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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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

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.)

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

PS1- I run a small software startup in Brazil and just found out about Customer Development and your blog (I’ve been reading and listening to everything I can get my hands on online, like Venturehacks and Ries’ blog). Ernest Hemingway One of an entrepreneur’s greatest strengths is their relentless pursuit of a goal.

Silicon Valley 324

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 324

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. It is web-based, fast and easy and soon to may be available on the iPhone. Good stuff too.

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Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

The design was actually a negative drag on selling anything off a retail shelf. From grumbling skeptics, they all became packaging design converts. And for sure they were never going to win any design awards. We were on the bottom row – with an invisible box. We labeled this our “Black Hole of Packaging&# strategy.

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. link] a few seconds ago from web [.] The Adventure of a Lifetime. You’re not joining a big company.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention. The real risk in markets like Web 2.0 Now In Print!

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

I distinctly remember this is the first time I head the phrases “features and benefits.&# And since I saw our ads (but didn’t quite understand them,) I knew marketing was the group that designed them, somehow to get customers to think our products were better than Intel and Motorola’s. I also knew our customers.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Perhaps in direct proportion to the number of “freemium” and “eyeballs” web deals funded.) It may be that the venture business will have to return to the old days of helping entrepreneurs build companies – not hype them, not spin them, but actually make them worth something to customers and investors. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Since there was very little documentation my time was split between the design engineers who built the system and the test and deployment team getting the system ready to go overseas. I really enjoy your posts – thank you for taking time to place your experiences up on the web. You’re Hired, You’re Fired.

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Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 245

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. They never understood Market Type. . Is there some defining factor that easily distinguishes the difference?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

The guidelines I had originally proposed to my students worked for enterprise software or Web 2.0 Just for discussion, the markets I chose were: Web 2.0, 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. Now In Print!

Vertical 149

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 149

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Ignore This Post The same caveat applies as in the first post; If you’re selling via the web, and trade shows seem hopelessly anachronistic, ignore this post. Someone from your company has to be designated the official competitive intelligence officer for this show. this may be a useful read. One of them is a loser.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

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. We will accomplish this through demand-creation activities (advertising, PR, tradeshows, seminars, web sites, etc.),

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Useful blogs and links for startups Click Here ————– 2.

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Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. I do not want to necessarily start a flame war about particular creations of “Web 2.0 We all know how that ends up.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

If you’re a startup raising money or just want to see your name online, there’s not a better blog on the web. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Reading this TechCrunch post made me remember the first time I saw someone confront a worldview they didn’t expect. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Tips for Startups « Am I a Founder? The other thing it helps clarify is that even at work, it’s the relationships that matter most (collegues, customers, partners, etc). The Adventure of a Lifetime.

Entrepreneur 276

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 276

andrewchenblog.com

MARCH 10, 2010

Coupled with A/B testing, customer development, and thinking through business problems in a scientific, hypothesis-driven way, you end up with a powerful cocktail of techniques to build a modern startup in the most iterative way possible. However, there’s the other side of the coin, which is the product design.

Technical Review 47

Technical Review Design Las Vegas Product 47

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? Platform selection and technical design - if your business strategy is to create a low-burn, highly iterative lean startup, youd better be using foundational tools that make that easy rather than hard.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

conversionxl.com

FEBRUARY 4, 2014

What follows is a list of resources that can be applied specifically to landing page optimization, found here on ConversionXL & from other great websites around the web. note: If you’re a startup, you’ll want to use customer development questions for your page to resonate with future traffic).

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Analytics Software Review Conversion Video 98

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. An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.”

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Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181

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 185

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 185

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. (You can use static methods like Monte Carlo simulation, or dynamic methods using continuous or discrete simulation.) However, for the Web 2.0

Vertical 128

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 128

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Amazon Web Services. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Customer service. Design/Front End: Twitter Bootstrap : Include this in your website, and you are half finished. LiveRoad : A Great IDE for design is very helpful. Web Tools: Hereâ??s Firebase : Are all your developers front-end engineers?

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 16, 2013

Seems like every third startup nowadays is using the “Freemium” business model: The lowest service tier is free, and the business is designed to get those users hooked and then upgrade to a paid plan. Foibles of Freemium Let’s dispose of some misconceptions about what Freemium actually does for you and how much it costs.

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Marketing Viral Campaign Business Model 318

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

Reply Customer Development and Start-up Models « Market By Numbers - Brant Cooper , on March 26, 2009 at 3:06 am Said: [.] We plan to have the many large dishes assembled for Moon Bounce, connected with live feeds on line, so EME, so the public will be able to be listened to from the web. Order Here. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 120

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If you think you are going to offend your customers or embarrass your engineering organization, get out of the marketing department. Design your graphics, pre-show promotion, literature and show directory advertising around your focused message and theme. you know they’re expensive in time, dollars and resources. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 178

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 178

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2009

I think the Volt open source platform could be managed through a Web 2.0-like I think the Volt open source platform could be managed through a Web 2.0-like Also, people successful with their designs could be able to earn some royalties, if they decide to do so! with the auto bailout. with the auto bailout. improvement system.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Open Source RSS California 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Funding for the companies spinning out of Stanford’s engineering department in the 1950’s benefited from the tight integration and web of relationships between Fred Terman, Stanford, the U.S. These technology startups had no risk capital – just customers/purchase orders from government/military/intelligence agencies. There was none.

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Silicon Valley Securities and Exchange Commission Venture Capital RSS 159

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

If you’re looking for a designer, engineer, or biz marketing guy – go to meetups / conferences that those people would go to. I’m studying design. The only problem is I haven’t found a problem or an industry – web, enterprise software, green tech, etc – where I feel passionate. How does that usually work?

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

And the kinds of failures that do get airtime are usually failures to adequately plan, anticipate, or design in advance. You are the “hits&# that websites crave, the followers and the RSS subscribers. And the kinds of failures that do get airtime are usually failures to adequately plan, anticipate, or design in advance.

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San Francisco Lean Metrics PR 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 20, 2009

Specially because of Twitter and this information overload, I think many people have been struggling to reduce the number of RSS feeds they actually follow (it is my case), so it´ll become easier for us to keep track of your writing even if we´re not reading those blogs that often. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 68

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

He chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. The design was put on paper, but the engineers agreed, every one of them, that it was simply impossible to cast an eight-cylinder gas engine block in one piece. It was yet another Web 2.0

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

Aymeric Gaurat-Apelli

JULY 1, 2010

Google Forms Simply go to [link] and select “Create new” / “Form” and you will be presented with a very good form designer. I found VWO very easy to use with their user friendly designer. Analytics You need to understand your customers/users better. The answers are saved in a spreadsheet. Amazingly quick and easy tool.

Lean 38

Lean Customer Ruby Startup 38

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

Lessons Learned is the best RSS source in my overflowing Newsgator Online account. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Expo SF (May. .

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 60