Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Given the hardware I had worked on at ESL, learning microprocessors wasn’t that hard but figuring out how to teach hardware design and assembly language programming was a bit more challenging. Just as I was getting settled into Zilog, the manager of the training department got fired. (I How did I miss that?

Silicon Valley 175

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 175

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.) TA’s make managing 60 students working on cases and team projects manageable. Finally our TA’s managed the mentors we had supporting the students.

Business Model 226

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

No trade-up program? No tools to transition your customers data to the new and improved but incompatible product(s)? Congratulations, you’ve just fired your existing customer base. I’ll add I’m particularly curious about how founders recognize that point at which they need to exit / fire the old customers.

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. Evangelos Simoudis’ is the founder and managing director of Synapse Partners. Filed under: Customer Development.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Now we needed to put the tactical programs in place to make this repositioning strategy happen. Tell Me How to Find You But having benchmarks in hand that showed us as the winner did us no good unless all our potential customers could see them.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

That’s a mouthful to say that our sales people didn’t sell our products directly to a customer. Instead they managed rep firms (independent sales companies that carried multiple, non-competing products) that called on computer resellers that sold to the customers. Was our compensation program good, great? Our products?

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 185

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.

Silicon Valley 171

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 171

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. Alex had been recruited back by his Alma Matter to create an entrepreneurship program. They accounted for 65 percent (or 9.8 Lessons Learned.

Silicon Valley 305

Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 305

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

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. emotional rather than technical) and a lot harder to manage than a startup. Two of my role models for my career were in this company. (And

Entrepreneur 276

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 276

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

We hired an interior designer and a great facilities person to manage the process. If the management team is thinking they’ve made it, the new building is just symptomatic of a company heading for a crash. A similar thing happens when a software program is repeatedly ‘improved’ so people can “do more things&#.

Silicon Valley 205

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 205

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. Bend needed its own venture firm.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 28, 2020

There were some great examples of enabling students in Africa to participate in programs from Australia, which had never happened before. Not only the theorists but constituents for customer development, or with Main Street businesses and local constituents. They managed to shorten and simplify the process that tended to help.

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Lean Community San Jose Africa 399

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2017

That if we could get teams to rapidly discover the real problems in the field using Lean methods, and only then articulate the requirements to solve them, could defense acquisition programs operate at speed and urgency and deliver timely and needed solutions. Each of their slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey.

Silicon Valley 182

Silicon Valley Southern California Lean San Diego 182

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. Sunny Shah , assistant director and faculty of the ESTEEM Graduate Program at the University of Notre Dame. Sunny Shah.

Cofounder 190

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 190

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2015

My guests this past week on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Pete Newell , managing partner of BMNT Partners. Matt Weingart, program development manager in the Strategic Development Office at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Channel 120

Channel Japan Bosnia Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2018

Six teams spoke to over 600 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, warfighters, legal, security, customers, etc. Each of their slide presentations follow their customer discovery journey. Six teams presented their Lessons Learned presentations.

Southern California 163

Southern California San Diego Mississippi SBIR 163

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. Before OpenGov, he built California Common Sense , the open data and government watchdog non-profit.

Cofounder 274

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. Before OpenGov, he built California Common Sense , the open data and government watchdog non-profit.

Cofounder 274

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. Sunny Shah , assistant director and faculty of the ESTEEM Graduate Program at the University of Notre Dame. Sunny Shah.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 120

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. None of mine did.)

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

One OSRD project – the Manhattan Project – the development of the atomic bomb – was so secret and important that it was spun off as a separate program. The Rapid Equipping Force operated with speed and urgency to deliver solutions to real customer problems. After the war the U.S. split up the functions of the OSRD.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Kuwait 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

If you can’t manage chaos and uncertainty, if you can’t bias yourself for action and if you wait around for someone else to tell you what to do, then your investors and competitors will make your decisions for you and you will run out of money and your company will die. It may not be for you.

Silicon Valley 170

Silicon Valley Iraq RSS Vietnam 170

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

Policy makers need to know: regulations designed to manage big-companies actually protect those companies by stifling innovation (and competition) from startups. You can see the design of the program here. Truth be told, we've got defense contractors here just like California does too. September 8, 2009 6:25 PM dbsaid.

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DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan Foundation , the Sloan School of Management at MIT , the Sloan program at Stanford , and the Sloan/Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in New York. Sloan realized that the traditional centralized management structures (like General Motors had in 1920) were poor fits for the management of GM’s already diverse product lines.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Ampex’s first customer was Bing Crosby who wanted to record his radio programs for rebroadcast (and had exclusive distribution rights.) Meanwhile on the West Coast – “The Group” 1950’s When Ampex was raising its money, in 1952, an employee of Fireman’s Fund in San Francisco, Reid Dennis , managed to put $20,000 in the deal.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley SBIC San Francisco RSS 125

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: [.] Historically, these were two guys with high testosterone.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

On September 7 th – 9 th we are holding our first Hacking for Defense & Diplomacy – class for Educators and Sponsors , training educators how to teach these classes in their universities and sponsors how to select problem sets and manage their teams. Sign up here. An Idea Whose Time Has Come. Result: Hell yes.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 128

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 30, 2008 Assessing fit with the Wisdom of Crowds When I wrote earlier about how to conduct a good technical interview , I had only a few things to say about how to assess if the candidate fits in with the team, including this: This responsibility falls squarely to the hiring manager.

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. To date, more than 800 teams of scientists and engineers have gone through the program which is built on the Lean LaunchPad curriculum.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Washington Government 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

On September 7 th – 9 th we are holding our first Hacking for Defense & Diplomacy – class for Educators and Sponsors , training educators how to teach these classes in their universities and sponsors how to select problem sets and manage their teams. Sign up here. An Idea Whose Time Has Come. Result: Hell yes.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 120

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

Their initial customer segment were upwardly mobile professionals with $2-10K discretionary purchases/year (excluding travel,) and their revenue model was affiliate program fees. The Agora Cloud Services team was now making a tool set for managing Amazon Web Services cloud compute usage. Veritas turbines.

South Dakota 217

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 217

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Task Management. Project Management Tools. Subscription Payments / Management. Managing APIs. Customer Relationship Management. Contractor Management. Private beta invitations & management: Prefinery. Scanning / Document Management.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Government 120

Government Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

Terman proudly pointed out that only Stanford, MIT and Harvard had a military sponsored electronics program. The eventual goal of this program would have been to radar-map the Soviet Union. The crash program to produce the Lockheed U-2 aircraft was initiated when the balloon program was abandoned. By 1947 the U.S.

Silicon Valley 153

Silicon Valley RSS Europe Germany 153

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

Every marketing communication hire couldn’t wait to produce the next great ad or PR program. In an early stage startup, instead of sales being up front, the point departments are likely to be product development and customer development. Very useful way to think about “Management By Objectives.&#

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 126

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. But we managed to grow a few customers, so that’s good, in spite of the name. Noel: So we been looking on enterprise power management tool.

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Widget Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 204