Steve Blank

APRIL 19, 2010

One of the best ways to get a debate going into the entrepreneurial world is to throw the “Nature versus Nurture” hand-grenade into a conversation. The conversation then goes into making the case whether these can be taught or you’re born with them. Filed under: Customer Development , Venture Capital.

Silicon Valley 219

Silicon Valley Venture Capital China New York 219

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

(There is a huge difference between the Chinese who have never left and those who went to school abroad, even for a few months – at least a difference in their ability to relate to me and have a conversation on the same wavelength. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

No, the conversation was about to get more interesting. We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. This methodology forces rapid hypothesis testing and Customer Development by getting out of the building while building the product. billion U.S.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

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.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2019

The cycle of creative destruction of the old being replaced by the new continues, fueled by angel and venture capital. Then follow up the Petal Diagram with another slide that says, here’s our unique insight that’s been validated by customer discovery. When you’re describing the future, most of them are remembering the past.

Bandwidth 281

Bandwidth Database Venture Capital Demand 281

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

(There is a huge difference between the Chinese who have never left and those who went to school abroad, even for a few months – at least a difference in their ability to relate to me and have a conversation on the same wavelength. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

This reminded me of a conversation with one of my direct reports years before my daughter was born. Our conversation went like this: Me: Jim, how are we doing with getting Ansys ported? When I explained this to him, the conversation got heated. I realized that my daughter had confused motion with action.

Silicon Valley 324

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 324

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2013

” conversation with investors. (If The competitive diagram is how develop your first hypotheses about who your customers are. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. Customer Development Teaching Venture Capital'

Venture Capital 335

Venture Capital Customer Development Business Model Lean 335

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

I use the Investment Readiness Level as part of my sessions to help the students understand that being ready for investment means that besides having a pretty PowerPoint, they need to do real work and show Customer Development progress. Since I began incorporating the Investment Readiness Level framework I’ve made three observations.

Sacramento 306

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 306

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. And the converse is true; Palm would have failed, burning through all their cash, using Handspring’s strategy.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Understanding the left-side of the mission model canvas ( activities, resources , partners , and costs) forces all teams to ask, “Are we building a product for a DOD/IC customer only or do we have a “dual-use” product that could be sold commercially and get funded by venture capital?”. This post is a continuation of the series.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. And since there was no Venture Capital in the 1950′s/’60′s where was the money coming from? After I retired, Jerry Engel , director of the Lester Center on Entrepreneurship , at U.C.

Silicon Valley 270

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 270

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

We were sitting in our conference room in our first “system-planning meeting” trying to define the specifications of our new supercomputer and make the trade-offs between what was possible to build, and what customers in this new market would actually want and need. The conversation that day would become one of my professional watermarks.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 271

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The Customer is a Genius Then instead of talking about our products he segued the conversation into their products. And soon the conversation were about architectural tradeoffs and then how customers didn’t appreciate the elegant designs and how the world was going to hell in a handbasket because of these commodity microprocessors.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I finally understood how valuable these contests can be for students in cities or countries without a venture capital or entrepreneurial infrastructure. Over scrambled eggs and diet coke, I listened to this seasoned startup veteran describe the excitement of his students who came to the U.S. to compete. You’ll learn a lot.

Business Plan 140

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

As the conversation began to get down to how much stock and salary we could offer van Dam, we left the barber to finish his work and went to a payphone to call our CEO to confirm the deal. We were painting a picture of hypertext on every desktop computer. The response from across the country?

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

I’ve seen a range of options for supporting entrepreneurs, which I can rank from least to most involvement in companies by investors: financier VCs, e.g., Correlation Ventures. portfolio operator VCs, e.g., Andreessen Horowitz, ff Venture Capital, First Round Capital, Google Ventures. mentor VCs, e.g., most VCs.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. The process they use to guide their search is customer development. They would: Blog their Customer Development progress as a narrative. Comments, help, suggestions and conversation can happen 24/7.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

It was always a welcome change of pace to leave the brown of the unchanging desert and travel into town and have dinner with them and have a non-technical conversation about books, theater, politics, travel, etc. Her husband would look at me out the corner of his eyes and then we’d segue the conversation to some other topic.

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2014

This leads to two key points: Point 1: You have to fight – and win- on two fronts (both outside and inside), in order to succeed in corporate venturing. One memorable example of this was Xerox’s internal venture capital fund, Xerox Technology Ventures (XTV). As Steve would say, this is a big idea.

Startup 327

Startup Business Model Lean Russia 327

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , ESL , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , ESL « Convergent Technologies: War Story 1 – Selling with Sports Scores A Wilderness of Mirrors » 17 Responses Michael F. 2 weeks in they had outsourced my job, which lead to an awkward conversation.

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Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 245

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

The Trojan Horse “Well…” I said hesitantly, “I’m not sure we should share this with you but we have a set of benchmarks that we use to measure performance….” Getting B-52s through the Soviet Air Defense System Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential?

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Ryan Chan, founder at UpKeep said, “We created an LLC at first, but after realizing that we wanted to take on venture capital, we decided to move to a Delaware C corp.”. venture capital. Seek out venture capital funding. 17 Venture Capital Blogs You Should Be Reading. or even be a U.S.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

If you look at the top 3 online retailers by conversion rate, none of these are award-winning designs : [link] [link] [link] However, they convert ~25% of visitors to customers. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) That’s 10x what many websites convert.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Venture Capital Cafe > Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Customer Support. GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers. turn customer feedback into action. Boilerplate Venture Funding Documents. Raising Venture Capital.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2013

Jim Hornthal splits his time between venture capital, entrepreneurship and education. The first month of customer discovery for most of their initiatives relied too much on conversations within the Princeton University community itself (fellow students, faculty and admin). Let the games begin …. ” Lessons Learned.

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Lean Cofounder Dividend Business Model 282

www.aaronkharris.com

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

Skipping ahead a bit Suffice it to say that we spent much of the last few months on customer development, a topic which merits its own post, and at which I think we’ve done a decent job. When it came time to put together our job posting, I ran it by developer friends, like Matt Insler.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire New York City .Net Cofounder 40

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

So conversion rate percentage, of course it can always be higher and we’re doing a lot of stuff to make that higher, but it’s in line with other applications. Jason: Yeah, one percent conversion rate is pretty normal. I’ve had some very good conversations with a large insurance company. So on the one hand.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

The lunch conversation was an interesting data point to add to a hypothesis I’ve had. Great founders live for these moments. Creating the Entrepreneurial Personality – A Thought Experiment Fast forward three decades back to today. Let me know what you think. Does any of this match your experience or people you know?

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Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 297

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

After quitting my job and starting Sorced , I spent a few months validating my business concept by creating the product mockups and doing customer development. Just like the low conversion rate from going to bars (unless it’s for that one night interaction), this is the same for finding a co-founder. This was the ‘one’!

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

I would say that in the last five or six years, it’s gone from a weird conversation to have to if you’re not having it, you’re not in the mainstream anymore. It’s a conversation. Steve : I’m going to remind everybody that no is just the beginning of a conversation for an entrepreneur ….

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Silicon Valley New York 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

We had some great conversations in the car, but one stuck in my mind. Unintended Lessons « Steve Blank steveblank.com/2009/09/28/unintended-lessons – view page – cached + Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) + Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40?

North Carolina 143

North Carolina Silicon Valley RSS Connecticut 143

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that. However, for the Web 2.0

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 128

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. Competing To Win Deals - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 7, 2010 The venture capital business is highly competitive.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. Do you know the archetype of their customers? Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

Silicon Valley 181

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181