Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

press and use it to generate end user demand and then drive that demand into our sales channel. Reply SuperMac War Story 6: Building The Killer Team – Mission, Intent and Values « Steve Blank , on April 9, 2009 at 5:02 am Said: [.] The Potrero benchmark strategy was one component of this creating end user demand through PR.)

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

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. But you probably never heard of ReelTime. You may know it by its final name. Now In Print! Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Video 168

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 168

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. The person who can quickly re-channel that excitement to a different idea (one based on fact, not faith) will have much more success. There is no certainty about a startup on day-one.

Silicon Valley 219

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 219

mashable.com

OCTOBER 27, 2010

Here, developers and dev shops are organized by vertical so you can find a shop that has expertise in the kind of app you want to build. It’s also a good idea if you want a cohesive campaign that reflects your company’s goals, messaging and branding across multiple channels, from Facebook to smartphones.

Small Business 104

Small Business Technical Review Social Media Software Review 104

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

After that there’s a discussion of how the product will reach the customer and the potential distribution channel. Sales is heavily building and staffing a national sales organization; the sales channel has quotas and sales goals. The venture investors start measuring progress by number of orders in place by first customer ship.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 263

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 13, 2009

But I constantly had to remind people every time I updated my blog (very few non-technical people were using RSS readers and nobody had even heard of Twitter) and I thought Facebook provided a way for me to publish pictures, blogs or random thoughts into a community rather than the community having to remember to find me. It is threaded.

Social Network 276

Social Network Networking RSS Vertical 276

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.) End result? If they had done this, there would have been zero dollars in sales.

Customer Development 203

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 203

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. An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.” Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 188

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 188

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

The absolute number depends on your channel and industry. In Customer Validation it is when you have enough early sales to declare that you have discovered a repeatable and scalable sales process. For example, if you are selling enterprise software, getting 3-5 early customers may be enough in Customer Validation. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Customer Development 246

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 246

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

I remember after a month or two of talking to 14-22 year old male gamers (our potential target market,) I realized that for the first time in my career I had no emotional connection to my customers or channel partners. I was now a CEO of Rocket Science, and having a great time building the company (more about that in future posts.)

Silicon Valley 142

Silicon Valley RSS California Video 142

Cracking the Code

DECEMBER 2, 2006

The time they spend with customers is usually limited to transactional core products sales, generating lower margins – The resource allocation is not always matching the opportunity (geography, customer segment, vertical.) – The rules of engagement for technical resources (solution or product specialists) are not clear.

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review Europe Software 48

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

have product/market fit,) then you invest the dollars to create end user demand and drive those customers into your sales channel. When you and your board agree you’ve found a repeatable and scalable sales model (i.e. Customer Development (and Lean) is about continuous customer contact/iteration to find the right time for execution.

Lean 250

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

I knew we were selling through a multi-level indirect sales channel. Market messages to indirect sales channels are just like that. As we found out when we interviewed our dealers, our sales department was using extra commission payments – called Spif’s – to incentivize the channel to move our product.)

Silicon Valley 192

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 192

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 29, 2011

Now, done correctly, what this really means is effectively using email communication in conjunction with efforts to produce educational content, amplify content throughout social media channels and turn Twitter followers into email subscribers. Vertical Response. Each allows you to accomplish the things mentioned in this article).

Email 77

Email Sales Social Media Vertical 77

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

In contrast, spark gaps are broad-band radio “noise&# sources – the idea of discrete radio channels was impossible spark gaps because of this. I’ll stop channeling James Burke now. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be.

Silicon Valley 279

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 279

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

You can be an Independent studio or do “work for hire&# (either a revenue share or buy-out model) - If you’re an independent studio you have a set of choices for distribution channel and marketing models. - We understood none of this. More detail in future posts. steve Twitted by altgate , on July 2, 2009 at 5:22 pm Said: [.]

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Given the lukewarm feedback we were getting from potential customers and channel buyers we should have dramatically dialed back the hype until the follow-on games could match it. The Customer Validation lesson of, “no formal launch until you have early sales validating the product and sales process&# was also born here. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

And they have channeled all this into whatever activity they could find outside of their home – sports, business, or …entrepreneurship. But a small percentage, whose brain chemistry and wiring is set for resilience, come out of this with a compulsive, relentless and tenacious drive to succeed. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

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Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 302

www.kalzumeus.com

AUGUST 13, 2012

This is objectively suboptimal, because email is the best broadcast channel ever invented for business purposes. Email: Geeks Ignore The Best Marketing Channel Ever. If you like what you see, I encourage you to sign up for the RSS feed. One medium I’ve never made much use of personally is email. Want more great articles?

Email 54

Email Software Review Software Campaign 54

BeyondVC

AUGUST 23, 2006

In my mind, there are two ways to look at SAAS offerings – vertical market applications or horizontal plays. Of course the challenge is that many vertical market app plays may not be big enough and the horizontal plays have probably been done already and are quite competitive.

AJAX 60

AJAX Balance Sheet Vertical Demand 60

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 hate business plan competitions. I was simply confused about what a plan was for. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Business Plan 143

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 143

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Steve I have to tell you some bad news, I just showed our potential channel partners and customers a few completed pieces of the games we had. While the Rocket Science press juggernaut moved inexorably forward, a few troubling facts kept trying to bubble up into my consciousness. A month later the VP of Marketing appeared in my office again.

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 212

mashable.com

OCTOBER 11, 2011

Then research which journalists at that publication cover the vertical in which your startup or its news would fall. Subscribe to the Business channel. RSS Feed 550,078+ Subscribers. Determine which demographic — and therefore, which publication — would be interested in your startup. Public Relations. 227 followers.

PR 103

PR Startup Social Media Technical Review 103

www.launch.co

JULY 25, 2012

LAUNCH RSS. I actually dont exactly know what the jump from 9 to 10 requires, as Im reserving 10 for some magical moment that happens when you channel the spirit of Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, da Vinci or Jesus (in that order). Competition is fiercer, winners win more and every vertical has many more losers. Wednesday Jul 25 2012.

Technical Review 54

Technical Review Jordan Audio Los Angeles 54

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. Now In Print! Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 127

www.rocketwatcher.com

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

You can sign up for email updates, subscribe via RSS or follow me on Twitter. One other basic metric I’d add is “Cost per channel&# (web, print, tradeshow, etc…) and tie in how many each channel is generating, so you get a ROI by channel as well. If you enjoyed that, you should subscribe!

B2B 42

B2B Metrics Marketing Startup 42

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. Cray Channels was describing my market, applications and customers for me. Hmm… typical booth stuff…key chains, data sheets, pens… Until I got to the material from Cray.

Silicon Valley 151

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 151

mashable.com

JULY 18, 2012

Subscribe to the Business channel. Where can an Emmy award winning cinematographer make a case for his channel? I would like to know, what are the areas/vertical they are looking for acquisition? RSS Feed 600,140+ Subscribers. 7,271 followers. Acquisition. 327 followers. For more Business coverage. 19 Comments.

San Francisco 104

San Francisco Acquisition Social Media Mobile 104

Occam's Razor

OCTOBER 19, 2010

Any website that provides an RSS feed would do very well to use Feedburner. There is a lot of clickstream activity that is happening inside your RSS feed (and away from your website). Special Recommendations: I'll make two types of multi-channel analytics outcomes recommendations here. Special Recommendations: ~ Feedburner.

Analytics 135

Analytics Web Non-Compete Campaign 135

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Marketing is Heard From Engineering was discussing how sophisticated the graphics portion of our computer should be, debating cost and time-to-market tradeoffs of arcane details such as double-buffering, 24 versus 32-bits of color, alpha channels, etc. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 275

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 275

mashable.com

OCTOBER 5, 2012

.” The name is important for discoverability , whether in Google searches (10% to 50%+ of site traffic, depending on the category), the App Store (especially painful in iOS6) and other text-based discovery channels. Subscribe to the Business channel. RSS Feed 614,263+ Subscribers. Contributors. 12 followers. 3 followers.

Naming 84

Naming Startup Social Media RSS 84