Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. For example, some startup sales execs believe hiring the core sales team is a key objective.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

Andrew read the Four Steps to the Epiphany , tracked me down at California Coastal Commission hearing in Santa Barbara, and had me meeting with him in a stairwell during a break in my day-long meeting. Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. So how did Customer Development fail us?

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Customer Development Developer Customer California 230

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.

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Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 21, 2014

Back in the early 2000s, the Maker Movement took hold in California, based on the emergence of such do-it-yourself (DIY) tools as 3-D printers, Google''s SketchUp and makerspaces such as TechShop, with all the tools you need to make almost anything. A recent California event packed in 100,000 people.

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Entrepreneur Detroit California Cofounder 246

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. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

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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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

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?”

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

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.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

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.

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Through trial and error, hiring and firing, successful startups all invented a parallel process to product development. 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.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 127

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. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them. Lets see why.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Up and Running

JANUARY 7, 2020

We ended up receiving a $5m term sheet from investors, dozens of government customers from all across the western United States, and several offers to acquire us for 10x the initial investment. Why does product-market fit matter? It’s when you have paying customers and can show both customer growth and customer retention. .

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Product Marketing Silicon Valley Term Sheet 82

infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

For instance, if a consultant proposes to help you with public relations, pay them a commission equivalent to the greater of a flat fee per story placed or a percentage of revenue generated from the PR coverage. Such positions include: PR, Sales, Product Development, Lead Generation, Strategic Planning, Fund Raising, etc.

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Equity Silicon Valley Cofounder Technical Review 40

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

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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Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

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. love to find great products and services made by entrepreneurs who are trying to change the world. The Proof Is In The Revenue.

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Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

October 2012 – Erin Turner and Gagan Biyani host the first Growth Hackers Conference in Menlo Park, California. It is simply getting customers. And by the transitive property, anything that gets customers is marketing. […] Welcome to growth hacking. via TechCrunch). PR and publicity drive attention…to drive sales.

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Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

Transformify

APRIL 12, 2020

There are similarities between IR35 in the UK and AB5 in California , US. IT team members working on the core product, sales and customer support, marketing, etc. Having an independent business is easier to prove if the remote worker has an office, a website, and more than one customer. No revenue at all.

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Bangladesh Philippines Salary Cofounder 98

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

Every product marketer thought they should help define the product feature set, etc. But without sales there is no revenue, and without revenue there is no company. All the strategic thinking in the world won’t make up for a missed revenue plan. Sales was the Sharp End of the Stick, and Marketing was the Stick ?

Silicon Valley 126

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Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I lived through the time when working in my first job in Ann Arbor Michigan we had to get out a map to find out that San Jose was not only in Puerto Rico but there was a city with that same name in California. The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle. The founders.

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Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222