Mike Michalowicz

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

Tip 1: Improve Your Customer Service | Dr. Eric White, OD. Dr. White has one of the highest Yelp scores among private practice optometrists and has one of the highest per-patient revenues in the country. His practice, Complete Family Vision Care Optometry, is in San Diego, California. Learn more here: [link].

San Diego 111

San Diego Technical Review California Retention 111

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. its product or service) to its customers. This week they were testing their hypotheses about Revenue Models: what are customers really willing to pay for? Are you generating transactional or recurring revenues?

Revenue 213

Revenue West Virginia Oklahoma Oklahoma City 213

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 25, 2013

The Lean Startup methodology has its roots in the tech sector, where companies need to iterate quickly in order to survive. In fact, at last year’s Lean Startup conference we had speakers from a number other sectors, including government, transportation, education and public health. Here''s just one example.

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Lean Ghana Startup Government 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I have been working on getting a startup to revenue for a while, and while this is my 4th iteration and I have not yet succeeded, I’ve been learning new things every time. I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO.

Silicon Valley 125

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And it was going to mention the two words that SuperMac marketing needed to live and breathe: revenue and profit. To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires.

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crowdSPRING Blog

SEPTEMBER 14, 2012

5 Warning Signs That Your Customer Service SUCKS - [link]. Good reminder on why it’s important to never breach your customers’ trust - [link]. Small Business and Startups: The True “Lean” Movement – [link]. Small Business and Startups: The True “Lean” Movement – [link]. What is success? – [link].

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

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. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup. Lets see why.

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story. That is until I saw that in startup after startup customers come from places you don’t plan on. Your board nods sagely at your target customer list. What happened?

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

In the next few posts that follow, I’ll describe how thinking of a solution to this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – that offers a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities. The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Up and Running

JUNE 4, 2018

He struck up his friendship with Jobs as the result of an introduction by a mutual friend who had met Jobs at their California high school. This is clear when you do anything from checking in your baggage for a flight, to contacting a large company’s customer service department! This can pay off in all kinds of ways.

Bootstrapping 66

Bootstrapping Colorado Internet Software Review 66

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. Even more serious, startups can have radically different cash needs.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Are there customers for what you are building? How many are there? Can it scale?”

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Up and Running

AUGUST 3, 2016

George Hedley, a CSP based in California, is known as “The Business Builder” and has worked in the construction industry since 1977. Use good years to buffer lean years. A handy rule is to expect three lean years for every seven good years. If you are a sub-contractor, for example, then your end customer is a general contractor.

Revenue 60

Revenue Nebraska Virginia Lean 60

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Rita McGrath, a Columbia Business School professor says, “there’s pleasing today’s customers and there’s developing tomorrow’s business.” That’s why it’s so important for companies to “get out of the building” and interact with customers. A good idea might still be a bad idea because customers don’t care about it.

Non-Compete 329

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 329

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

We as researchers go in with a bias – that obviously these guys want our technology – but that is not the case for a lot of customers. I am good with doing research and doing experiments but talking to customers is not my forte. from University of California, Davis in Biomedical Engineering. It was intimidating from day one.

Cofounder 190

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 190

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 1, 2018

Product management is fundamentally about thinking on your feet, staying one step ahead of your competitors, and being able to project yourself into the minds of your colleagues and your customers. Commit to observing and interacting with your customers on a weekly, if not daily basis. invest time into your customers.

Management 85

Management Product Technical Review Software Review 85

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Last week the teams tested their Revenue Models hypotheses: what are customers willing to pay for? After a week of hectic customer discovery , the team further refined their new business model. Veritas turbines.

South Dakota 217

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 217

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

We as researchers go in with a bias – that obviously these guys want our technology – but that is not the case for a lot of customers. I am good with doing research and doing experiments but talking to customers is not my forte. from University of California, Davis in Biomedical Engineering. It was intimidating from day one.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 120

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Why Arizona Bay started taking stock from its customers instead of cash. But with the help of Grahams company, which specializes in creating tech systems for start-ups, Jumpstart grew to more than $50 million in revenue--enough to make it an attractive acquisition for media conglomerate Hachette Filipacchi. LEADERSHIP & MANAGING.

Arizona 40

Arizona Equity Iowa Venture Capital 40

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 10, 2018

I enlisted in the Marine Corps at the tender age of 17 and got stationed in California. When I was California, I went to continue … I was doing karate at the time. When I got stationed out in California, which obviously has the larger Asian population, I stumbled across my first Aikido class in May of 1988. Musubi, right?

California 41

California Washington Pennsylvania Audience 41

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating. Technology?

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Rita McGrath, a Columbia Business School professor says, “there’s pleasing today’s customers and there’s developing tomorrow’s business.” That’s why it’s so important for companies to “get out of the building” and interact with customers. A good idea might still be a bad idea because customers don’t care about it.

Non-Compete 120

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 22, 2020

Digital Response (USDR) CalFresh Onward California Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) "President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1935-1944" SF New Deal donation/volunteer page Transcript for Out of the Crisis #15: SF New Deal Eric Ries : This is Out of the Crisis, I'm Eric Ries.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Government Technical Review Community 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

Corner Cases and Consensus are For Large Companies Carefully considering each and every possible outcome before you proceed with a decision is something large companies with large revenues, shareholders and employees need to do. Customer Development.) They are about forward motion, momentum and feedback loops (i.e.

Silicon Valley 176

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 176

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

In particular, the winners invent and live by a process of customer learning and discovery. It’s a process that doesn’t exist in large companies with existing customers and markets. The “Customer Development” model is a paradox because it is followed by successful startups, yet articulated by no one.

Silicon Valley 127

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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. At first glance, the diagram, which illustrates the process of getting a new product into the hands of waiting customers, appears helpful and benign.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2016

She left high school at 15 to attend Simon’s Rock Early College, then studied computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. We were depending on investor funding, but with $60,000 in revenue no one would fund it. . Jessica ran things as lean as she could for the next few months while figuring out what to do.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Cofounder Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan put in place GM’s management accounting system (borrowed from DuPont) that for the first time allowed the company to: 1) produce an annual operating forecast that compared each division’s forecast (revenue, costs, capital requirements and return on investment) with the company’s financial goals.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

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. I replied: “This is really important for our success as company and I’m really at a loss why customers didn’t respond the way we expected. Anybody else got some other ideas?&#

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Up and Running

JULY 16, 2015

From the beginning and all along the way, careful planning has guided the business from revenues of $35,000 in 2011, to $400,000 in 2014, and estimates of $700,000 for 2015. Increased revenue has gone hand-in-hand with public acclaim. That made our first winter in the shop very lean, but we made it through,” he says.

Oregon 60

Oregon Prospectus Southern California California 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 25, 2020

As a veteran of many disasters in which improvising in the moment to meet an immediate need led to innovative solutions, Carl has been impressed by how many businesses, small and large, have reinvented the way they serve their customers during the pandemic. Then they've gotten to work. It's member-owned.

Technical Review 148

Technical Review Balance Sheet Texas Austin 148

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

The subscription box industry is growing rapidly thanks to a steady revenue model and tapping into people’s love for surprises. Lots of new box companies have trouble ironing out the kinks in their process: their customer can’t easily unsubscribe, their boxes just aren’t exciting or well-curated, and more. Your problem and solution.

Business Plan 63

Business Plan Curation Balance Sheet Intellectual Property 63

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

We Changed Our Mind In 1966, 10 years after Hewlett’s memo, Hewlett Packard’s revenue and headcount had grown ten fold; $200 million and 11,000 employees – all from test and measurement equipment. Technology changes, culture changes, customer needs change, more agile competitors emerge, etc.

Silicon Valley 164

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SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

How to Enchant Your Customer - How to Change the World , November 23, 2010 I love to do business with small businesses—in-store, online, for myself, for others, for pleasure, for work—it doesn’t matter to me. No Business Plan Survives First Contact With A Customer – The 5.2 New York, California different toilet, same s#@t.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Dinner in a Strange Land When I was in my mid 20′s working at ESL, I was sent overseas to a customer site where the customers were our three-letter intelligence agencies. The conversation happened to hit on politics and culture and my friend’s’ wife innocently offered up she had lived in a commune in California.

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