SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Draw Your Ideas - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 16, 2010 I saw Jack Dorsey give this talk at The 99% Conference last month. The Yin and Yang of Product and Engineering - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 22, 2010 For a tech company, product and engineering are the heart and soul of the business.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

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. After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner.

Business Model 226

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

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. We’ve had folks where they are in between jobs or their hours have been cut.

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

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.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

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

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Lets take venture capital and grow this thing into a real business.”. They used Customer and Agile development to search for a scalable and repeatable business model to become a large company. Typically the size of their opportunity and company doesn’t lend itself to attracting venture capital.

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Business schools teach aspiring executives a variety of courses around the execution of known business models, (accounting, organizational behavior, managerial skills, marketing, operations, etc.). In contrast, startups search for a business model. (Or Their objective is to get users, orders, customers, etc.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. Electron-based Venture Capital. Here’s why.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

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

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. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. The Wrong Discussion s.

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

If you take funding from a venture capital firm or angel investor and want to build a large, enduring company (rather than sell it to the highest bidder), this isn’t the decade to do it. The collapse of the IPO market and dysfunctional math in the venture capital community has stacked the odds against you. Here’s why.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

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. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. The Wrong Discussion s.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2011

This site aggregates and filters content from thought leaders who talk about topics such as Marketing , Sales , Design , Revenue , Hiring , Social Media , Business Models , Metrics , PR , Venture Capital , Angel Investors , Bootstrapping , Incubators , Agile and many others.

Intellectual Property 175

Intellectual Property Aggregator Startup IP 175

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. They’ll explore the best way to deliver the product to customers, the resources required, as well as competing technologies. See the NSF web page here. Join the I-Corps.

Engineer 278

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 278

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

New Century, New Channels For many of you reading this, boxes sitting on a retail shelf may seem hopelessly outdated, but the same marketing lessons hold for “award winning&# web sites or social media. Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Over time, open source software the rise of the next wave of web startups and the embrace of Agile Engineering meant that startups no longer needed millions of dollars to buy specialized computers and license expensive software – they could start a company on their credit cards. Filed under: Technology , Venture Capital.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

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 278

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2010

That process involves rapid hypothesis testing, validated learning about customers , and a disciplined approach to product development. Myth: The Lean Startup methodology is only for Web 2.0/internet/consumer 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

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

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

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 1, 2011

The combination of venture capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology detailed in his book, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany."

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Balance Sheet Lean 118

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I’d been around the web long enough to remember the dozens of companies before YouTube that tried to create crowdsourced video sites and failed. Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

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

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 185

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

Pricing models, the freemium myth and why you may not be charging enough for your product - Seth Levine's VC Adventure , August 12, 2010 I’ve been pulled into a number of product and pricing meetings recently (for reasons unknown I’ve become the Foundry pricing and productization guy). More tiers = more complication = more confusion.

Startup 191

Startup CTO Hire Cofounder Venture Capital 191

The Next Web

DECEMBER 30, 2012

How to Build a Startup (EP245) by Steve Blank: You’ll learn the key steps of the Customer Development process. How to identify and engage the first customers for your product, and how to gather, evaluate and use their feedback to make your product, marketing and business model far stronger. Khan Academy.

Artificial Inteligence 156

Artificial Inteligence Founder Private Equity Ruby 156

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. The consequences of raising venture money.

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 333

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

The one-page pitch format is also more suitable for SaaS businesses that are constantly testing new ideas. Your pitch is going to cover your strategy (what you’re going to do), your tactics (how you’re going to do it), your business model (how you will make money), and your schedule (who is doing what and when). venture capital.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

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. Hype before shipping any product is an obvious flaw, but what about hyping products that have shipped but have zero business model?

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

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. The consequences of raising venture money.

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 225

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

They have many, many man-years of development and customer development in them. Edwin: Oh sorry, so the business model. Edwin: The business model is that the organizer has to pay. Edwin: No, I do think, and I realize that very much, that if I were to take venture capital, the whole game changes.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

www.aaronkharris.com

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

Skipping ahead a bit Suffice it to say that we spent much of the last few months on customer development, a topic which merits its own post, and at which I think we’ve done a decent job. We knew we needed a crackerjack web developer, and could probably do without a guy who dreams in COBOL. We had two.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire New York City .Net Cofounder 40

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, “vertical&# works perfectly fine in quickly telling you about a general direction of a company’s business model. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Vertical 149

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 149

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

It is the first in a series of posts he’s writing about the decisions a young entrepreneur needs to make when she/he is first starting a business. The timing is perfect, there is more than a little overlap with Vivek Wadhwa’s guest post on venture capital earlier today. Johnny Good post.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Some really great stuff in 2010 that aims to help startups around product, technology, business models, etc. First Principles. Steve Blank , January 25, 2010 10 Tips for Adding Game Mechanics to a Non-Gaming Service - ReadWriteStart , September 21, 2010 Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own. -

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

the wave of semiconductor startups in the 1960’s/70’s, the emergence of venture capital as a professional industry, the personal computer revolution in 1980’s, the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s and finally. This lets them deliver a first version of the product to customers in a fraction on the time.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

the wave of semiconductor startups in the 1960’s/70’s, the emergence of Venture Capital as a professional industry, the personal computer revolution in 1980’s, the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s and finally. This lets them deliver a series of minimal viable products to customers in a fraction of the time. The founders.

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222