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. You may have a set of hypothesis about them but you really don’t know.

Vertical 130

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 130

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 123

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 123

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

You pay, download the stock photo, jury-rig it into your design, and look at your work with a mixed sense of pride and shame. Here’s the problem: Every other poor schmuck in every other vertical has used the exact…same…photograph. Now, not all stock photographs are bad… …just the designers who use them.

Stock 71

Stock Software Review Arizona Technical Review 71

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Finally, I’ll write about 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. customers aren’t buying it, the cost of distribution is too high, etc.) Product Development Diagram 1.

Customer Development 241

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 241

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

Finally, I’ll write about 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. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Blog at WordPress.com.

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 228

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

We talked about some simple design rules and I remember him thanking me for coming, saying we were the only chip company who cared enough to call on him (little did he know.) Long gone from Zilog I saw the picture of the original Macintosh design team. I thought nothing about the meeting until years later.

Silicon Valley 134

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 134

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 14, 2014

You pay, download the stock photo, jury-rig it into your design & look at your work with a mixed sense of pride & shame. But the client LOVES it! (“See, looks like Stock wasn’t so bad after all, was it Mr. Designer?”). Photograph. ” This applies to both positive & negative experiences.

Stock 129

Stock Software Review Lead Generation Arizona 129

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Reply Lots of low cost experiments « Open Ambition , on April 22, 2009 at 8:58 am Said: [.] Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Reply Killing Innovation with Corner Cases and Consensus « Steve Blank , on April 22, 2009 at 5:04 am Said: [.] “Speed and Tempo&# – Fearless Decision Making for Startups [.]

Silicon Valley 302

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 302

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. Just like in the world of startups, we can start to use micro-scale pilot programs, executed in lean fashion, to gather real facts for making ROI decisions about new project investment. 12comments: Dougvs said.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

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. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup. What’s the customer acquisition cost?

Lean 251

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 251

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. Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.)

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

However the Customer Development Model and the Lean Startup work equally well for startups on the web. The first question to ask is: “Does your startup have market risk or is it dominated by technical risk?” Lean Startup /Customer Development is used to find answers to the unknowns about customers and markets. End of theory.&#

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 224

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Just for reference, Slidebean is a SaaS presentation software where users can add content, and a finished presentation is designed automatically. Nov-15: Graphic Designer (growth/product). Lean marketing. Cost of Acquisition (CAC): The total cost of acquiring a user through a given channel.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? Therefore, no, we weren’t really equipped to be the low cost provider. Our company’s graphics boards were designed to speed up a key part of the Macintosh graphics operating system called QuickDraw. No, not really.

Silicon Valley 145

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 145

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

In less than a month they designed a low-cost video-capture board that plugged into the Mac and allowed you to connect a video camera and VCR. He showed me a little Korean hard drive portable music player, not much more than the Compaq reference design it was based off of. com Michael Robertson.

Video 169

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 169

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

Not surprising with a CEO with a PhD in Math, at ESL the engineers ran the company, pursuing bleeding-edge designs in antennas, receivers and microwaves – at times hand in hand with Stanford’s engineering department. could design and produce, and a good part of it was coming from Silicon Valley. defense spending even higher.

Silicon Valley 177

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 177

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

So they systematically designed electronic devices called “jammers&# to shut down each part of the German air defense system. And now am leading a startup of my own ( [link] ) where we’re students of you and Eric Ries’ lean startup principles. Each allied bombing mission lost 2-20% of their planes.

Silicon Valley 186

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 186

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Stanford designed Klystrons producing 2½ Megawatts were manufactured by Varian and Litton would power the radar in the BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) built at the height of the cold war.) The university found government contracts profitable as the government reimbursed their overhead charges (their indirect costs.)

Silicon Valley 145

Silicon Valley RSS California Government 145

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

It will cost you your job.” Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. By accountable I meant, “we agreed on a delivery date, and between now and the delivery date it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office the day something was due and give me an excuse.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

YoungUpstarts

MAY 12, 2014

Masterful execution makes up one of the triangle’s two vertical sides. (I If you cut 1 percent in cost or time, that’s not much. They signal their intelligence by putting great emphasis on the design of their products and services (Taste). They use lean teams. Their packaging and services are distinctly designed.

Stock 157

Stock Memphis Balance Sheet Analytics 157

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Growth marketing borrows a concept from the lean startup methodology. Marketers following this practice start with a hypothesis, design and run an experiment, and interpret results to fuel future experiments. Growth hacking is a term that emerged from the Silicon Valley tech community and the lean startup methodology.

Framework 102

Framework Marketing Acquisition Retention 102

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

She said, “Dad, one of the great things you and Mom did was never tell us how much things cost.” Now that I’m older, I’m starting to know what things cost. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. 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 147

North Carolina Silicon Valley RSS Connecticut 147

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

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. This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. A few successful ones do all these things.

Customer Development 247

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 247

crowdSPRING Blog

DECEMBER 13, 2018

Chapter 4: Brand Identity Design: the Building Blocks of Your Brand Identity. Chapter 5: Designing Your Brand Identity. Put another way: a designer’s job isn’t to design a brand. Designers design the brand identity (explained in Chapter 5 ). Chapter 2: Creating Your Brand Strategy. style guide.

Marketing 162

Marketing Charlotte Naming Design 162

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

While the story about the Potereo benchmarks was about relentless execution, its glib description of designing the benchmarks could be read as we cheated. These were applications we had never seen or ran before when the boards were designed. As a private company you can decide that winning at all costs is your culture.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley RSS Startup California 124

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. Everyone was using a road map that was designed for a very different location, yet they are surprised when they end up lost. These markets live entirely in decreasing returns economics.

Silicon Valley 264

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 264

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Customer 421

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 421

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. Get a blog at WordPress.com Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer.

Silicon Valley 189

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 189

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Different market opportunities present radically different startup risks and costs. Verticals Are Different I began to realize that entrepreneurs (and their professors) act like every vertical market and industry has the same set of rules. Just for discussion, the markets I chose were: Web 2.0,

Vertical 151

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 151

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Or, if it really was prevented, what was the opportunity cost of choosing to prevent it ahead of time? And in most situations, there is significant cost involved in negotiating over the right estimates to plug in. In the past, we invested in brilliant architecture, code reuse, refactoring, modular design, etc.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

Without a budget, costs can quickly spiral out of control (last minute impulse purchases to jazz up your booth, for example) and defeat your best laid plans. A rule of thumb is that your space costs represent about a quarter of your total show budget. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 186

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 186

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. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer.

Silicon Valley 162

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 162

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. Not All Startups Are Alike There’s an urban legend that Eskimos-Aleuts have more words to describe snow than other cultures.

Customer Development 204

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 204

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. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. They hit each other with baseball bats until one of them dropped.) This first Zen moment happened at a SuperMac exec staff meeting. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

Designing the Perfect Building Once the commitment to fix everything wrong was in place, we were off and running on the design phase. We hired an interior designer and a great facilities person to manage the process. The exec staff started meeting about the design of the new building. Stay hungry, stay lean.

Silicon Valley 213

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 213

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

One of the times I screwed this up it left a legacy of 25 years of questionable design in microprocessor architecture. It has to be little-endian or we won’t design your chip into our systems.” The reaction from the chip circuit design guys was, “OK, we could do that. What a great idea. Are you out of your !? *x!

Customer Development 280

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 280

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. The primary goal of customer development is to reduce the cost of mistakes. This is basic enough that I don’t think anyone can argue with it – reduce the cost of mistakes. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer.

Venture Capital 218

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 218