Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend.

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Mike Michalowicz

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

His practice, Complete Family Vision Care Optometry, is in San Diego, California. Dr. Aaron Neufeld, OD is an Owner/Optometrist at Los Altos Optometric Group in Los Altos, California. They work towards that goal by driving sales month after month and trying to keep an eye on cash while keeping costs as low as they reasonably can.

San Diego 111

San Diego Technical Review California Retention 111

Steve Blank

APRIL 21, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment with a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. This week they were testing their hypotheses about the sales “Channel” – how a company delivers its value proposition (i.e. With two weeks and two more updates to go, this post is part six.

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Channel Artificial Inteligence San Francisco Business Model 215

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Just like catching a bug in development is cheaper than fixing it once it has been released, confirming lack of customer demand prior to ramping up a sales engine is cheaper than finding out once you have a paid sales team.

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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.

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Lean Ghana Startup Government 167

SoCal CTO

MARCH 12, 2012

Tech Events / Meetups - In Los Angeles, There are lots of Networking Events in Los Angeles and Southern California that are techie oriented. A great post by Elizabeth Knopf , FounderDating: How I Found My Co-Founder where she breaks down the process much like how you think about a sales process. Ask them about your concept.

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder CTO Hire Los Angeles 211

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They looked at their watches, gave our sales guy a quizzical look and left.

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Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

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 response was inevitably “great pipeline.” (Great pipeline means no real sales.). We now understand that’s wrong.

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Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

However the Customer Development Model and the Lean Startup work equally well for startups on the web. The first question to ask is: “Does your startup have market risk or is it dominated by technical risk?” Lean Startup /Customer Development is used to find answers to the unknowns about customers and markets. Does this help?

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Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Since the training department was part of sales no one really paid attention to the four of us. It was a Friday (about ¾’s through my work week) and I was in a sales department meeting. The VP of Sales gave me a funny look and just moved on with the agenda. VP of Sales? Repeat every day, six or seven days a week.

Silicon Valley 175

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 175

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

In short order they learned how to transition from being customers on the receiving end of a sales pitch to giving one. They knew the technology trendsetters in their fields and got us in front of them. To a person they became passionate evangelists and effective marketers.

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Your goal was to preserve your cash while you turned these guesses into facts and searched for a repeatable and scalable sales model. Your presentation doesn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. They will realize that you have built a startup that’s agile, resilient and customer-centric.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Little Indians and Big Indians At MIPS Computers , my second semiconductor company, I was the VP of Marketing and defacto head of Sales. Reply My take on Customer Development and the Lean Startup | Recess Mobile Blog , on January 9, 2010 at 5:29 am Said: [.] Reply Yuri Ammosov , on December 15, 2009 at 4:28 pm Said: Hmmm.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Motioning to our VP of Sales, he ordered: “Go with him and get him in front of customers, and both of you don’t come back until you can tell us something we don’t know.” Reply Chui , on October 8, 2009 at 8:05 pm Said: Anyone squirming probably shouldn’t be in sales anyway, and a wise person would have realized it was good advice.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. Two paragraphs, Five bullets. It didn’t take more.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

The initial hypothesis for Epiphany (from my much smarter partner Ben ) was that as departments in the enterprise (manufacturing, finance, customer support sales) became automated, the marketing department would eventually get its turn. This is the pivot, a crucial tactical maneuver for the lean startup [.]

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Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

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Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

But if you’re writing a plan as an internal guide for strategic growth, you should consider a lighter version— a Lean Plan. A Lean Plan can also serve as an initial plan that helps you think through all the aspects of starting your business. Marketing and sales plan. Your problem and solution. Target market (intended customers).

Business Plan 63

Business Plan Curation Balance Sheet Intellectual Property 63

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

The implications for entrepreneurs is that each of these (market risk versus invention risk,) require radically different financing models, a different type of venture investor, different timing for hiring sales and marketing, etc. Am I in a company with “invention risk? A good case study here is most iPhone apps.

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2015

Many people are too cautious in sales processes and as a result when they present their solutions they end up sounding milquetoast and undifferentiated from anybody else in the market. I recently wrote about the three rules of sales. In sales we often call these USPs (I wrote about them here: Unique Selling Propositions ).

Sales 150

Sales Silicon Valley Las Vegas Southern California 150

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. Some sales guy who was too busy to take the meeting was probably retired in Maui on the commissions. Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story.

Silicon Valley 131

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Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

I packed up my life in Michigan and spent five days driving to California to start work. I’ve tried different things in India – sales training, software sales, advising entrepreneurs. You’re Hired, You’re Fired. Driving across the U.S. is an adventure everyone ought to do.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

We have structural employment issues : The official unemployment rate in the US is hovering just below 10% but “true” unemployment is much higher when you account for those that have stopped looking or taken part-time employment and in key states like California and Michigan we’re downright hurting.

Entrepreneur 298

Entrepreneur Technical Review Balance Sheet Government 298

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

I knew we were selling through a multi-level indirect sales channel. 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.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 185

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

When a startup finds a repeatable sales process and steadily increasing revenue, its investors wants to harvest the rewards and build a culture of “execution.” However, if the founder is still running the company, the last thing he wants is a company complacent with day-to-day execution.

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Intelligence As I leafed through the Cray sales material, a glossy magazine with the headline Cray Channels jumped out of the pile. Later I sat down for lunch and began to leaf through the bag of data sheets and brochures I had collected. Hmm… typical booth stuff…key chains, data sheets, pens… Until I got to the material from Cray.

Silicon Valley 147

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

We knew from back-of-the-envelope calculations that I would need 3 times the combined marketing and sales budgets of the incumbents for a head-on assault. (I The 3:1 Lanchester Laws said I would need $60M in marketing and sales spending to win. You need to hire the right type of sales people for the type of [.]

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

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. We were constantly creating metrics [.] there were words of encouragement on the package.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Hearpreneur

JUNE 4, 2021

Jump forward 16-17 years, through numerous mergers, sales, wins and losses, and our current agency, HUB, is going strong, powered and pushed forward by that original desire to do a good job, create sustainable digital products and generally make a difference. But I also leaned that is actually ok.

Entrepreneur 133

Entrepreneur B2B Database Technical Review 133

crowdSPRING Blog

SEPTEMBER 14, 2012

Small Business and Startups: The True “Lean” Movement – [link]. Small Business and Startups: The True “Lean” Movement – [link]. How to Steal Killer Sales Copy Straight from Your Prospects’ Mouths – [link]. Interesting that 6 of top 10 cities with happiest young professionals are in California - [link].

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

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. So he had adopted Steve’s Lean LaunchPad class and was using The Startup Owner’s Manual as his core text. . ———– The 99%.

Silicon Valley 305

Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 305

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

This happened to us at SuperMac when our sales skyrocketed. Stay hungry, stay lean. I don’t want to be hungry and lean (nor do I want to be full and fat). It was an odd feeling at that time, we thought we have made it and fail to stay lean and hungry. That’s when things went south. Don’t let it happen to you.

Silicon Valley 205

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 205

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

The Customer Validation lesson of, “no formal launch until you have early sales validating the product and sales process&# was also born here. I can’t remember if they were in the Wired article or on the web site, but every once in a while I still go over to ebay and see if I can find any for sale. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

———— T o: Marketing Department From: Steve Subject: Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters Generating Leads Ownership If your company is going to a show to generate leads, then sales owns the show. This is worthy of an open and honest discussion with sales up front. And inviting to the booth/dinner/private demo.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. He decided that our largest customers would be involved in the setting of our priority lists (we did some of this internally in the early years but we saw it mostly as a sales process). The Outside In organization had a one-way flow.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

Our small training department had been without a manager for months and finding a replacement didn’t seem to be high on the VP of Sales list. I walked into the VP of Sales’ office and with my knees trembling, I politely asked for the job. For entrepreneurs good things come to those who ask. What’s Marketing?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

Prior to his investing and advisory career, Evangelos spent 20+ years in high-technology industries, in executive roles spanning operations, marketing, sales and engineering. He was the CEO of two startups. they often confuse the vehicles to innovation –a venture fund, or an incubator or something else — with actual innovation.

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