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? End result?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 205

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

Compressing the Product Development Cycle. In the past, the time to build a first product release was measured in months or even years as startups executed the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. Startups traditionally required millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product to customers.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2022

How do they become present on new social media and communications channels? How do they connect with a new generation of customers who had no brand loyalty? How to they use the new distribution channels competitors have adopted? Some of the teams even included some of their close partners.

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Framework Distribution Channel Leadership 395

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. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 253

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 17, 2010

If this is your attitude, your conception of tech support is completely backwards and you're missing out on important channels for marketing, product development, and sales. Yes, I'm flagrantly paraphrasing the legendary Kathy Sierra , but the idea applies as much to tech support as to product development.).

Technical Review 245

Technical Review Sales Turkey Software Review 245

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

Defense and Intelligence organizations drove the pace of innovation in Silicon Valley by providing research and development dollars to universities, and defense companies built weapons systems that used the Valley’s first microwave devices and semiconductor components. This might mean competing with and if necessary killing your own products.

Restful 230

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 230

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2014

In the 20 th century corporate skunk works were used to develop disruptive innovation separate from the rest of the company. ——– In the 20 th century companies could be leaders in a market for decades by just focusing on their core product(s). Developed by Lockheed Skunkworks. CIA A-12 spy plane.

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Channel Customer Development Distribution Restful 291

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

Its goal is to take the original idea and search for a repeatable and scalable business model - first by finding product/market fit, then by testing all the parts of the business model (pricing, channel, acquisition/activation, partners, costs, etc.). They deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

A business plan has a set of assumptions (who’s the customer, what’s the price, what’s the channel, what are the product features that matter, etc.) Yet by first customer ship most of the business model hasn’t been validated or tested. Business Model Design and Customer Development Stack.

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Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 250

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

When it was spun out as a a separate company, Iridium’s 1990 business plan had assumptions about potential customers, their problems and the product needed to solve that problem. They made other assumptions about the type of sales channel, partnerships and revenue model they would need. It All Came Crashing Down.

Business Plan 335

Business Plan Customer Business Model Customer Development 335

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 266

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 266

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

For Neopets, its simply a side-effect of their game-like product design. Either way, you can use any marketing channel thats available to bring in new customers, including word of traditional advertising, SEO, SEM - wherever you can find prospects who are going to find your product addicting.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

He turned his PhD thesis into a killer product, got it funded and now was CEO of a company of 30. It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. He was constantly in front of customers, listening, selling, installing and learning. We’re building the wrong product!”

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Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 320

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Turns out, there was aboslutely no demand whatsoever for that particular product. Oops - there went several precious weeks of development effort down the drain. If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. What is customer development? What a great post.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Next, you have to deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers. And here’s where life gets really interesting, as the reality of product development and customer input collide, the facts change so rapidly that the original well-thought-out business plan becomes irrelevant.

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Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 305

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door. Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP. Brand to clarify your vision. Do it yourself.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 18, 2010 Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases non-events The following is a case study of one entrepreneurs transition from a traditional development cycle to continuous deployment. Managing weekly releases got a lot harder once I started doing customer development.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

They’ve found product/market fit (what products customers want to buy). They’ve learned the best distribution channel to get the product from their company to the customer. and how to price the product. for new product development that emphasize immediate returns.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

My two cents is that a business plan is the single place to collect your thinking about about your: business model, distribution channel, demand creation plan, financial assumptions, and customer and product development plan. I was simply confused about what a plan was for.

Business Plan 144

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 144

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. existing enterprises are establishing corporate innovation groups. StageGate Process.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

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 123

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Mass blasts of information are ineffective, because the broadcast channels are suffering from information overload (even in social media). There are too many products clamoring for attention. Test-marketing is now easier than ever before, thanks to leveraged distribution channels like AdWords and Facebook. Is that a lot?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Even with only a few months of development, third parties have crammed every single category in the store full of apps. All I see is a name, an icon, a price, the developers name, and a review star-rating. There are other models, in other distribution channels. And what distinguishes a good app? I cant really tell.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Steve Blank

MARCH 15, 2011

By now the nine teams in our Stanford Lean LaunchPad Class were formed, In the four days between team formation and this class session we tasked them to: Write down their initial hypotheses for the 9 components of their company’s business model (who are the customers? what’s the product? what distribution channel?

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Business Model Nebraska Peru Germany 237

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them. We cultivated a passionate community that nurtured a skilled set of developers.

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

and “Does our solution (a product, a website or an app) solve the problem in a compelling way?” Here’s how: Develop the Product for the Few, Not the Many. No startup can afford to build a product with every feature a mainstream customer needs all at once. They understand they have a problem.

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Customer Advisory Board Engineer Cofounder 119

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Again, its critical to focus your marketing launch on those publications, venues, and channels that your potential partners are paying attention to. Do some Customer Development instead. So dont combine your product launch with a marketing launch. Instead, do your product launch first. Help you raise money.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 15, 2017

But first, you have to nurture your existing superusers while also developing new ones. One of my clients discovered that his most demanding customers were consistently the ones who ended up recruiting many new customers and helping with product development. Nor are they sure how to create more of them.

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Community LLC Customer Developer 124

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. the fatigue rate of customers in that notification channel 2. It all depends on: 1.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

, it seemed time to return to the subject of investigating who my customers are. Today, Id like to spend some time on two techniques: the problem presentation and learning what channels of information reach customers. But beyond the obvious, its also important to know where customers go to get answers to pressing questions.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

In fact, unless you are adding capacity to a bottleneck in your development process, you probably should not be hiring at all. Given that most recruiting channels are pay-for-performance, its usually cheaper, too, because it has a lower conversion rate. Second, a lot of work that you do is actually not value-creating - its waste.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

It requires separating the product launch from the marketing launch (see Dont Launch ) as well as other staple Lean Startup tactics: minimum viable product, split-testing, customer development and the pivot. Those tools, combined with focused customer interviews, have turbo-charged the company’s ability to learn.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

She has a separate team, with its own culture and office, and a mandate straight from top management to innovate without regard to the company’s historic products, channels, or supply chain. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? So far, so good.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

We were going to do that by turning marketing into a machine to generate end user demand, drive the that demand into our sales channels, and educate our sales channels. In an early stage startup, instead of sales being up front, the point departments are likely to be product development and customer development.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 127

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

LSC: Tell us about the customer development you did for your book: Alistair: We''ve been thrilled at how Lean Analytics seemed to resonate with founders. LSC: What''s an example of one metric, other than revenue, that you might look at for a non-tech product? The reality, though, is that every company today is a tech company.

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Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167