Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

Andrew read the Four Steps to the Epiphany , tracked me down at California Coastal Commission hearing in Santa Barbara, and had me meeting with him in a stairwell during a break in my day-long meeting. Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. So how did Customer Development fail us?

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

The Times Square Strategy discussion I had with Eric Ries , was still top of mind, so instead of my standard Customer Development lecture , I offered my thoughts on: the origin of Customer Development, where we are today, and where does Customer Development go, and how you can help get it there.

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 212

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.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

It was amazing to see the two founders, Fred Durham and Maheesh Jain, build a $100 million company from coffee cups and T-shirts. But Cafepress’s most memorable moment was when the founders used a “Lessons Learned” VC pitch to raise their second round of funding and got an 8-digit term sheet that same afternoon.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10 weeks. While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ), Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique. He runs H4X Labs.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

The Founder’s New Insight Smart founders are never satisfied with simply executing their current business model, they are constantly observing, orienting and deciding whether their current business model can be made better. But the purpose of this post is what happens when a founder (or large company CEO) finds a better business model.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

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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Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I lived through the time when working in my first job in Ann Arbor Michigan we had to get out a map to find out that San Jose was not only in Puerto Rico but there was a city with that same name in California. Yet time after time, after the product shipped, startups would find that customers didn’t use or want most of the features.

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Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Evangelos Simoudis’ is the founder and managing director of Synapse Partners. If you can’t hear the clip, click here. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

He would go on to be a co-founder of two mechanical engineering software companies.) Years later he would become a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital.) Our head of finite element analysis came from General Motor’s Chevy division, where he headed up one of their analysis groups. (He

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Forget the Hypertext idea and come on back to California. Oh, and since it was not code compatible with anything, we were going to have to port all the key scientific applications our customers needed (as soon as we figured out who they were.) A few days later Gordon became a founder. The response from across the country?

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North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

We Don’t Need Domain Experts When I looked around at our executive staff, there wasn’t a single founder who was a gamer. Customer Development There was nothing wrong about Rocket Science having a vision radically different than the conventional wisdom. Nor was there anyone with game experience on our board. Make sure they are.

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

PS1- I run a small software startup in Brazil and just found out about Customer Development and your blog (I’ve been reading and listening to everything I can get my hands on online, like Venturehacks and Ries’ blog). You can get away with effective behavior in a large company. Thank you for sharing this.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

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Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

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.

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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.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

The founders coming out of the DEC ( Digital Equipment Corporation ) and Intel culture of the 1960’s and ‘70’s. As an early employee I worked all hours of the day, never hesitated to jump on a “ red-eye ” plane to see a customer at the drop of a hat, and did what was necessary to make the company a winner.

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Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 276

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. The Customer Validation lesson of, “no formal launch until you have early sales validating the product and sales process&# was also born here.

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Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

I’ve built my company using the Customer Development Model from Day One. I recently completed the Validation step (less the industry analyst presentations) and am ready to move on to Customer Creation. On a more serious note, any tips on attracting founders? So the ask is made — shall it be given?

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Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

A partner allows me the flexibility to miss a session or two (my job as a California Coastal Commissioner meets three days every month up and down the coast of California.) While that’s gratifying, the fact is that most people are ill suited to survive in the wild as founders or early employees.

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Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

Even though the Ceres Imaging founders initially wanted to build drones, talking to potential customers convinced them that as I predicted, the farmers couldn’t care less how the company acquired the data. So we’ve learned to live with our customers. Build continuous customer discovery into your company DNA.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand. so at least some parts are being run by people who know what they are doing.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. Communism being a bad science experiment) ESL’s founder Bill Perry was moving the chess pieces. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. If you’re an entrepreneur, ESL is the most important company you’ve never heard of.

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Marketing , SuperMac , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , SuperMac « Love/Hate Business Plan Competitions Gravity Will be Turned Off » 17 Responses EricS , on May 11, 2009 at 11:05 am Said: I loved my Spigot. It was fun watching it happen. steve MIchael W. ,

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2011

Second, to share how my how my thinking about entrepreneurship as a distinct practice and how Customer Development as one of its central components has evolved over the last decade. Fourth, as a public official in the State of California , to offer a window on how public policy on California Coastal protection gets made.

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Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

Let this article serve us reminders to founders and boards alike Reply Michael F. Paul Henderson , on May 15, 2009 at 10:37 pm Said: A boot-strapping startup I once worked with was actually doing some real customer development and making real money from real customers for their early, ugly product. Order Here.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

A startup founder needs to never lose sight of the vision, but be extremely adaptable to pretty much everything else. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. Lots of people have visions.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

A startup founder needs to never lose sight of the vision, but be extremely adaptable to pretty much everything else. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. Lots of people have visions.

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Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Founders Pad.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Michael Mondavi , founder and coach of Folio Fine Wine Partners. Magdalena Yesil. Joining me in from the studio at Stanford University were. Michael Mondavi.

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Silicon Valley California Entrepreneur Cofounder 139

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Create a stream of translational entrepreneurship literature for practitioners (founders and VC’s.) . In research universities with entrepreneurship programs adjuncts are typically founders, VC’s or business executives. Expose adjuncts to the breadth and depth of academic research in the field. It’s Been A Trip.

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Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Reply Alan Urech , on May 13, 2009 at 7:03 am Said: As a Moot Bowl Judge who just returned from that competition (May 7-10, 2009), I think that Business Plans provide a framework for the judges and founders to understand the entire business. It provides a guideline for a methodical growth path for the company.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Curt Haselton , co-founder and CEO of Haselton Baker Risk Group. from University of California, Davis in Biomedical Engineering. Curt Haselton.

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 190

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. Using the Lean LaunchPad (the business model canvas and Customer Development) are the right tools.

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Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 305

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

My first business trip to the valley was to visit California Microwave. to get acquired to raise money or get their founders and investors liquid. My first job out of RPI was as an engineer on the EF-111, an electronic counter measures laden derivative of the original F-111 swing-wing fighter / bomber. Order Here.

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