Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

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Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# My advice was to start a policy of making reversible decisions before anyone left his office or before a meeting ended.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot.

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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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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (..)

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Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

The Customer Development talk can be seen here. That said I will be giving a Customer Development talk at TIECON , Saturday May 16th, 1:30 thanks for asking. steve Customer Development is Hard. Thanks to Dave McClure and Leonard Speiser for the opportunity to speak. It starts at ~40:30 in the video.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

This year, with the kids grown, their choice was to fly up from Southern California and spend the holidays at our ranch. So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. California, where even the rabbits are bigger than life!

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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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Forget the Hypertext idea and come on back to California. He and his wife Gwen would found the Computer Museum, first in the lobby of DEC headquarters, then in Boston (and now as the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.) The response from across the country? We’re building a supercomputer.”

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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.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. Is there some defining factor that easily distinguishes the difference? Sounds like handspring.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious. Good stuff too.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile. You’re not joining a big company.

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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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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.) After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner.

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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

APRIL 2, 2009

Finally, since no one would believe a set of benchmarks named after our company, we needed a façade of independence, so we named them after the street the company was headquartered on in Sunnyvale California – they became known as the Potrero Benchmarks.

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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. Bend needed its own venture firm.

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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

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Brendan McManus said: “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [link] #startup #advice [.] It was amazing to see the two founders, Fred Durham and Maheesh Jain, build a $100 million company from coffee cups and T-shirts.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

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. What part of this blog should I read if I am also reading the book?

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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.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Facts are the rock on which you build your strategy and tactics In a startup second-hand facts are almost as useless as opinions.

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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. It’s one of the subtle distinctions that at times gets lost in the process.

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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. Can I buy you lunch to share it with you? &# Yes, I’m serious. So the ask is made — shall it be given?

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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. 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.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

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

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. We think we got it figured out.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Stanford had a Customer Development loop going on inside their own lab. The discoveries in tube and circuit research suggested new electronic intelligence and countermeasure techniques and systems; in turn the needs of the Applied Lab pushed tube and circuit development.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog.

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

What didn’t? Write it down and keep it in a tradeshow handbook for those who will follow. Go to trade shows like it matters.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

My first business trip to the valley was to visit California Microwave. 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. Had not yet heard of Silicon Valley at the time, but the siren call was already sounding.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2012

It was a strange contrast for me having grown up in Northern California where failure seemed to be a badge of honor. 4:30 How did you come up with the idea of customer development? 33:15 Thank you to Detroit Venture Partners for supporting the show. Steve, thanks so much for joining us today! What brings you to LA?

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 21, 2010

Filed under: Customer Development « Requiem For A Roommate 2 Responses steve , on October 21, 2010 at 7:05 am Said: what did Carl say at 1:12 ? BTW, the definition of entrepreneurship I describe at 2:50 into the video is described in detail in the post “ You’re Not a Real Entrepreneur.&#

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 14, 2009

My only excuse is that this week I’m doing public service in my role as a California Coastal Commissioner. Long days, lots of items on the calendar , dedicated staff, very bright fellow commissioners. Greatest hits here.

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