Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 228

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 139

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Generate end user demand (to match our revenue goals) Drive that demand into our sales channels Value price our products to achieve our revenue and margin goals (create high-value) Educate our sales channel(s) Help engineering understand customer needs That was it. We hired union laborers to do that.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

If we tried to match them on their playing field we’d never catch up. Reply steveblank , on March 28, 2009 at 7:27 am Said: Denis, Over time the blogs tagged under the “customer development&# category will build up a narrative of illustrative stories of how customer development evolved in practice.

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Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 144

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

Have a loud product demo; give away pieces of candy; hire a masseuse and offer free back rubs. If there aren’t any that match your company, create some. Offer a free bestselling book in your industry (can you have the author there to autograph it?); Leading or speaking at any? No is the wrong answer.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 185

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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Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 191

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 21, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. Jason: It does, because one of your goals is to have enough runway to try lots of stuff and fail a lot of times, or hire a really good person.

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Widget Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 204