Steve Blank

APRIL 21, 2011

This week they were testing their hypotheses about the sales “Channel” – how a company delivers its value proposition (i.e. Physical channels include Direct Sales, Rep Firms, Systems Integrators, Value-added Resellers, Distributors, Dealers, Mass Merchandisers, and Original Equipment Manufacturers.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2009

within one year of sale, offer for sale, public disclosure or public use. Under California law, employers may own inventions that are “related to employer’s reasonably anticipated R&D.” Offer for sale in the U.S.:Red You must be “first” to patent. In the U.S. that means “first to invent” while outside U.S.

Intellectual Property 213

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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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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.

Silicon Valley 125

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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 [.]

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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.

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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

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Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

When I retired after 21 years working in 8 startups, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the business school at the University of California Berkeley. While most visionaries turn out to be hallucinating, the few who are right push the human race further along. Let me give you an example.

Lean 221

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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?

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

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.

Silicon Valley 124

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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?

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Market Type affects your spending and sales ramp after you reach product/market fit. You say, “Market Type affects your spending and sales ramp after you reach product/market fit.&# Use the Lean Startup - When There's Market Risk The second question is : “What’s the “ Market Type ” of your startup? Does this help?

Customer Development 219

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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

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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.

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

We had seen the reactions of people playing with the prototypes in our lab and when we demo’d it to our sales force. Since we had gotten out of the software business when we came out of Chapter 11 , and our sales channel didn’t know what to do with software, we licensed ReelTime to Adobe. We knew something our CEO didn’t.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

billion for a company with less than $50 million in sales. The IPO Bubble – August 1995 – March 2000 In August 1995 Netscape went public, and the world of start ups turned upside down. On its first day of trading, Netscape stock closed at $58/share, valuing the company at $2.7

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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.

Silicon Valley 120

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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. 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.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

However, in catching up with the VP of Sales of Ardent last night, I was reminded one of the few times I did return for closure. In my career I’ve been involved with lots of sales deals, and for some reason losing this was the one deal I never forgot. It was for sale on Ebay. I liked to fail fast, move on, and not look back.

Silicon Valley 185

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

With that implicit assumption, startups hire a VP of Sales with a great rolodex and call on established mainstream companies while marketing creates a brand and buzz to create demand and drive it into the sales channel (web, direct salesforce, etc.) They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

Customer Development 196

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

Market Type Integral to the Customer Development model is the notion that Market Type choices affect the way the company will deploy its sales, marketing and financial resources. In Customer Validation it is when you have enough early sales to declare that you have discovered a repeatable and scalable sales process.

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Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

As the company gets larger and a large professional sales organization kicks in, its second priority is to generate qualified leads. Before you go to a trade show sales and marketing need to agree to measurable goals. Then offer those budget dollars to the VP of Sales.

Silicon Valley 178

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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. ———– The 99%.

Silicon Valley 305

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan. Marketing starts to build a sales demo, writes sales materials (presentations, data sheets), and hires a PR agency. Marketing is at its peak.

Silicon Valley 260

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Steve Blank

JUNE 24, 2013

The banks lobbied regulators in Louisiana , New York , California, and Idaho and soon they were issuing injunctions forcing PayPal to delay their IPO. This is the same approach that allowed Amazon to ignore local sales taxes for the last two decades. As the company grew larger, incumbent banks forced PayPal to register in each state.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

If it was a very big mistake, I blamed the VP of Sales. “This marketing campaign didn’t work? It was a brilliant strategy but Sales screwed it up.&# (My own lame defense here for this behavior is that sales and marketing are always cats and dogs in startups. Or simply wishful thinking?

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Steve Blank

MAY 1, 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 (..)

Customer Development 139

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Execution by Vertical Market As the class progressed, students asked how the activities/functions of a startup; (Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Product Development, etc.) For example, How does sales differ from one market to another? Sales – What Channel to reach the customer? would look in each of the verticals.

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

The key contributors to an out-of-control burn rate is 1) hiring a sales force too early, 2) turning on the demand creation activities too early, 3) developing something other than the minimum feature set for first customer ship. These are great, but they are not repeatable by a sales organization.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

But I wrote a post about an iterative, process-oriented approach to high-tech sales and marketing on 2.9.9. Reply Customer Development and Start-up Models « Market By Numbers - Brant Cooper , on March 26, 2009 at 3:06 am Said: [.]

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Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

Reply Ray Debs , on April 29, 2009 at 6:55 pm Said: Hi Steve, I am thoroughly enjoying reading your blog posts, and looking forward to more.

Silicon Valley 170

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Rule 1: In an existing market Customer Development means not only understanding potential customers, but your competitors in detail – their product features, their sales channels, their demand creation strategy, their business model, etc. Me – “So what’s the problem?” We only have 20 customers, and Large Company x has millions.”

Silicon Valley 181

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Steve Blank

JUNE 24, 2013

The banks lobbied regulators in Louisiana , New York , California, and Idaho and soon they were issuing injunctions forcing PayPal to delay their IPO. This is the same approach that allowed Amazon to ignore local sales taxes for the last two decades. As the company grew larger, incumbent banks forced PayPal to register in each state.

North Carolina 227

North Carolina New Jersey New York Government 227

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Top management was trying to coordinate all of the operating details (sales, manufacturing, distribution and marketing,) across all the divisions and the company almost went bankrupt that year when poor planning led to excess inventory (with unsold cars piling up at dealers and the company running out of cash.)

Silicon Valley 156

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Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2011

In talking to their sales channel (farm equipment dealers) and customers (organic farmers) they realize they have an opportunity to come up with a unique revenue stream. The team hasn’t been getting much sleep as they have a week and a half to make meaningful progress. Lets see what they can pull off. No kidding, I couldn’t make this up.)

Revenue 213

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Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

I took a deep breath and asked, “Ok, if you were, what percentage of your sales do you think these markets would be in 5 years?” “I guess less than 5%,” was the answer. How big are your Mexican and Spanish markets,” I asked? Well, we’re not in those markets today… but we might be some day.”

Silicon Valley 176

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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

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