Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

Silicon Valley 131

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

New strategic direction in companies with loyal customers have different consequences then when you had no customers Acquiring new customers are a lot more expensive that converting existing ones.

Customer 216

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 216

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on?

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Market Risk vs. Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention.

Vertical 162

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 162

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

I know that this all seems obvious now with the movements started by Steven Blank ( Four Steps of Epiphany ) with the whole Customer Development processes / Lean Startup movements also popularized by people like Eric Ries. They taped people using existing products. Back then it seemed foreign. But they went one step further.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. steve Terence Pua , on July 31, 2009 at 12:20 am Said: You need email reply notifications Yes, got it.

Silicon Valley 143

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 143

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 269

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 269

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 125

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

Unintended Lessons « Steve Blank steveblank.com/2009/09/28/unintended-lessons – view page – cached + Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) + Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40?

North Carolina 160

North Carolina Silicon Valley RSS Connecticut 160

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Eighty some pages later I realized that a) I had some great war stories as a good marketeer and failed CEO, b) I’d have to pay my wife and kids to read them, c) the three of them were probably the entire total available market, and d) when I looked at what I had done and what other entrepreneurs had done at their startups, that there was a pattern.

Redemption 132

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Through trial and error, hiring and firing, successful startups all invented a parallel process to product development. In particular, the winners invent and live by a process of customer learning and discovery. It’s a process that doesn’t exist in large companies with existing customers and markets.

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 133

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Durant Versus Sloan – Part 1 « Steve Blank steveblank.com/2009/10/01/durant-versus-sloan-part-1 – view page – cached + Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) + Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40?

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 179

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 260

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260

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 210

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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 310

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Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

My two cents is that a business plan is the single place to collect your thinking about about your: business model, distribution channel, demand creation plan, financial assumptions, and customer and product development plan. If you’re text averse like i am, try to diagram these key items and then write-up the diagrams.

Business Plan 156

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 156

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. We had several emails back and forth where he provided basic details on the concept. New York, California different toilet, same s#@t. What went wrong?

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

October 2012 – Erin Turner and Gagan Biyani host the first Growth Hackers Conference in Menlo Park, California. On Sean’s GrowthHackers.com , categories include… So, essentially everything from customer development and onboarding to persuasion and social marketing fall under the umbrella of growth hacking.

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Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Silicon Valley’s development is intimately entwined with the long history of industrialization and innovation in the larger San Francisco Bay Area. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Want to learn more about me?

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I started my last company with 100% off-shore resources because I could never have completed Customer Development at a reasonable cost of money or regulatory burden had I employed US Citizens. Truth be told, we've got defense contractors here just like California does too. September 9, 2009 12:36 AM Richard Tibbetts said.

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DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

It ended with a large layoff and a transfer of jobs from NY to California and Bangalore. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The moral of the story? A bad manager can destroy anything, I guess. But also -- if you ask people for input, youd better listen to them.

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

In an early stage startup, instead of sales being up front, the point departments are likely to be product development and customer development. Later on in this same company’s life, sales will become the pointy end and product development moves to a supporting role. Who’s on the Sharp End?

Silicon Valley 132

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steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

AgileZen – project management visually see and interact with your work Kanbanery – Simple online team or personal kanban board LeanKit Kanban – Great for visualizing work of product development Kanban Pad – “Nice and lean” and free online Kanban tool Banana Scrum – A tool simple as Scrum itself.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Whether you’re wondering what site search you should use or what is the best email marketing tool, knowledge is power. Email Integration. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Email marketing. Sendgrid : Need to send email out to users? They make sure that your emails never to go spam folders.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53