Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

There’s nothing wrong with a business that supports you and perhaps an extended family. But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. With 317 million people the U.S. Trip 2 to the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? 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.

Cofounder 223

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 223

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.”

Silicon Valley 232

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 232

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 123

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 123

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers.

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

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.” As the engineers were busy rearchitecting the original Stanford MIPS chip into a commercial product, one of my jobs was to find out what features customers wanted.

Customer Development 280

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 280

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter. It did not mean building a startup into a company to flip or hype on the market with no earnings or revenue, but building a company that had paying customers.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

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. Today, startups receive only 4% of those funds, something Clearshore–now in the customer discovery phase–is out to change.

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley California Vertical Customer Development 201

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. 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

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. No building, no money, no customers, no market? Think about all the assumptions you’ve made to get your business off the ground. Who are the customers? Great, sign me up.

Silicon Valley 219

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 219

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. This circular loop can cause them to churn, pivot, and fail.

Customer 421

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 421

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

An existing market is one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. Do you know the archetype of their customers? We only have 20 customers, and Large Company x has millions.” Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

Silicon Valley 188

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 188

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Cray called two years ago and bought it back for parts for an unnamed customer still running one. There is nothing harder than changing customer behavior, except maybe changing the procurement department’s behavior. Of course when you do succeed at changing customer behavior, you have a game changer. Good closure, Steve!

Silicon Valley 191

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 191

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Intellectual Property At the next class I said, “You all ought to get out and start talking to customers on day one, and get early feedback on your idea. Don’t share the details of your manufacturing process with customers until you’ve locked up your intellectual property.” Just get out of the building.” Oops,” I said, “you’re right.

Vertical 151

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 151

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

For the first 25 years HP’s business model was static. Of course HP did ship new products and innovate, but their center of innovation was sustaining innovation , around the core of their existing business. Technology changes, culture changes, customer needs change, more agile competitors emerge, etc.

Silicon Valley 169

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 169

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Ps: my limited perspective comes with self recognition of a lack of hands on experience always enjoy it when I stop in to read here Steve Reply Aamir , on July 2, 2009 at 10:18 am Said: Awesome post Steve… but isn’t drawing the business model for a gaming company going to be easy? Make game, market, sell, profit?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

To a Hammer Everything Looks Like a Nail In hindsight my failure was that I executed to my strength – telling a compelling story – without actually listening to customer feedback. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to listen to customers. I had outsourced customer feedback and ignored the input.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

The Startup Toolkit

JANUARY 25, 2017

With so many potential instruments to teach, the founder decides to start with just one (this is right) and then decides to talk to customers to figure out exactly which to pick first (this is wrong). This sort of customer conversation doesn’t add extra rigor, but just wastes extra time. So what are the scary questions here?

Vertical 20

Vertical Video Conversion Business Model 20

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Founding a company is a sheer act of will and tenacity in the face of immense skepticism from everyone – investors, customers, friends, etc. Next, you have to deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers. And that’s just to get started. Let me know what you think.

Founder 302

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 302

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

In the real world, most business plans don’t survive the first few months of customer contact. And even if they did – customers don’t ask to see your business plan. Preparing for a year is not the best way to spend time, rather getting customers is the better way to an Investor’s heart.

Business Plan 143

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 143

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. Did the customers know they had a problem?

Silicon Valley 178

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 178

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? No one laughed when ESL proposed this class of project to “the customer.” There was something about the energy and passion Zilog’s customers had as they kept doing the most unexpected things with our products.

Silicon Valley 121

Silicon Valley RSS California Chad 121

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110