Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Venture Capitalists on your board developed the expertise to get your firm public as soon as possible using whatever it took including hype, spin, expand, and grab market share because the sooner you got your billion dollar market cap, the sooner the VC firm could sell their shares and distribute their profits. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 226

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 226

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

One is explaining the world as it used to work: the importance of gatekeepers, the scarcity implied by limited distribution, and the resulting quality bar that the industry is so proud of. Mostly it is the time and expense required to create the means of distribution for that industry. It’s just taking some longer than others.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

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.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 223

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Nuclear Weapons Laboratories used supercomputers to run their hydrodynamics codes for nuclear weapon design and the National Security Agency used them to decrypt codes. I had the only farm capable of nuclear weapons design. Cray called two years ago and bought it back for parts for an unnamed customer still running one.

Silicon Valley 195

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 195

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.

Silicon Valley 266

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 266

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 have they distribute their product? Do you know the archetype of their customers? This is easy to test.

Silicon Valley 191

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 191

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2009

Worries from the garage One of the worries I hear from entrepreneurs (not just my students) is that Customer Development means getting out of the building and sharing what you are working on. In the end, the CEO couldn’t get his board to give us the cash in exchange for the Japanese distribution rights and some equity.

Silicon Valley 155

Silicon Valley RSS Startup California 155

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 254

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 254

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

So I got out out of the building to meet and understand our customers and distribution partners. I remember after a month or two of talking to 14-22 year old male gamers (our potential target market,) I realized that for the first time in my career I had no emotional connection to my customers or channel partners.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley RSS California Video 144

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Top management was trying to coordinate all of the operating details (sales, manufacturing, distribution and marketing,) across all the divisions and the company almost went bankrupt that year when poor planning led to excess inventory (with unsold cars piling up at dealers and the company running out of cash.) Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 164

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 164

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 424

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 424

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Video Games At SuperMac , Peter Barrett was the witty and creative 24-year old Australian engineer who had designed several of our most successful products, culminating with the software for the Video Spigot. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. I had no idea what I wanted to do next, and would get paid to think about it?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Meanwhile my partner was in heaven working with his newly hired group of game designers directing and producing our first games. Go spend some time outside the building talking to potential distribution partners. Stop annoying our game designers and start working on selling and marketing the games.” They think we’re brilliant.

Silicon Valley 214

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 214

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

My two cents is that a business plan is the single place to collect your thinking about about your: business model, distribution channel, demand creation plan, financial assumptions, and customer and product development plan. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. I now think that was a mistake. Blog at WordPress.com.

Business Plan 145

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 145

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

We already have some competitors in the vertical and while there is no point in trying to hide the actual idea, there are differences in the way we implement stuff that can get us an advantage over the competition. >> There are some other serious reasons why we dont want to go public right now. Ford said, “Produce it anyway.”

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

For example, Friendster was famously vertically partitioned at one time in its growth curve. Sharding for startups To support a single partitioning scheme is easy, especially if you design for it from the start. Ive taught everyone from hard-core programmers to scripters to HTML-designers to use it properly. to store it.

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Ampex’s first customer was Bing Crosby who wanted to record his radio programs for rebroadcast (and had exclusive distribution rights.) Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Ampex business took off when Terman introduced Ampex founder Alex Poniatoff to Joseph and Henry McMicking. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley SBIC San Francisco RSS 126

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110