failing dismally at making disposable digital cameras in 2003 Pure Digital Technologies reinvented their company in 2007 to make the Flip line of camcorders. For the first 25 years HP’s business model was static. Technology changes, culture changes, customer needs change, more agile competitors emerge, etc.

Silicon Valley 164

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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. You’re in a “ hits-based &# entertainment business like movies or music rather than a product business like traditional high-tech. -

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Every generation of new technology seems to find a willing audience in naïve journalists and eager readers. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I Hate Business Plan Competitions Yet this same conversation reminded me why every time students at Berkeley or Stanford tell me they’ve entered a technology business plan competition, I question whether they are wasting their time. You’ll learn a lot. I now think that was a mistake.

Business Plan 140

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Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

The dysfunctional family theory may explain why founders who excel in the chaotic early phases of a company throw organizational hand grenades into their own companies after they find a repeatable and scaleable business model and need to switch gears into execution. Let me know what you think. Comments and brickbats welcomed.

Founder 297

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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

OCTOBER 22, 2009

Getting Out of the Building Wasn’t Entertainment – Discovery and Validation Now that I was the master of the “facts” about customer needs in these specialized vertical markets , and with my team of vertical marketers , I thought I had achieved absolution and redemption. But there was one fatal flaw.

Silicon Valley 172

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 172

Steve Blank

JULY 23, 2009

I had to decide what I wanted to do with my career – go back to ESL, try to work for the Customer, or stay at Zilog? While it may seem like an easy choice, few people who love technology and who work on black projects leave. These technologies which allowed the U.S. These projects are incredibly seductive. Let me explain why.

Silicon Valley 121

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steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Reply steveblank , on September 16, 2009 at 7:00 pm said: Greg, The Google Group “Lean Startup Circle&# at [link] is a wonderful repository of Customer Development/Lean Startup success and failure. I hewar via thew grapevine that you’re thinking about a ‘Business Model Competition’ Interesting.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110