View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Also, the benefit of raising a pre-seed from great partners probably outweighs the cost. I’d keep the dilution really low at that stage, and focus on very cheap customer development tactics or even a hybrid services model to test out your initial hypothesis without requiring meaningful outside funding.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

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. After twelve months Handspring’s revenue was $170 million. They never understood Market Type. End result?

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Imagine a chart that’s 300 lines long for each component and you have to strategize when you’re going to buy this component and how far in advance you need to purchase it in order to get the price you need to get your cost of goods sold low enough that you’re going to make money on this thing. .

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. Electron-based Venture Capital. Here’s why.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

Cost pressures are unrelenting in every sector, with pressure on prices and margins continuing to increase. on medical device revenues, regardless of profitability delays or cash-flow breakeven. Venture Capital Issues. Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up. Venture Capital.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And it was going to mention the two words that SuperMac marketing needed to live and breathe: revenue and profit. If marketing can’t deliver the 40,000 leads what else can we do for sales to still achieve our revenue and profitability?”) They understood the mission intent was our corporate revenue and profit goals.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. In particular, you will likely have to do without venture funding becuase it is costly.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

Intel under their last two CEOs delivered more revenue and profit than any ever before. All of Intel’s resources – fabs, manufacturing strategies, and most importantly executive mindset — were geared towards large, expensive x86 processors, not low-cost mobile cores of someone else’s design. But it’s not over for Intel.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Instead you will be getting your hands dirty talking to customers, partners, competitors, as you encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup actually works. Get real costs from suppliers.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Unfortunately most startups learn this by going through the “Fire the first Sales VP&# drill: You start your company with a list of potential customers reading like a “who’s who&# of whatever vertical market you’re in (or the Fortune 1000 list.) Your board nods sagely at your target customer list.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

Plans and processes are in place, and rules, job specifications, revenue, profit and margin goals have been set. It only emerges after an intense business model design and search activity based on the customer development process. Operating divisions execute the known business model. We will propose some alternatives.

Business Model 333

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 333

VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

“After the crash, venture capital was scarce to non-existent. In a capital scarce environment following the Dot Com crash, startups needed to do more with less and survive long enough to generate revenue. Capital resources alone don’t do the trick. Cash (alone) isn’t king.

Lean 214

Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

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

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2016

We were depending on investor funding, but with $60,000 in revenue no one would fund it. . I talked it over with some friends that night, and decided the next morning we’d have to cut all of our costs. . I started working with startups and venture capitalists. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Cofounder Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

MAY 16, 2016

In a company you know you’ve been successful when you generate revenue and profit. In those case revenue will become an additional metric. Sentinel initially started by trying to use low-cost sensors to monitor surface ships for their 7th fleet sponsor in a A2/AD environment. Now back to the class. .

San Diego 142

San Diego Metrics Indonesia Silicon Valley 142

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

One of the primary drivers of the switch is cost. Currently, when enterprises switch to Google's productivity suite, they still need to make provisions to move the large portfolio of home grown long tail productivity apps that have been developed around the previous system - Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange. A second is collaboration.

Entrepreneur 114

Entrepreneur India Silicon Valley Massachusetts 114

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan put in place GM’s management accounting system (borrowed from DuPont) that for the first time allowed the company to: 1) produce an annual operating forecast that compared each division’s forecast (revenue, costs, capital requirements and return on investment) with the company’s financial goals.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

As the costs of production fall, it’s getting easier and easier to send in a proposal or even a complete work. We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. What is the right revenue model? I’ve met a lot of gatekeepers in the past few months. ideas (e.g.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

I was asked to explain why a marketing program that cost $150,000 bucks literally generated nothing in revenue for the company. Reply Customer Development Gut Checks « Market By Numbers - Brant Cooper , on April 28, 2009 at 11:38 am Said: [.] They hit each other with baseball bats until one of them dropped.)

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

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

JULY 2, 2009

To an entrepreneur, being asked to join a venture firm with an Entrepreneur-in-Residence title means you have been tapped on the shoulder by the VC gods. The CDROM content business in the early 1990’s was one of the many of the long line of venture capital fads.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. The software was sold based on installation cost running on local servers for enterprises—which was very, very expensive. venture capital. or even be a U.S.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

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 11, 2013

The test is: If you add one more sales person or spend more marketing dollars, does your sales revenue go up by more than your expenses? Does our product or service solve a customer problem (product-market fit)? How do we attract, keep and grow customers? What are revenue strategy and pricing tactics?

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 333

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

I thing I’ve learned over the years is that technology purists hate advertising even when it is that revenue stream that truthfully drives much of our industry. He took out an ad in the Yellow Pages (it was the early 80′s, pre Internet), which cost him $1,000 / month for a half-page ad.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

What CEOs, management teams and shareholders care about is growth —revenue growth, greater user adoption, increased market share, bigger margins, etc. in developing these new models. It only emerges after an intense business model design and search activity based on the customer development process.

Lean 326

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 326

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

The test is: If you add one more sales person or spend more marketing dollars, does your sales revenue go up by more than your expenses? Does our product or service solve a customer problem (product-market fit)? How do we attract, keep and grow customers? What are revenue strategy and pricing tactics?

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 225

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

These poor miserable people who insist in making money at the cost of others, deserve our compassion, not emulation The real success I believe is leading a happy life and to hopefully provide for your worldly needs and those of your dependents. Page views drive his ad revenue, which is probably CPM based.

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

They have many, many man-years of development and customer development in them. But assuming it’s a fair exit, a venture capitalist, and I’m explicitly not saying angel because we could talk about angel and they’re sort of special so that might work out. For venture capital, right?

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Different market opportunities present radically different startup risks and costs. Capital Requirements In my class students form teams and spend a semester building a detailed plan for a company. Vertical markets are a risk and cost reduction strategy. What is it that’s unique about the market I’m in? Yeah, I said.

Vertical 149

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 149

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

But without sales there is no revenue, and without revenue there is no company. All the strategic thinking in the world won’t make up for a missed revenue plan. If sales revenue and profits are high enough, we could take the company public or sell it, and the stock would be worth more than the paper it was printed on.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 126

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

The timing is perfect, there is more than a little overlap with Vivek Wadhwa’s guest post on venture capital earlier today. The project was so low cost they did not even want to bother with it. Thus why I decided to wait until the market allowed for low cost investment. Johnny Good post.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

Our calculations had us losing money on the two lowest cost boards, breaking even on the third and making great margins on the other six. We did that when we surveyed our customers. And in this very unique case, we figured out how to maximize revenue and profit by branding and product line extensions.

Silicon Valley 134

Silicon Valley Product RSS Engineer 134

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

the wave of semiconductor startups in the 1960’s/70’s, the emergence of Venture Capital as a professional industry, the personal computer revolution in 1980’s, the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s and finally. Today open source software has slashed the cost of software development from millions of dollars to thousands.

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222