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 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

The Startup Death Spiral: The Cost of Getting Product Launch Wrong By the time of first customer ship, if a startup does not understand its market and customers, failure unfolds in a stylized ritual, almost like a Japanese Noh play. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer.

Customer Development 232

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 232

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

I had a pleasant meeting and was as convincing as a marketing type could be to a very earnest and quirky field service guy, mostly promising the moon for a versatile but then very buggy piece of silicon. 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 143

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 143

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

customers aren’t buying it, the cost of distribution is too high, etc.) Education program must emphasize the need to start with customer needs and design your entire product development strategy around a customer development blueprint, as you put it so very well. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Customer Development 244

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 244

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Your best bet is probably taking an existing market and serving a portion of it better than the competition, through lower cost or a different set of features. That’s no longer the case in Silicon Valley. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer.

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 228

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 157

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 157

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. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Video 184

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 184

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 137

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 137

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 125

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. How did Silicon Valley start?

Silicon Valley 297

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 297

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

Creating a vertically oriented regional ecosystem is a pretty amazing accomplishment for any country or industry. The trap most of them fell into (common almost everywhere): they were reading the blog posts and advice of Silicon Valley-based companies and believing that it uniformly applied to them. It doesn’t.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

It will cost you your job.” Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. 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. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

First up today was John Bertoni with Mava Consulting , who is setting up a part-time sales force for companies to use without having to invest the fully loaded cost of a direct sales rep per geography. So, effectively, at the cost of one full-time sales rep, they can access coverage in four different regions.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

Repaid 12-36 months with ability to prepay at reduced cost. From their website: “We invest via a Shared Earnings Agreement , a new investment model developed transparently with the community, and designed to align us with founders who want to run a profitable business and never be forced to raise follow-on financing or sell their business.”

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

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. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. For a minute it was a pretty depressing thought for a parent.

North Carolina 160

North Carolina Silicon Valley RSS Connecticut 160

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Everyone was using a road map that was designed for a very different location, yet they are surprised when they end up lost. Combined with product costs, an engineering budget, and schedules, this results in a spreadsheet that faintly resembles the first financial plan in the company’s business plan. Ortho kills.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 269

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. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 206

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

The Customer Development Model Customer Development is designed to solve the problems of the Product Development model I described in the four previous posts. A few successful ones do all these things. The difference is that the ones that succeed invent a Customer Development model. This post describes such a model.

Customer Development 253

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 253

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

So I gave my “ The Secret History of Silicon Valley ” talk as the keynote to the CIA’s venture capital conference. So this post is how I came to write “The Secret History of Silicon Valley&#. (I’ll And you’d like me to do my talk on Customer Development and startups?” “No, we’re the other CIA.”

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Venture Capital 267

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 30, 2017

It follows up on my posts discussing why early stage startups should — or should not — move to Silicon Valley. As the product stabilises and gains traction, however, the business needs to ramp up talent that can handle not only design and development, but also sales, marketing, customer support/success and ops.

Early Stage 48

Early Stage Austin Silicon Valley Intellectual Property 48

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 127

Silicon Valley RSS Startup California 127

Life Beyond Code

FEBRUARY 20, 2013

About Mokriya: Mokriya is a design-focused mobile app strategy and solutions company based in Silicon Valley. The Mokriya Craigslist app is an effort in re-imagining craigslist from the ground up using Mobile centric design principles. RS: What is the cost of this app? For a one-time $0.99

Silicon Valley 99

Silicon Valley Mobile Vertical Search 99

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. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 203

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 203

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. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 179

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. Most publishers are still caught up in an outdated “vision vs. metrics&# argument, which is already obsolete here in Silicon Valley. 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

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

In times when venture capital is hard to get, investors extract high costs for failure (down-rounds, cram downs , new management teams, shut down the company.) Sales people cost money, and when they’re not bringing in revenue, their wandering in the woods is time consuming, cash-draining and demoralizing. Who recommends a sale?

Lean 260

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260

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. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. They hit each other with baseball bats until one of them dropped.) Reply Michael F. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

steve Jay Levitt , on September 11, 2009 at 5:39 pm Said: There’s a fun corollary to this: If you’re creating a new market, you WANT competitors, because they’ll share the cost of educating your target market. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer.

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Entrepreneur-in-Residence After SuperMac I had been approached by one of our venture investors to be an entrepreneur in residence (EIR), a Silicon Valley phrase which says one thing but means another. Peter described the first company in which “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” and we were enthralled. Little did I know.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Marketers following this practice start with a hypothesis, design and run an experiment, and interpret results to fuel future experiments. The growth marketer would design and run an experiment (ideating, drafting, and sending the email), and then review the data to confirm or disprove the hypothesis. Where does growth hacking come in?

Framework 102

Framework Marketing Acquisition Retention 102

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 156

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 156

Austin Startup

MARCH 4, 2018

We’re at a strategic point where our core business is experiencing solid growth and we’re ready to invest in significantly more advanced breathomics sensing and analytics into our roadmap, so we can begin to focus on the specific disease verticals that our data, reach and technology can have the greatest impact for. I attended in 2007.

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Startup China India 48

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

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. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Order Here. Now In Print!

Venture Capital 239

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 239

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. Are his costs in control?

Silicon Valley 230

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 230

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 284

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 284

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

These damn models weren’t designed right so we’re fixing them on the line.” He welcomed us by screaming, “Do you know how much it costs every minute this line is down.&# of total entrepreneurs born in China and India is not even close to what entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley looks like. were born in India.

Founder 310

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 310

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Waiting for images to move around the screen were not only driving them crazy, but costing them money. The good news was that the Spif strategy was working; the bad news is that it was costing the company our entire profit. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 210