Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. Is there some defining factor that easily distinguishes the difference? Sounds like handspring.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Computer hardware companies were faced with their customers asking for low-cost (relatively) desktop computers they had no experience in building. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? what Market Type is your startup?

Technology 138

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Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? While we sometimes cut the price of graphics boards, it was only because we offered our customers no compelling reasons to buy one that was priced equivalently to the market share leaders. No, not really.

Silicon Valley 141

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Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. For example, complex new semiconductor architectures, (i.e.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

It will cost you your job.” By accountable I meant, “we agreed on a delivery date, and between now and the delivery date it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office the day something was due and give me an excuse. That kind of accountable.

Silicon Valley 259

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

All of sudden what was an additional engineering and development effort now became a small, variable cost. So we’ve learned to live with our customers. We’re now piloting our application with Tree Farmers in California and working with crop specialists at U.C. Build continuous customer discovery into your company DNA.

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Some are r esegmenting an existing market– directed at a niche that an incumbent isn’t satisfying (like Dell and Compaq when they were startups) or providing a low cost alternative to an existing supplier (like Southwest Airlines when it first started.)

Silicon Valley 131

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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.” I ran back to the company and said customers had told us, “We have to do both little and big endian.” And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

In less than a month they designed a low-cost video-capture board that plugged into the Mac and allowed you to connect a video camera and VCR. A month or two before the QuickTime public announcement in May, the SuperMac hardware engineers (who had a great relationship with the QuickTime team at Apple) started a “ skunk works ” project.

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Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. When Terman said no, Sylvania, a tube company which built proximity fuse tubes in WWII, won the contract and set up its Electronic Defense Lab (EDL) in Mountain View California in the middle of an orchard. defense spending even higher.

Silicon Valley 171

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Stanford had a Customer Development loop going on inside their own lab. The discoveries in tube and circuit research suggested new electronic intelligence and countermeasure techniques and systems; in turn the needs of the Applied Lab pushed tube and circuit development.

Silicon Valley 142

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

My first business trip to the valley was to visit California Microwave. In all the Germans had over 7,500 radars dedicated to tracking and killing the allied bombers. Each allied bombing mission lost 2-20% of their planes. Bomber crews had to fly 25 missions to go home. We needed a way to shut down the German Air Defense system.

Silicon Valley 180

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Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2016

. — When Michael and his father started the Robert Mondavi Winery, few people were drinking California wines. Before that, restaurateurs would never compare California with France. It was “France is great” and “California is jug wine.” Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Silicon Valley 139

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Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2016

. — When Michael and his father started the Robert Mondavi Winery, few people were drinking California wines. Before that, restaurateurs would never compare California with France. It was “France is great” and “California is jug wine.” Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley California Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2019

I’ve been an adjunct for almost 18 years, and I still remember the onboarding process at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. I knew I wanted to write a book about a (then) radically new entrepreneurship idea called Customer Development (later the foundation of the Lean Startup movement).

Cofounder 142

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

She said, “Dad, one of the great things you and Mom did was never tell us how much things cost.” Now that I’m older, I’m starting to know what things cost. It was something I never thought about, and when I first heard it I thought it was a terrible thing to have taught her. For a minute it was a pretty depressing thought for a parent.

North Carolina 143

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

from University of California, Davis in Biomedical Engineering. Sunny’s startup idea emerged from a diagnostic tool he’d developed in his lab to detect pathogens. In talking about how expensive the costs of that two-day delay are for them we could start seeing that maybe our research could help these people. .

Cofounder 190

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 190

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

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that. However, for the Web 2.0

Vertical 128

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 128

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? We’re about to ship next week.”

Silicon Valley 181

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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

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan put in place GM’s management accounting system (borrowed from DuPont) that for the first time allowed the company to: 1) produce an annual operating forecast that compared each division’s forecast (revenue, costs, capital requirements and return on investment) with the company’s financial goals.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

from University of California, Davis in Biomedical Engineering. Sunny’s startup idea emerged from a diagnostic tool he’d developed in his lab to detect pathogens. In talking about how expensive the costs of that two-day delay are for them we could start seeing that maybe our research could help these people. .

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

As a private company you can decide that winning at all costs is your culture. You can decide that coming in first at all costs is your culture. Think through if you want to win at any cost. (I It’s the decisions that you make that might cost you an order, a sale or a higher stock price. And we decided not to.

Silicon Valley 124

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Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

Without a budget, costs can quickly spiral out of control (last minute impulse purchases to jazz up your booth, for example) and defeat your best laid plans. A rule of thumb is that your space costs represent about a quarter of your total show budget. Plus tips on overall trade show strategy.

Silicon Valley 178

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Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

Davis , a German applied Laser research group, a California organic farm er who wanted to be an Earlyvangelist , four service partners and three weed/pest management consultants. Answer: The most cost effective wavelength is 800-900nm ~ $20/watt. Final question: Is the improved absorption efficiency worth the extra cost?

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Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

I was asked to explain why a marketing program that cost $150,000 bucks literally generated nothing in revenue for the company. Reply Customer Development Gut Checks « Market By Numbers - Brant Cooper , on April 28, 2009 at 11:38 am Said: [.] They hit each other with baseball bats until one of them dropped.)

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2016

She left high school at 15 to attend Simon’s Rock Early College, then studied computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. I talked it over with some friends that night, and decided the next morning we’d have to cut all of our costs. . Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Cofounder Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

And you’d like me to do my talk on Customer Development and startups?” “No, we’re the other CIA.” Steve my name is Donald xx, and I’m the head of external affairs of the CIA’s venture capital firm and we’d like you to keynote our conference.” Do you mean the Culinary Institute of America?

Silicon Valley 247

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Reply Dan Hodgins , on November 13, 2009 at 1:12 am Said: Hi Steve, Just listened to your “Retooling Early Stage Development&# for about the 10th time tonight as I was cleaning my room. Your results may vary.

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Hippoland

JUNE 19, 2018

We are starting to see some doctors who are licensed to practice in California live abroad in Bali and partake in telemedicine – can we do more of this to help with patient loads from state to state and perhaps get more doctors certified in multiple states? Costs : I’ve seen a lot of startups attempt to reduce medical costs.

San Francisco 48

San Francisco California Cost Software 48

Hippoland

JUNE 19, 2018

We are starting to see some doctors who are licensed to practice in California live abroad in Bali and partake in telemedicine – can we do more of this to help with patient loads from state to state and perhaps get more doctors certified in multiple states? Costs : I’ve seen a lot of startups attempt to reduce medical costs.

San Francisco 48

San Francisco California Cost Software 48

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

The quintessential California couple, they stood out in our crowd as the engineer (in his late 20′s, respected by his peers and the customer) had hair down to his shoulders, sharply contrasting with the military crewcuts of the customers and most of the other contractors.

Silicon Valley 184

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Gust

AUGUST 8, 2012

That’s two free drinks on this particular one-way trip from New York to California, a $10 value (although not worth suing over ). Never have I worked so hard to get a business to take such a small amount of money for something so trivial to them (assuming near-zero variable cost) yet valuable to me.

Customer 143

Customer Southern California San Jose Marketing 143

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Thanks for sharing the lessons you’ve learned, especially the ones where the cost is measured in years. If you are entrepreneur with a solid business that actually makes money you would know that VC has the highest cost of capital imaginable and would find better options.

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. An interesting phenomena of the 1920s that illustrates the fragility and cost of vacuum tubes is the “Reflex Receiver&# design methodology.

Silicon Valley 270

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