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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Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. Do you know the archetype of their customers? Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

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Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If there aren’t any that match your company, create some. Tradeshow Seminars Almost all tradeshows have conferences and seminar sessions; is your company keynoting any? Leading or speaking at any? No is the wrong answer. I can’t imagine your company going to a tradeshow to create awareness and not being a speaker.

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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

JULY 13, 2009

It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to listen to customers. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a smart VP of Marketing who was getting early feedback from customers and screaming that the games didn’t match the hype. I had outsourced customer feedback and ignored the input.

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Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Does any of this match your experience or people you know? Yet I am surprised given how much is written about the attributes of a startup founder, how little has been written about what “makes” a founder. Let me know what you think. Comments and brickbats welcomed.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2009

Since we were the hip, new, edgy, “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” video game company (more about “ big hat, no cattle ” startups in subsequent posts,) our office obviously had to match the image. Our receptionists’ desk was built on the wing of a WWII P-51 fighter plane, and the rest of the office décor matched.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

Each of my competitors each had 5-10 graphics boards covering a range of prices with performance to match. This requires deep customer and competitive knowledge. I went home to think about this. Instead of a product family, we had a single point product. Even our current product line had four graphics boards in it. What could we do?

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