Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

I have an idea for how to connect user social web conversations to 2-way search and contextual advertising. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. It took me 8 startups and 21 years to get it right, (and one can argue success was due to the Internet bubble rather then any brilliance.) Here’s my first time entrepreneur dilemma.

Silicon Valley 204

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 204

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Simulation to Reduce Invention Risk If you’re in a vertical where “invention risk” is dominant, then you want to do everything you can to manage and reduce those risks. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that.

Vertical 137

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 137

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. the “schedule fantasy factor,”) or his eleven rules of supercomputer design but also a real appreciation for how a technical visionary thinks. (I

North Carolina 131

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 131

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

When you are presenting to a VC there are two conversations going on – the one you are presenting and the one that investors are thinking as they are listening to your presentation. (If Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. What are Early Stage VC’s Really Asking? If they’re not busy looking at their Blackberry’s/iPhone’s.)

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Since there was very little documentation my time was split between the design engineers who built the system and the test and deployment team getting the system ready to go overseas. Reply 7thpixel , on June 29, 2009 at 10:23 am Said: My first start up in 1999 I was employee #10 or so and signed up for a Graphic Designer position.

Agile 265

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 265

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

The design was actually a negative drag on selling anything off a retail shelf. From grumbling skeptics, they all became packaging design converts. And for sure they were never going to win any design awards. We were on the bottom row – with an invisible box. We labeled this our “Black Hole of Packaging&# strategy.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

The conversation that day would become one of my professional watermarks. We had an application designed to [.] Reply Startup Weekend Lesson Learned #2 – Customer Development | startupSQUARE's blog , on August 5, 2010 at 4:15 am Said: [.] Reply Are the best Seed deals moving out of the Valley? To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 283

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 283

mashable.com

OCTOBER 5, 2012

Before you can even finish your pitch, people are already making judgments of your company, and bad names can be a real distraction to important conversations. Invite people from outside of the tech world to bring a fresh perspective, and also invite folks from the creative professions — writers, designers, artists, etc.

Naming 84

Naming Startup Social Media RSS 84

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 210

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 210

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Business Model Affects Metrics and Exit Criteria Web-based Business Model Exit Criteria In a web-business model you’re looking for traffic, users, conversion, virality, etc – not revenue. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 228

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

You can imagine the rest of the conversation; my sounding reluctant to let our own tests outside our building, the magazines begging us to let them have them, and finally a deal gets struck where we let the benchmarks out to the test labs of these magazines under their own name “The Potrero Benchmark Suite” without attribution to us.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 127

mashable.com

JULY 18, 2012

One got added to the latter category Tuesday: design firm Cuban Council, which will be shipping off a portion of its team to help improve the look of Google+.). And maybe you heard of a tiny Linux-based mobile software designer Google bought in 2005, called Android Inc.? So what does it take to impress Lawee? dMarc Broadcasting.

San Francisco 104

San Francisco Acquisition Social Media Mobile 104

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I Hate Business Plan Competitions Yet this same conversation reminded me why every time students at Berkeley or Stanford tell me they’ve entered a technology business plan competition, I question whether they are wasting their time. To Order Outside of the U.S. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. You’ll learn a lot.

Business Plan 156

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 156

mashable.com

OCTOBER 11, 2011

Facebook Timeline: 10 Stunning Designs [PICS]. Then research which journalists at that publication cover the vertical in which your startup or its news would fall. Are you asking for them to write a specific article about you (your business), or are you putting information out there in order to get a conversation going?

PR 103

PR Startup Social Media Technical Review 103

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

These damn models weren’t designed right so we’re fixing them on the line.” The lunch conversation was an interesting data point to add to a hypothesis I’ve had. It’s our hood alignment station,” the plant manager said proudly. I had a queasy feeling that perhaps this wasn’t the way to solve the car quality problem. Now In Print!

Founder 310

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 310

mobile.smashingmagazine.com

JANUARY 16, 2013

Web Design. Design Patterns. UI Design. Mobile Design’s Wake-Up Call Preparing Websites For The Unexpected. Responsive Design , Strategy. Designing websites for smartphones is easy compared to retrofitting those already in place. Designers made their upper left corner logos clickable because it was expected.

Mobile 101

Mobile HTML Flash Software Review 101

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

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 7, 2011

People judge your blog based on the design. The content of your blog is always more important than the design, but you need to woo people with your design first. You draw them in with design, and keep with content. “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. . Design is how it works.”

Design 86

Design Stock Search Matching 86

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

We had some great conversations in the car, but one stuck in my mind. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. We started in North Carolina eating BBQ and enjoying the Southern culture, went through Washington D.C It was something I never thought about, and when I first heard it I thought it was a terrible thing to have taught her.

North Carolina 160

North Carolina Silicon Valley RSS Connecticut 160

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Some of the conversations went like this: Startup 1 Entrepreneur -“I’m competing against Company x and have been following the Customer Development process and I’ve talked to lots of customers.” weeks ago, positioning it as a tool designed to help small businesses effectively manage their social media efforts. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 206

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2009

The ESL equipment were racks of the latest semiconductors designed into a system so complicated that the mean-time-between-failure was measured in days. Before leaving California, the engineers gave me a course in this specialized receiver design.

Silicon Valley 278

Silicon Valley RSS California Washington 278

Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

Now I mention this conversation not because the objection was dumb, but because objections like these happen all the time when you’re brainstorming. Get a blog at WordPress.com Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. And when you are brainstorming you really do want to hear all ideas and all possible pitfalls. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 201

Software By Rob

AUGUST 11, 2009

Join nearly 6,000 startup entrepreneurs by subscribing to my RSS feed. Subscribe via RSS On Twitter? Luckily several thousand people have decided to stick around and join the conversation. the original: How to Compete Against Open Source Competition | Software by Rob marketing View admin’s Profile Subscribe via RSS [.] #10

Open Source 62

Open Source Software Review Non-Compete Software 62

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

From there, the conversation took a different trajectory. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. I replied: “This is really important for our success as company and I’m really at a loss why customers didn’t respond the way we expected. Anybody else got some other ideas?&# To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

And the converse is true; Palm would have failed, burning through all their cash, using Handspring’s strategy. And maybe those r the only startups that actually survive and succeed Reply Startup Employment Design Patterns « Breaking Glass by Rishi Dean , on October 23, 2010 at 11:08 am Said: [.] To Order Outside of the U.S.

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Steve Blank

MAY 13, 2009

As it was a vocational school, I think the most math we had to do was to figure out whether we got a passing grade, and no one was in any danger of actually designing new equipment, but I left with an excellent education in troubleshooting, and solving complex problems in real-time. Can we go to the bathroom when the gravity is turned off?”)

Silicon Valley 232

Silicon Valley RSS California Mississippi 232

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 29, 2011

No matter how enamored you may be with social media, email still outpunches just about every tool out there when it comes to cost effective lead conversion. Currently, my newsletter format is designed to offer several compelling article abstracts grouped into a set of topics that I believe my readers expect from me. Vertical Response.

Email 77

Email Sales Social Media Vertical 77

Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2009

While this is a conversation that is active and never cliche in the mompreneur world I move in, it’s the first time I’ve heard it so clearly spelled out by a dad. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Being in a startup and having a successful relationship and family was very hard work. Your wife and kids are lucky.

Entrepreneur 333

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development 333

www.kalzumeus.com

AUGUST 13, 2012

Here’s a “conversion” I’d like to get out of everyone in our space: I want you to start A/B testing, because it will make you a substantial amount of money. If you like what you see, I encourage you to sign up for the RSS feed. Conversion Rates: Up. Blog posts are very poor at changing actual behavior.

Email 54

Email Software Review Software Campaign 54

hippoland.tumblr.com

AUGUST 16, 2012

I tried to find investors who had portfolio companies in the ads and email verticals. Conversely, 2) by keeping our pipeline full, it also gave us leverage in setting up meetings. Powered by Tumblr and designed by Kcmr. The Pipeline. Prior to Demo Day, I spent a few days researching investors on Angel List. Permalink 6 notes.

Cofounder 49

Cofounder Coder Angel Investor Portfolio 49

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). Move from a data collection obsession and develop a crush on data analysys. Special Recommendations: ~ Feedburner. Percent Mobile. LivePerson.

Analytics 135

Analytics Web Non-Compete Campaign 135

andrewchenblog.com

JANUARY 28, 2010

Persuading peopleto pay for your service and invite their friends requires creativity, product design, and lots of metrics. Do it right, and your conversion rates might be as high as 20%. Ad.com 20M 0.10% 20,000 10% 50% 1000 $20,000.00 $20.00 To me, this tab captures the “art&# side of building a freemium business.

CPA 51

CPA Retention Viral Acquisition 51

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

We already have some competitors in the vertical and while there is no point in trying to hide the actual idea, there are differences in the way we implement stuff that can get us an advantage over the competition. >> Google+twitter give live updates, but its not very conversational. Our idea is boring and not revolutionary.

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

Because.NET is designed to extend, not disrupt. NET is designed to tightly integrate with and seamlessly extend the Microsoft stack in extremely powerful but ultimately incremental ways. Subscribe to comments with RSS. Some us have evolved past the visual designers. March 25, 2011 at 7:00 am. Posted in CEO Friday , Job.

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107

www.rocketwatcher.com

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

conversion prospects/targets – This shows how many targets took action or showed interest enough to become prospects. conversion leads/prospects - This can be an indicator of the quality of your marketing materials in terms of how well it is prompting the right types of prospects to take action. . Designed by.

B2B 42

B2B Metrics Marketing Startup 42