Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

She had so much insight to share that we broke the interview into two parts, 1) Corporate Venture Capital and more broadly, 2) How the Fortune 500 Can Buy, Invest and Partner with the Innovation Economy (coming soon). . Could they excel at customer development with enterprises? Can the founders communicate well?

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

When Netscape went public, it unleashed a frenzy from the public markets for anything related to the internet and signaled to venture investors that there were massive returns to be made investing in anything internet related. After the crash, venture capital was scarce to non-existent. Then one day it was over. IPOs dried up.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund and mutual fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. Sources like Crunchbase , Angel List , and Seed Invest even give this data away for free or very low cost. Stanford List of Venture Capital and Private Equity Sources.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

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.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

Part 3, the next post describes the rise of Chinese venture capital. Torch has four major parts: Clusters, Business Incubators, Seed Funding, and Funds to support Venture Capital firms. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. Lessons Learned.

Programming 278

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 278

VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

“After the crash, venture capital was scarce to non-existent. Ditch the business plan and when assumptions are proven wrong, pivot Customer Development: Build a product your customers want (vs. If you can afford to make an MVP look and feel great, even at the expense of time to market or cost, why compromise?

Lean 214

Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

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

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. In all of these new product and cost-focused new trends, a big problem has emerged that all of these movements have not addressed. That died with waterfall software development.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

Part 3, the next post describes the rise of Chinese venture capital. Torch has four major parts: Clusters, Business Incubators, Seed Funding, and Funds to support Venture Capital firms. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. Lessons Learned.

Programming 170

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 170

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

MAY 30, 2016

And they’re getting a handle on what it costs to build a company to deliver it. And in these last two weeks of class, they learn what activities, resources and partners they’ll need to deliver their solution and derive what it costs to build the company to deliver it. This post is a continuation of the series. It’s a ton of work.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

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.

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Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

Greycroft is Alan’s venture capital firm that recently raised its second fund ($130 million) with offices in both New York and LA. We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc.

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

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

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

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. Is there some defining factor that easily distinguishes the difference? Sounds like handspring.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

Clay stressed that crowdfunding should not replace Customer Discovery: … Customer Development and Customer Discovery need to be moved earlier – before you launch. Because Lean Startup methods, Crowdfunding, Amazon Web Services and the Internet that connects us all, is bringing the cost of failure to zero. .

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

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

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# Reply Lots of low cost experiments « Open Ambition , on April 22, 2009 at 8:58 am Said: [.] That’s why startups are agile.

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

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. Venture Capital Issues. Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up. The amount of capital being invested in new device companies is at an 11 year low. Venture Capital.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

The Next Web

MAY 4, 2013

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Stefano Bernardi, who is on the founding team of Betable , where he heads Customer Development. Previously, he worked in venture capital in Europe. You can check out his blog and follow him on Twitter. But don’t expect to go back with a check.

San Francisco 159

San Francisco Europe Technical Review Due Diligence 159

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

How do we attract, keep and grow customers? And what are its costs? If you’re a lifestyle entrepreneur or a small business, odds are the return you can provide is not what traditional angel or venture investors are looking for. Filed under: Venture Capital. Venture Capital' Who are the partners?

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 333

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Marketing is Heard From Engineering was discussing how sophisticated the graphics portion of our computer should be, debating cost and time-to-market tradeoffs of arcane details such as double-buffering, 24 versus 32-bits of color, alpha channels, etc. Customer development isn’t just for [.] Getting out of the building.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 271

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

At first only the national laboratories and the largest companies could afford to buy supercomputers, (the Cray-1 cost ~$9 million) but over time scientists and researchers were also starting to use them. Ardent 3: Supercomputer Porn « Steve Blank (tags: customer-development product-management startup) [.]

Silicon Valley 147

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? While we sometimes cut the price of graphics boards, it was only because we offered our customers no compelling reasons to buy one that was priced equivalently to the market share leaders. No, not really.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

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 25, 2009

Computer hardware companies were faced with their customers asking for low-cost (relatively) desktop computers they had no experience in building. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? what Market Type is your startup?

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

The goal was commercial products, but as scientists and engineers the company’s founders realized that at times the cost of experimentation was failure. government backed venture firms and limited partnerships. A wave of innovation was about to meet a pile of risk capital. Filed under: Lean LaunchPad , Venture Capital.

Engineer 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

How do we attract, keep and grow customers? And what are its costs? If you’re a lifestyle entrepreneur or a small business, odds are the return you can provide is not what traditional angel or venture investors are looking for. Filed under: Venture Capital. Venture Capital' Who are the partners?

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 225

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

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. Risk capital has provided financing for new ideas in the form of startups. But it’s not over for Intel.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

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?

Vertical 149

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 149

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

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

in developing these new models. We believe that using the customer development process to monetize these assets through new business models can create huge competitive advantage and more speed to market for us and other big companies. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development.

Lean 326

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 326

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

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. That gave Google a huge cost advantage. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350