Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Apple is trying to push Vision Pro into their existing consumer customers All the demos and existing applications are oriented to their consumer customers Apple did not create demos for how the Vision Pro could be used in new markets where users would jump on buying a Vision Pro.

Search 286

Search Marketing Forecast Burn Rate 286

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2016

Transportation partners play an enormous role in the supply chain as they bring products into distribution centers and sometimes directly to customers. Develop Relationships with Supply Chain Partners. Develop relationships with each of your supply chain partners and make communication a top priority.

Management 145

Management Forecast Los Angeles San Francisco 145

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. Price is not an exercise in maximizing some micro-economic supply/demand curve, slapped post-facto onto the product. Examples: WorkDay (much of revenue is consulting), IBM. Again, like shared hosting companies.)

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Freemium models have their own scorekeeping.)

Customer Development 227

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 227

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

In my last post I described what happened when a company prematurely scales sales and marketing before adequately testing its hypotheses in Customer Discovery. You would think that would be enough to get wrong, but entrepreneurs and investors compound this problem by assuming that all startups grow and scale by executing the Revenue Plan.

Revenue 232

Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 232

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

These hypotheses span the gamut from who’s the customer(s), to what’s the value proposition (product/service features), pricing, distribution channel, and demand creation (customer acquisition, activation, retention, etc.). They are: value proposition, product/service the company offers (along with its benefits to customers).

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

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 217

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 217

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. To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 268

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

But it was their market size survey that had the team (and us) even more concerned; last weeks “hot” market of biomed researchers looked like it was only $30m market, and the total available reference manager market was another $80M.The question was, even if they got the product right, were there enough customers to make it a business?

Customer 239

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 239

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

Customer Development 266

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 266

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

Finally to have a better chance of a viable enterprise, they need to test all the other hypotheses in their business/mission model (pricing, demand creation, revenue, costs, etc.). The key principles of customer development are: There are no facts inside the building so get the heck outside.

Customer 418

Customer Business Model Restful Video 418

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

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.

Lean 334

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 334

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. And their branding and demand creation activities were going to occur primarily outside of Australia. With 317 million people the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2012

In circumstances like this, most firms call their legal departments and start issuing cease and desist demands. MIT professor Eric von Hippel has coined the term “lead users” to describe them, and worked with 3M’s healthcare business to develop a system for finding them. But LEGO took a smarter approach.

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234

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. What are the 9 parts of a business model?

Wiki 315

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 315

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. Your design or ad agencies can impress you with their awards, but if you’re not moving product or creating demand, you’ve missed the point.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. The business plan, its revenue forecast, and the product introduction model assume that every step a start-up takes proceeds flawlessly and smoothly to the next.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

I had been confused for years why I had to update an income statement each board meeting that said zero for 18 months before we had any revenue. As a founder you are testing a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? How do we create end user demand? Customer Acquisition.

Balance Sheet 303

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 303

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. existing enterprises are establishing corporate innovation groups. What Does this Mean?

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

How do we create end user demand? Your job as a founder is to quickly validate whether the model is correct by seeing if customers behave as your model predicts. Most of the time the darn customers don’t behave as you predicted. How Does Customer Development, Agile Development and Lean Startups Fit?

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

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

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 140

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 140

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

If there was any doubt among the teams about the value of what they’re learning, Blinken put it to rest with a compelling overview of how so many of today’s complex global problems – from stopping Ebola to monitoring cease-fires and improving food security – demand innovative, tech-based solutions.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

If there was any doubt among the teams about the value of what they’re learning, Blinken put it to rest with a compelling overview of how so many of today’s complex global problems – from stopping Ebola to monitoring cease-fires and improving food security – demand innovative, tech-based solutions.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2011

These web science experiments are the logical extension of the Customer Discovery step in the Customer Development process. They’re a great way to brainstorm outside the building, getting real customer feedback as you think through your ideas about value proposition/customer/demand creation/revenue model.

Entrepreneur 271

Entrepreneur Web Demand Customer Development 271

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Now with customers and early revenue, it was out raising its first round of venture money. A scalable startup typically requires external “risk&# capital to create market demand and scale. Posted in Customer Development, Durant versus Sloan, Technology, Venture Capital. The Web and Startups.

Hockey Stick 296

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 296

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 13, 2013

It’s OK because in an era where you can much more rapidly prototype and build products it is far more beneficial to launch your first version, get initial customer traction and then talk to your customer base to understand how well it meets their needs.

Sales 393

Sales Startup Framework Search 393

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2011

Week 3 of the class and our teams in our Stanford Lean LaunchPad class were hard at work using Customer Development to get out of the classroom and test the first key hypotheses of their business model: The Value Proposition. Next week each team test their Customer Segment hypotheses (who are their customers/users/decision makers, etc.)

Cloud 236

Cloud Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 236

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. Lets see why.

Lean 259

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 259

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

Until 1995 startups going public typically had a track record of revenue and profits. Suddenly there was a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit. In either case Customer Development provides entrepreneurs with a methodology for being capital efficient. Netscape’s 1995 IPO changed the rules.

Venture Capital 302

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 302

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. You dive deep into a customer development process, working closely with a few customers who feed you requirements and are willing to trial an imperfect product that is evolving quickly.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

In the Udemy course, Alistair and Ben expand these basics into a description of how to create empathy, stickiness, virality, revenue, and scale. Stickiness, Ben and Alistair say, is where people move on too quickly--they don’t make sure they really have a product that has the right features and functionality to meet their customers’ needs.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. What is customer development?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

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 124

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

HOF Capital has stitched together our workflow across Google Suite , Slack , Airtable , Asana , Streak , and some other tools (leveraging Zapier for basic 3rd party integration, in addition to custom development for certain other integrations). Kushim , Totem , and VisibleVC focus on serving this need among VCs.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60