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Times Square Strategy Session – Web Startups and Customer Development

Steve Blank

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” It’s an impressive portfolio.

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The Customer Development Manifesto: Reasons for the Revolution.

Steve Blank

In the next few posts that follow, I’ll describe more specifically how this model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Because it isn’t until after first customer ship that a startup discovers that their initial hypotheses were simply wrong (i.e.

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supermac War Story 1: Joining supermac

Steve Blank

They had an existing distribution channel and their dealers and customers thought they knew who the company was and what it stood for. When I went through their financials as part of my due diligence I realized that if they ditched their low margin disk drive products, it wouldn’t take much to make them a profitable company.

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A new field guide for entrepreneurs of all stripes

Startup Lessons Learned

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

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Can You Trust Any vc's Under 40?

Steve Blank

Venture Capitalists on your board developed the expertise to get your firm public as soon as possible using whatever it took including hype, spin, expand, and grab market share because the sooner you got your billion dollar market cap, the sooner the VC firm could sell their shares and distribute their profits.

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How to Be Smarter than Your Investors – Continuous Customer Discovery

Steve Blank

All of sudden what was an additional engineering and development effort now became a small, variable cost. As a bonus it meant the 1,400 aerial applicator companies could be a potential distribution channel partner. So we’ve learned to live with our customers. Build continuous customer discovery into your company DNA.

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SuperMac War Story 9: Sales, Not Awards « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales.

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