A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

This post is by Scott Edward Walker , the firm's founder and CEO. It is here where my father began his 15-year journey from entry-level engineer at Western Union to founder and CEO of Walker Telecommunications Corporation , a NASDAQ-listed public company. If you like it, check out Scott's blog and tweets @ ScottEdWalker.

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Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2015

Takashi Tsutsumi and Masato Iino , founders of Learning Entrepreneur’s Lab in Japan. The focus of our first segment is how Silicon Valley and the U.S. military and are now helping government agencies operate with the speed and urgency of Silicon Valley. Listen to my entire chat with John.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 2, 2008 Paul Graham on fundraising I have found no better primer on the current realities of starting a new technology company in a startup hub like Silicon Valley than Paul Grahams essays. Its to everyones advantage to let the world think the founders thought of everything.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Its easy to take Silicon Valley for granted. Ive written a little bit about the origins of Silicon Valley because I think its important for us to understand how we got here in order to make sure we preserve what is best about our community. And do your customer development.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 4, 2021

Just before the IPO, I had a far-reaching conversation with co-founder and CEO Brian Armstrong as he approached this major milestone for the company he co-founded back in 2012. I'm the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase. It's one of those things that founders can do sometimes where other employees are afraid to do it.

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The Next Web

MARCH 2, 2014

An EU memo in 2010 stated the following discoveries: In the EU (but also in Japan and South Korea) the preference for being an employee is mainly motivated by considerations of stability (regular income, stable employment relation) and by the generally agreeable employment conditions (working hours, social protection).

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 27, 2013

Kent, a veteran programmer, a founder of the Agile method and the creator of Extreme Programming, came armed with anecdotes and lessons from his own experience, as well as a few questions for Eric. But the truth of any program is, it requires teams, and customers, and it''s this complicated ecosystem….

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, June 9, 2009 The Lean Startup Tokyo edition I had a blast speaking at Startonomics Tokyo , which was organized to foster ties between the startup cultures in Japan and Silicon Valley. benjaminjoffe : early adopters of buggy product are visionary customers, sometimes smarter than founders!

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Id like to call special attention to Kurt Carr s perspective (lets hope he finishes his five-part series): Now that I’m back in Ohio (I was one of the token foreigners in a room full of Silicon Valley residents), I have found myself reliving and rethinking much of what I saw there. We all owe him our thanks for persevering.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, November 11, 2008 Where did Silicon Valley come from? I think the absolute best reading on this subject is a book called Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee Saxenian. And what were they doing beforehand?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Here are a few: We know what customers want. By hiring experts, conducting lots of focus groups, and executing to a detailed plan, the company became deluded that it knew what customers wanted. But that was two full years before any customers were allowed to use it. Stealth is a customer-free zone.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development?

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. We finally settled on a $1.99 Setup a simple website.

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pandodaily.com

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Multiply that by literally a couple thousand, and that’s what 2013 is going to look like in Silicon Valley, and to a lesser degree some other startup ecosystems. “There are so many companies in Silicon Valley that have raised $30 million and done absolutely nothing with it.” Now it’s glutted.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. The biggest source of cost/time advantage that all lean companies have is avoiding building features that customers dont want. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. Agile allows companies to build higher quality software faster.

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techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Tech Gadgets Mobile Enterprise GreenTech CrunchBase TechCrunch TV Disrupt SF More TechCrunch TV Beta Invites Crunchies Elevator Pitches Gillmor Gang Podcasts TechCrunch Europe TechCrunch Trends TechCrunch France TechCrunch Japan Whats Hot: Android Apple Facebook Google Microsoft Twitter Yahoo Zynga Subscribe: From Nothing To Something.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Im not offering extensive studies or research to support this conclusion; the evidence from my peers right here in the innovation capital of America, Silicon Valley, is absolutely overwhelming. Asked to help, I am confident that Silicon Valley and every other innovation center will step up. They are nerds. Good Post.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

The problem is that the most authentic innovators and entrepreneurs are in the Valley. I want more than anything to come to Silicon Valley after I graduate and join the vibrant ecosystem. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Join the Lean Startup discussion at Web 2.0

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2009

Worries from the garage One of the worries I hear from entrepreneurs (not just my students) is that Customer Development means getting out of the building and sharing what you are working on. I was positioning the company as the second coming of the video games businesses at the intersection of “ Hollywood Meets Silicon Valley.”

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

If I have some budget for outside help, should I hire a vendor to help us drive down our payment fraud rates by 1% (ROI easy to predict), or hire a market research firm to give us insights into potential customers (ROI hard to predict)? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

At Toyota , they are called Chief Engineer : Toyota realizes that the Chief Engineer job is probably the most important one in the company because the Chief Engineer listens to the customer and then determines what the functions need to do to address the customer’s desires. What is customer development?

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

This is especially true in Silicon Valley. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thats all helpful for recruiting, retaining, and ramping-up a new employee. You dont have to guess who their mentor will be. Youre not competing with every other company in town.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

For a marketing job, for example, its reasonable to expect that a candidate will have done their homework and used your product (maybe even talked to your customers) before coming in. Were there to serve customers direclty, as well as all of the other functions of the company. What is customer development?

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 29, 2016

Realizing you need help and learning how to ask for help are crucial skills for a founder. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Steve Sims , founder of Bluefish executive concierge service.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Take a look: This full-day Master Class focuses on how to build a startup from the ground up to focus on customers, markets, and speed of iteration. Im working on a future post where Ill share the details of how I used customer development to shape both the content and packaging of this event, so look for that soon.

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YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 20, 2016

by Samar Singla, founder of Click Labs. When we say on-demand, the glorious image of Silicon Valley and its technological environs pops up in the layman’s mind, and even that may be too imaginative. Co-operation and Synergy. A simple glance through their website gives dedicated focus to safety and security for consumers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, December 7, 2008 The hackers lament One of the thrilling parts of working and writing in Silicon Valley is the incredible variety of people Ive had the chance to meet. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Customers will get to consume the content they want, and support the producers of that content directly, rather than having to rely exclusively on intermediaries. Now, helping potential customers discover new things they might like is the job of the discipline of marketing. There are just too many of them out there.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

Much of what makes the USA, and Silicon Valley in particular, such a great place to start a company is the result of good government policy. I started my last company with 100% off-shore resources because I could never have completed Customer Development at a reasonable cost of money or regulatory burden had I employed US Citizens.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. In particular, a marketing launch can help you do three things (courtesy, as is most of my marketing advice, of The Four Steps to the Epiphany ): Drive customers into your sales pipeline. Do your customers really read TechCrunch?

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development?

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 20, 2010

Heres an excerpt: Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster - WSJ.com Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists often churn out how-to business books and fancy themselves as management gurus, but few see their methodologies adopted. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Ive previously written about the advantages of having a pathetically small number of customers , and how to get started with customer segmentation. it seemed time to return to the subject of investigating who my customers are. Thats a common pattern to gaining customer insight. Customer knows they have a problem.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2009

Biological Clocks After Convergent and now single again, I was a co-founder of my next two startups; MIPS and Ardent. In hindsight this list looks pretty organized but in reality we made it up as we went along, accompanied with all the husband and wife struggles of being married and trying to raise a family in Silicon Valley.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Whether youre a US citizen or an immigrant, entrepreneur or investor, founder or employee, theres something you can do. This is especially true if you live outside the echo chamber of Silicon Valley. If you are an immigrant founder who has helped build a company that has created jobs in the US, we need you to tell your story.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 15, 2010

His posts are born of tremendous research into the secret history of Silicon Valley , and if you haven’t read those essays, you should. When private capital is available in sufficient quantities to satisfy investor and founder liquidity needs, why go IPO? Let me be clear: Steve is the historian.

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