Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 241

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 3, 2016

In that spirit, I offer my perspective on ten common startup failure sources that rarely get admitted by entrepreneurs: Choose to skip the written business plan. A business plan is for you first, not investors. Entrepreneurs need to spend time working on the business, as well as in the business.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Investor Viral 120

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 15, 2009

I have about 11 years in the technology sector including roles doing market research, sales and product development. My focus has been marketing strategy and product development. I’m currently working with several startups, helping them launch new web businesses. Most people think they can do product design.

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Los Angeles Southern California Management Product 179

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 3, 2021

In my experience, it means it will likely be necessary to supplement your product business plan with some key personal initiatives that define you as a business leader role model for all to see: Take a visible leadership role in your industry. Build relationships with known business leaders.

Stealth 362

Stealth Leadership Viral Social Media 362

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 7, 2023

That means they normally only invest in startups with a working product that has already been sold to at least one customer for full price (beta tests, giveaways and best friends don’t count). They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. Make your focus and priorities clear.

Elevator Pitch 228

Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 228

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 1, 2015

In that spirit, I offer my perspective on ten common startup failure sources that rarely get admitted by entrepreneurs: Choose to skip the written business plan. A business plan is for you first, not investors. Entrepreneurs need to spend time working on the business, as well as in the business.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Viral Distribution 120

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 6, 2016

To create this first year in business checklist, I turned to our in-house experts here at Palo Alto Software: Sabrina Parsons, CEO; Noah Parsons, COO; Josh Cochrane, Vice President of Product Development; and Josh Fegles, Academic and Government Channel Sales Director, and founder of gluten-free cookie company Jude’s Foods.

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Forecast Software Review Lean Finance 60

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 12, 2020

That means they normally only invest in startups with a working product that has already been sold to at least one customer for full price (beta tests, giveaways and best friends don’t count). They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. Make your focus and priorities clear.

Elevator Pitch 336

Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 336

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 6, 2018

Creating a Business Plan. Don’t create your business plan entirely from scratch. Once you’re in, huddle with mentors to refine your plan. Product Development. Your product might “sell itself,” but it still has to get into customers’ hands somehow.) They’re essential, in fact.

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CPA Bandwidth Lean Startup 124

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

Every large company, whether it can articulate it or not, is executing a proven business model (s). A business model guides an organization to create and deliver products/service and make money from it. Somewhere in the dim past of the company, it too was a startup searching for a business model. StageGate Process.

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IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

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. Unless you were incredibly lucky most of your assumptions are wrong.

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Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 248

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.

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Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 263

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I hate business plan competitions. I Love Business Plan Competitions I had a breakfast with a friend who has founded a few companies in Thailand and started the New Ventures Program at one of their universities. For all the reasons why business plan competitions are wonderful for students from outside the U.S.,

Business Plan 143

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 143

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 31, 2014

That means they normally only invest in startups with a working product that has already been sold to at least one customer for full price (beta tests, giveaways and best friends don’t count). They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. Make your focus and priorities clear.

Elevator Pitch 285

Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 285

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 5, 2018

That means they normally only invest in startups with a working product that has already been sold to at least one customer for full price (beta tests, giveaways and best friends don’t count). They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. Make your focus and priorities clear.

Elevator Pitch 139

Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 139

Women Entrepreneurs Can

NOVEMBER 19, 2022

These firms can provide various services, including financing and business advice. They can also help you develop your product and sales channels. VC funding is best suited for businesses with high growth potential. They also look for a robust business model and product/market fit. Seed Rounds.

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Venture Capital Early Stage Liquidity Event SEC 52

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

That means in their core business, large companies have a series of knowns. 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. 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’s the product? what distribution channel?

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 30, 2016

That means they normally only invest in startups with a working product that has already been sold to at least one customer for full price (beta tests, giveaways and best friends don’t count). They are willing to cover marketing, inventory and scaling, but not product development. Make your focus and priorities clear.

Elevator Pitch 120

Elevator Pitch Salary Angel Investor Viral 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Customer Development by Vertical - Click to Enlarge (As a reminder, the Customer Development process says your business plan is just a series of untested hypothesis (unless you’re a domain expert.) You take your product vision and get out of your building to turn your hypothesis into facts. New/Disruptive?

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 123

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 12, 2010

Products: You obviously can’t create value without a viable product (or service) to sell. This section of your Venture Value Scorecard should summarize the important advances you have made recently in research and product development. Tags: scorecard venture value Akira Hirai business valuation.

Intellectual Property 223

Intellectual Property .Net Valuation Distribution 223

Up and Running

MARCH 24, 2021

You don’t necessarily need to have the greatest market penetration for your business to be viable. One of the best ways to start developing your market penetration strategy is using the Ansoff Matrix. Launch a new product or service. If you’re considering launching a new product or service, be sure that there is a need for it.

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Software Review Marketing Campaign Forecast 146

crowdSPRING Blog

SEPTEMBER 21, 2014

This means that you need to be in constant contact with your customers: make it easy for them to contact you , survey them regularly , provide great content for them through your social media channels, and listen closely to what they have to say. A business plan is a great place to start and every business needs one.

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Small Business Startup Leadership Vertical 95

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

With an out-of-this-world business plan. When it was spun out as a a separate company, Iridium’s 1990 business plan had assumptions about potential customers, their problems and the product needed to solve that problem. A Business Plan Frozen in Time. This business plan was a static document.

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Business Plan Customer Business Model Customer Development 335

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

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

The dominant channel by which we reach customers is the Internet, whether you''re a small local restaurant on Yelp or a global maker of tissue paper. We often tell founders that a business plan is nonsense. A business model, on the other hand, is a snapshot of your business assumptions at this moment in time.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

She has a separate team, with its own culture and office, and a mandate straight from top management to innovate without regard to the company’s historic products, channels, or supply chain. Certainly venture-backed startups don’t have this luxury – every business plan has a model in it. So far, so good.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Up and Running

MARCH 1, 2016

So, if I were going to invent something, I’d probably start by creating an affordable jeweler’s workbench, not least because I’d be able to test it, and because I already know all the distribution channels I’d need to hit in order to sell it. You can do this on your own too using the lean planning methodology.

Non-disclosure Agreement 60

Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Non-Compete Naming 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

The Customer Development process says preserve your cash by not hiring anyone in sales and marketing until the founders turn hypotheses into facts and you have found product/market fit. This “get out of the building” activity is the Customer Discovery step of the Customer Development Model.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

Tim Keane

APRIL 24, 2006

Last night, Bob Zieserl, Venture Capitalist, and general partner at Stratus Ventures, was the keynote speaker at the Marquette University Business Plan Competition. As an example, we had an advanced manufacturing business that achieved excellent early results. The product development cycle was excellent.

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Wisconsin Angel Investor Bootstrapping Venture Capital 60

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 12, 2018

Where do you see your business in the next 3-5 years? Our 5 to 10 year business plan is centered on new efficiencies within the Ellison consumer purchase funnel. This investment will help us become faster and cut overall costs related to product development without lowering the quality.

Greece 49

Greece Iowa Nicaragua Chicago 49

Up and Running

DECEMBER 22, 2015

I have to admit, I’ve seen some judges of graduate-level business plan competitions care about IRR, but never an actual angel investor during actual due diligence. Please, get a clue: Real businesses usually turn out net profits in single digits, and only rarely up as high as 20%. You’re out of school now.

Angel Investor 60

Angel Investor IRR Software Review Startup 60

Austin Startup

APRIL 14, 2020

Lazarus: Credit Before COVID-19 madness ensued, we were ramping up our beta community outreach, finalizing our Ambassador program, nailing product development, and flirting with guerrilla marketing ideas for a classic post-SXSW launch. Then, day after day, more and more drastic COVID-19 links hit our Slack channel.

Austin 64

Austin New York City Matching Cofounder 64

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Again, its critical to focus your marketing launch on those publications, venues, and channels that your potential partners are paying attention to. Figuring this out takes time, and few entrepreneurs have the patience to wait it out, because the business plan does such a good job of explaining what customers are going to think.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Next, you have to deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers. And here’s where life gets really interesting, as the reality of product development and customer input collide, the facts change so rapidly that the original well-thought-out business plan becomes irrelevant.

Founder 302

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 302

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A minimum viable product in this category must answer the question: does my media content or channel command the attention of a valuable audience? Startup founders need to use their own judgment to ask: which is the riskiest assumption underlying my business plan? Let’s look at a viral growth company, like Facebook.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Designmantic Blog

MARCH 6, 2018

She is recognized as a design and innovation leader in high-impact and philanthropy product development. Lea Woodward developed a strategic planning process called the Values-Based Business Plan. Website: talentculture.com. Lea Woodward. Website: leawoodward.com.

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Entrepreneur Social Media B2B Cofounder 76