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. What’s the consequence if your stab at a sales strategy is wrong?

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Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The downside is that with so much venture and angel capital available, investors have been willing to fund the 10 th Groupon clone. For the last few years, there really hasn’t been a demand to innovate on top of the ecosystem that’s been built. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

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China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

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.

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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. In 1996 no potential customer had even heard of a Personal Digital Assistant.

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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.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. I couldn’t care less about those. on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Brendan McManus said: “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [link] #startup #advice [.] Your “Customer Development Process&# has really resonated for me. Your results may vary.

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Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

press and use it to generate end user demand and then drive that demand into our sales channel. The Potrero benchmark strategy was one component of this creating end user demand through PR.) Getting B-52s through the Soviet Air Defense System Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential? We were constantly creating metrics [.]

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

If you take funding from a venture capital firm or angel investor and want to build a large, enduring company (rather than sell it to the highest bidder), this isn’t the decade to do it. The collapse of the IPO market and dysfunctional math in the venture capital community has stacked the odds against you. Here’s why.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Lets take venture capital and grow this thing into a real business.”. A scalable startup typically requires external “risk&# capital to create market demand and scale. Typically the size of their opportunity and company doesn’t lend itself to attracting venture capital. The Scalable Startup.

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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.

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. Demand creation for subsequent iPods can be about the features not about the new idea of iTunes+sync+iPod.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Rather than invent a new form of corporate governance, venture investors adopted the traditional board meeting structure from large corporations. Silicon Valley, New York). Here’s how. Because We’ve Always Done It This Way.

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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?

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Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Rather than invent a new form of corporate governance, venture investors adopted the traditional board meeting structure from large corporations. Silicon Valley, New York). Here’s how. Because We’ve Always Done It This Way.

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Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

But the bubble mantra of get “big fast” and “first mover advantage” demanded tens of millions more to create a “brand.” Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. That requires building a company using Agile and Customer Development.

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners. What didn’t? Go to trade shows like it matters.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

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.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms. Thanks to Suns amazing PR blitz, there was tremendous demand for experts on Java, and I did my best to convince people that I was one of that mythical breed.

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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.

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Some of the conversations went like this: Startup 1 Entrepreneur -“I’m competing against Company x and have been following the Customer Development process and I’ve talked to lots of customers.” Do you know how they create demand? Do you know the archetype of their customers? This is easy to test.

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Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2019

Here’s what I suggested they do: Mei and Bill are building a better version of an on-demand help service like TaskRabbit. They have a unique insight about the nature of interactions between customers and service providers I’ve never heard before. But they needed to convince investors that they are Facebook not Friendster.

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Bandwidth Database Venture Capital Demand 281

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. Customer Development This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process. Employ customer development.

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Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 212

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

The idea was to keep customers coming back to General Motors over time to upgrade to a better brand as they became wealthier. Finally, GM created the notion of perpetual demand within brands by continually obsoleting their own products yearly with new models rolled out every year. Think of the iPod family and its yearly new models.)

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Cray called two years ago and bought it back for parts for an unnamed customer still running one. Reply BillSeitz , on November 23, 2009 at 4:51 am Said: Did you put your pinky next to the corner of your mouth and demand “1 beellion dollars&# ? Story here. [.]

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Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

Steven Cohn , founder and CEO of Validately , which helps user researchers, product managers and others validate demand or usability for prototypes and live sites. Before co-founding Biota Technology , he was an investor and entrepreneur-in-residence at Seed Capital , a investing in science-based innovation. Steven Cohn.

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Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

Steven Cohn , founder and CEO of Validately , which helps user researchers, product managers and others validate demand or usability for prototypes and live sites. Before co-founding Biota Technology , he was an investor and entrepreneur-in-residence at Seed Capital , a investing in science-based innovation. Steven Cohn.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120

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.

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Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 19, 2011

It’s amazing how many startups skip the MVP (minimum viable product) stage, spend months building a full fledged product with no feedback from users, and focus their energy on building features they “think” are cool or needed, without actually checking their customers reaction or demand.

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Early Stage Lean Customer Development Demand 92

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If the VP of Sales doesn’t think that generating end user awareness and ultimately demand for them is worthwhile, then one of you is an idiot. Hope it’s not you. Once you know which show you’re going to and what your goals are, draw up a budget. Plus tips on overall trade show strategy.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 178

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

The other revels in the world as we all know it will be someday: limitless distribution enabled by new technologies, the importance of collaborative filters, and on-demand availability of all content for end-users. We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 13, 2011

Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology that helps startups optimize their chances for success while reducing risk. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Silicon Valley, New York).

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Silicon Valley Balance Sheet Metrics Early Stage 117

Spencer Fry

APRIL 17, 2017

Having started and sold 3 successful bootstrapped businesses, and am now running 1 venture capital backed business ( Coach ), this is a topic I know a thing or two about. I would have continued to scrape by with a product that was conceptually on point, but didn’t have the bells and whistles that customers expect nowadays.

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Bootstrapping Cap Table Liquidation Preference Cofounder 63

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I finally understood how valuable these contests can be for students in cities or countries without a venture capital or entrepreneurial infrastructure. And even if they did – customers don’t ask to see your business plan. to compete. I was simply confused about what a plan was for.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

www.instigatorblog.com

MARCH 2, 2010

Venture capital firms like to see CEOs with strong support (beyond the Board of Directors) and that’s what the Advisory Board is there to do. Whether the Advisory Board is something your investors (or Board of Directors) demand or not, you should set one up anyway. Why wouldn’t you?

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

A seed round can come from friends, family, Kickstarter, angels – and most importantly, early customers. These sources are a lot more forgiving of iterations and pivots than later-stage venture-capital funds. In times of unlimited cash (internet bubbles, frothy venture climates) you can fix your mistakes by burning more dollars.

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Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 333

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

So bowing to popular demand the 2009 blog posts are now available on Amazon on a portable device which provides instant and random access to any post and does not require power or an internet connection. After I retired, I began teaching Customer Development , a theory of how to reduce early stage risk in entrepreneurial ventures.

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Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 202