Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions and even billions of users can happen in years versus decades. Continuous innovation requires the imagination and courage to challenge the initial hypotheses of your current business model (channel, cost, customers, products, supply chain, etc.)

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

For example, one of the critical business model hypotheses they could test locally is Product/Market fit – the connection between their Value Proposition (what product or service they were building) and the Customer Segment (who they were building it for.). They intended to get scale for their business by growing in the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Through advertising or direct sales, these sites harvest intent. For a micro-ISV, selling to big businesses can be more lucrative than selling to consumers. Instead of making a few dollars per sale and hoping for thousands of sales, you sell to only a few customers, and charge much higher rates. Here’s why.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? Don’t Throw the Tomatoes.

Search 320

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

Notice that the traditional product introduction model leads to a product launch and the execution of a revenue plan. The revenue numbers and revenue model came from a startups original Business Plan. that make up a business model. All of these initial assumptions must be right for the revenue plan to be correct.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

The idea of a Business Model competition first emerged when I realized that Business Plan writing ought to be taught in English Departments – as they’re the best example of creative writing entrepreneurs will ever do. The Business Plan ?- And your revenue plan is something more than a hallucination.

Business Model 263

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 263

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Step 1: Start with a lean plan. Instead of sitting down to write a 40-page business plan, start with a one-page pitch. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

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. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious. Good stuff too.

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Many entrepreneurship courses focus on teaching students “how to write a business plan.” If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know I believe that: 1) a product is just a part of a startup, but understanding customers, channel, pricing, etc. This class is not about how to write a business plan.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

Do your research and validate your idea: You’re probably going to be doing this at the same time as you write your business plan. It’s the lean format of the business plan—the format that will allow you to adapt fastest as you progress through the startup phase. Your customer. The problem you are solving.

Curation 60

Curation Lean Software Review Finder 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. Every large company, whether it can articulate it or not, is executing a proven business model (s).

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 28, 2010

In a startup the search for a business model is chaotic, unpredictable and uncertain. Yet the Customer Development process uses a series of checklists to ensure that you walk through the Customer Discovery and Validation steps. Customer Hypothesis Checklist. Do you think they can handle the truth ?”

Business Model 239

Business Model Customer Development Engineer Vesting 239

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

As a founder you start out with: 1) a vision of a product with a set of features, 2) a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? What’s the distribution channel. Most of the time the darn customers don’t behave as you predicted. Business Plan Versus Business Model.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

As a formal method, the Lean Startup consists of three parts: The Business Model Canvas – to frame hypotheses, Customer Development – to test those hypotheses in front of customers, and Agile Engineering – to build Minimum Viable Products to maximize learning. Customer Segments is changed to Beneficiaries.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

We had seen the reactions of people playing with the prototypes in our lab and when we demo’d it to our sales force. All we had to do was tell customers they could get video into their computer – and not promise anything else. Our answer was, “People will love this thing, as long as we don’t oversell the product.”

Video 164

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

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

MARCH 11, 2015

They’ve found product/market fit (what products customers want to buy). They’ve learned the best distribution channel to get the product from their company to the customer. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.) and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 15, 2011

By now the nine teams in our Stanford Lean LaunchPad Class were formed, In the four days between team formation and this class session we tasked them to: Write down their initial hypotheses for the 9 components of their company’s business model (who are the customers? what distribution channel? what’s the product?

Business Model 236

Business Model Nebraska Peru Germany 236

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2011

Week 3 of the class and our teams in our Stanford Lean LaunchPad class were hard at work using Customer Development to get out of the classroom and test the first key hypotheses of their business model: The Value Proposition. What sort of sales structure and salesforce does it require? This post is part three.

Cloud 228

Cloud Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 228

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

How startup ideas are developed and nurtured was the focus of conversations with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on Sirius XM Channel 111. Pat was named one of the “80 Most Influential People in Sales and Marketing History” and was twice named Ernst & Young “Entrepreneur of the Year” for both ACT!

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Channel Programming Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2016

Instead, he yearned to channel his creative energies. — Although a February appearance on the reality TV show SharkTank brought Clean Sleep some brand recognition, Michael is struggling to find a scalable business model. Until I got the machine to work, I hadn’t even thought about the business plan.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Fort Worth America Silicon Valley 120

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

In particular, a marketing launch can help you do three things (courtesy, as is most of my marketing advice, of The Four Steps to the Epiphany ): Drive customers into your sales pipeline. Again, its critical to focus your marketing launch on those publications, venues, and channels that your potential partners are paying attention to.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

The show airs on SiriusXM Channel 111 (weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern). You’re constantly critically analyze the gaps in someone’s business plan. The most important part of sales is building trust, and you can’t build trust if you you’re not able to connect with people.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

The show airs on SiriusXM Channel 111 (weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern). You’re constantly critically analyze the gaps in someone’s business plan. The most important part of sales is building trust, and you can’t build trust if you you’re not able to connect with people.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. turn customer feedback into action. turn customer feedback into sales and relationships. customer feedback, vote, comment, manage. live customer chat. SaaS Sales Team Compensation â?? BPS : Business Plan Servicesâ?? business planning.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

grasshopperherder.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2011

Q: “What will be your best channel for customer acquisition?&# We’re testing a viral loop, direct sales, and affiliate marketing.&# BTW, What do business plans look like? Sign up for Grasshopper Herder Other Subscription Options: Recent Posts Is the business plan dead?

Cofounder 47

Cofounder NDA Founder Sweat Equity 47

blog.startupsquare.com

APRIL 13, 2010

2 Comments Tags: Customer Development , lean startup , pivot , Strategy. warning: this post may be highly theoretical / geeky) Last week I was planning for the worst. I’d be very very wary of my business plan. Although you could just as easily call those Market Pivots.)

Lean 40

Lean Startup Cofounder Architecture 40

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

Do that – nothing else but one product / company / focus and get to $1M in sales with atleast $15% net profit. what are the most crucial steps to be taken by a new tech startup when outsourcing major part of the tech to IT firms or outsourcing “product development” eg new social media website project? do something else.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

In fact, you cant go through traditional channels at all. Without a basis for comparison, you first have to drive home the need, then you will have an easy time making the sale (after all, youre the person who they trust to bring it to their attention). One can see how it ripples through the entire business plan.

San Francisco 89

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Ruby Lean 89