Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2020

Are you surrounded by other animated conversations in a coffee shop or sitting with other classmates in a lecture hall? In conversation we watch other’s hands, follow their gestures , focus on their facial expressions and their tone of voice. In the physical world the space and context give you cues and reinforcement. Non-Verbal Cues.

Video 436

Video Bandwidth Conversion Lean 436

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2018

So, I asked: Team, As per our conversation about the lack of response from your advisor John Doe -please forward me copies of the emails you have sent to him. When they returned from the trip, I asked if the advisor I suggested was helpful. The reply I received was disappointing — but not totally surprising.

Technical Review 318

Technical Review Email Naming Conversion 318

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 14, 2022

During the breakout sessions, you will have the opportunity to contribute to the conversation via Chat, Q&A, and an online community bulletin board. Alexander Osterwalder , the creator of the business model canvas and Strategyzer co-founder will join the discussion about the intersection of education, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Lean 332

Lean Cofounder Community Global 332

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

She started by sketching her business model canvas on a napkin, but somehow the conversation quickly shifted to what was really on her mind. I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2021

The conversation got interesting when I asked, “How are you going to describe the product to potential customers in the concrete industry?” So it seemed logical to him that the concrete industry was going to be one the first places to approach since it was obvious that they need to reduce carbon emissions.

Product 429

Product Advisory Board Green Customer 429

Steve Blank

AUGUST 23, 2010

This stifles or shuts down the important “outlier” conversations that drive pivots and iterations in the discovery process. Structuring the conversation in a way that elicits feedback before you reveal the product hypothesis is essential to getting honest reactions, good or bad.

Customer Development 235

Customer Development Developer Customer South America 235

Steve Blank

MAY 19, 2015

While he kept bringing the conversation back to their big valuation I tried to steer the conversation back to how they were going to deal with: training the influx of new hires – in both culture and job specific tasks. They had doubled headcount from 100 to 200 in the last year and were planning to double again.)

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Salary Early Stage Software Review 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2019

As the conversation progressed, we agreed about the ways to manage projects using a few operating principles of Lean/Agile project management (without ever mentioning the words Lean or Agile.). More importantly we decided that he would focus these conversations on outcomes rather than reports. They just want to see the paperwork.).

Agile 64

Agile Lean Leadership Conversion 64

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

Use Skype or Google+ Hangouts for team conversations. Read Business Model Generation pages 1-72, and The Four Steps to the Epiphany Chapter 3. Set up the Lean LaunchLab or a WordPress blog to document your Customer Development progress. Craft Your Company Hypotheses (use the Lean LaunchLab ). List key features/ Minimal Viable product plan.

Lean 333

Lean Web Coder Business Model 333

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 14, 2021

Instead my stories are of what I remember about the facts/data/conversations around the event. When I want to describe an event that happened, I don’t bring up the visual imagery of what the places or people looked like.

Conversion 416

Conversion Founder 416

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

The conversation went great and everyone agreed he’d teach us a lot – until one of the board members asked, “How much stock do we have to give him?” I was so excited to break the news to the board that I put this new advisor on as the first agenda item. Even back then the advisor was a well-known name in Silicon Valley.

Advisory Board 260

Advisory Board Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Stock 260

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2014

Often I hear spirited defenses for Customer Development versus Design Thinking or vice versa, and my reaction is to slowly back out of these faith-based conversations. And in still another, understanding untapped customer needs can offer an opportunity for new innovation.

Customer Development 335

Customer Development Design Developer Customer 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2018

The first half of the conversation talks about Lean and its origins. I sat down with Arvind Gupta , Founder and Managing Director of IndieBio and talked about how Lean methods apply to Life Sciences. If you can’t see the video click here. The second half focuses on its applicability in Digital Health and Life Sciences.

Lean 248

Lean San Francisco Programming Video 248

Steve Blank

MAY 27, 2010

Our conversation led us to Scott Walkers post Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers and why we both recommend that entrepreneurs print it out and tape it to their wall. But founders need to know how to ask for their advice and when to ignore it. Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers. I was having coffee with a friend who teaches at the U.C.

CTO Hire 287

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Software Review Startup 287

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

That kicked off this long conversation about how you might try to leverage this evolution of education technology to create scalable impact in places where tuition couldn’t be the driver of growth. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

The IRL provides a vocabulary and framework for shifting the conversation between investors and entrepreneurs from simply “No”, to the much-more-helpful “Not yet – but here’s what you can do…” Tying Fundraising to the Lean Startup. Enables better mentoring.

Sacramento 306

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 306

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

That kicked off this long conversation about how you might try to leverage this evolution of education technology to create scalable impact in places where tuition couldn’t be the driver of growth. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

No, the conversation was about to get more interesting. In July I got a call from Errol Arkilic , a program manager at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the $6.8-billion billion U.S. government agency that supports research in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Wow, that’s nice, I thought, a call from a fan.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

And conversely show our sponsors in the Department of Defense and Intelligence community that civilian students can make a meaningful contribution to problem understanding and rapid prototyping of solutions to real-world problems.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2020

That initial email dialog formed the basis of opening the conversation and establishing a minimum of social connectivitywhen we did meet. And that preparation went beyond just finding mutually agreeable meeting times. Early on in my career I realized that I could I learn lots of information from the premeeting dialog.

Email 421

Email Framework Founder Finance 421

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2020

But you’ve got to start a conversation. Reach out to someone currently in government and talk a little bit about what generally they’re interested in what they would like to do. Because you don’t know what you don’t know.

Acquisition 284

Acquisition Technical Review Technology Security 284

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 4, 2016

I was interviewed at the Stanford Business School and in listening to the podcast, I realize I repeated some of my usual soundbites but embedded in the conversation were a few things I’ve never shared before about service. Listen here: Steve Blank on Silicon Valley, AI and the Future of Innovation.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley China Conversion 141

Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2010

He quickly left and when I passed him in the hall, he was in deep conversation with the program manager, and I could hear snippets of my name and the word “terrible.”. In the one or two times I managed to look up, I saw my boss wincing, the program manager putting his head in his hands, and then most everyone drift out of the room.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Technical Review Hiring Programming 258

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 4, 2016

I was interviewed at the Stanford Business School and in listening to the podcast, I realize I repeated some of my usual soundbites but embedded in the conversation were a few things I’ve never shared before about service. Listen here: Steve Blank on Silicon Valley, AI and the Future of Innovation.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley China Conversion 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

We had an almost identical conversation when the subject turned to hiring a Public Relations agency. I took a deep breath and said, “Look this is just like the channel consultant conversation. The conversation should be, “Here’s what we learned, but we know this is your expertise. Hiring PR Agencies.

PR 314

PR China Lean Channel 314

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

The VP of Sales comes to a board meeting, still optimistic, and provides a set of reasonable explanations – “our pipeline looks great, but orders will close next quarter” or “we’ve got lots of traffic to our site, we just need to work on conversion.” Just had a conversation today with a student taking Steve’s class.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

Steve Blank

AUGUST 22, 2011

Part of each conversation was getting asked to help them put together a “job spec.”. Now with the data in front of you, the conversation about hiring can start. Over the last few weeks I’ve gotten involved in hiring for two startups, a public agency and a non profit. I had them leave with a pie chart.

Hiring 290

Hiring Non-Compete Search Customer Development 290

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2016

There wasn’t much conversation as we walked to dinner. The rest of the dinner conversation revolved around, if not hours worked what should he be measuring, when is it appropriate to ask people to work late, burnout, and the true measures of productivity. Rahul’s jaw dropped and then tightened. Productivity. Lessons Learned.

Metrics 220

Metrics Employee Revenue Matching 220

Steve Blank

APRIL 8, 2022

Listening to the secretary’s conversations, I was further reminded of how much of a radical reinvention of our civil/military innovation relationship is necessary if we want to keep abreast of our adversaries.

Security 217

Security Silicon Valley China Private Equity 217

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2014

1:36: Customer Discovery is a Series of Conversations. Module 2, Getting Out of the Building: Customer Development. 0:24: What is Customer Development? 1:09: How Do You Start the Customer Development Process? 2:05: The Founder and Customer Development. 3:16: Real World Example of Customer Development. Module 3, Customer Development Data.

Intellectual Property 328

Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development Acquisition 328

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Or conversely business team members draw timelines and costs without a deep understanding of the technology hurdles. One of the symptoms is technologists going heads-down building product and features without customer input while they defer all of the left-side of the canvas to the business team.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2020

Conversely, the things you measure well, with easily understood and visible metrics, tend to improve without much extra push. It’s incredibly slow, because of all the stakeholders. I’m going to talk about some things that are easier to do. More like a surgical strike. 1 is measurement. So how you do that with innovation?

Technical Review 322

Technical Review Taiwan Technology Design 322

Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2015

But in her own family, at the dinner table, she would read a book while everybody else was conversing. Because following the conversation when multiple people were talking around her was impossible. And pivoted to a mobile application that transcribes group conversations using speech-recognition technologies.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Lean Customer Development Startup 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

We had an almost identical conversation when the subject turned to hiring a Public Relations agency. I took a deep breath and said, “Look this is just like the channel consultant conversation. The conversation should be, “Here’s what we learned, but we know this is your expertise. Hiring PR Agencies.

PR 206

PR China Lean Channel 206

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2016

Their Mission Model Canvas had a ton of learning, and their MVP engendered a lot of conversation from those who’ve been in combat and were familiar with the challenges of maintaining situational awareness under fire. Team Skynet is also using drones to to provide ground troops situational awareness. Almost the inverse of Team Guardian.).

Social Media 132

Social Media Customer Programming Video 132

Steve Blank

MAY 20, 2010

It was clear that he had no memory of a phone conversation my partner and I have never forgotten. Luckily the company did go public, but I’ve never forgot the conversation. Last week in a car showroom of all places I ran into a VC who I hadn’t seen in ten years. Big Name CEO. Never Forget. We never did get a raise.

Founder 275

Founder Cofounder Salary Naming 275

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2013

” conversation with investors. (If (And plays on the “no VC wants to miss a hot space” mindset.). Finally, you could show the current and projected market sizes of the adjacent markets which allows the startups to have a ”how big can our new market be?” The Petal Diagram drives your business model canvas.

Venture Capital 335

Venture Capital Customer Development Business Model Lean 335