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 333

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 333

The Equity Kicker

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

Two developments have changed the face of startup investing in the UK in recent years. The first development is increased capital efficiency. The second development is SEIS and EIS. I could give lots of examples but perhaps the best is the way we work with solo-founders. It went up on their blog yesterday. _.

Early Stage 119

Early Stage Development Team Review Technical Review Software Review 119

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2023

Now at Imperial College Business School and Co-Founder of the Wicked Acceleration Labs , Cristobal and I wondered if we could combine the tenets of Lean (get out of the building, build MVPs, run experiments, move with speed and urgency) with the expanded toolset developed by researchers who work on Wicked problems and Systems’ Thinking.

Lean 294

Lean Chile Ukraine Spain 294

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

Gore , I’ve found two corporate strategy tools developed by other smart people helpful in bridging Lean Startups with Corporate Innovation. To move innovation faster, we now have 21 st century tools — Business Model Canvas , Customer Development , Agile Engineering – all adding up to a Lean Startup. Do it Again!?

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

www.kernelmag.com

MARCH 8, 2012

The Scene Developers Nailing that elusive technical co-founder. Just last week, start-up supremo Naval Ravikant of AngelList wrote how the “oversupply” of founders starting companies is making it harder to hire for the average startup. Are there any ‘Founders Dating’ events coming up?”. Thursday, 8 March 2012.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Coder 43

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Previously she was Co-Founder and CEO of SNAZZ, a cloud-based event management platform. Her work included heading Nokia’s location-based services business and app portfolio for emerging markets, which she built from a back-of-a-napkin idea to a 100-person organization with over 10 million users.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

View from Seed

DECEMBER 8, 2015

It’s often a good idea for founders to find a way to build something and get some early market validation before raising outside capital. Is there founder/market fit? How authentic is this idea to the founder’s experience? I’ll dig into this a bit further… Founder/Market Fit.

Product 120

Product Startup Early Stage Seed Capital 120

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Guide to Evaluating Startup Ideas - Tony Wright dot com , May 27, 2010 A great developer I once worked with was kvetching at lunch one day. But founders need to know how to ask for their advice and when to ignore it. But startups can shoot themselves in the foot when founders use consultants at the wrong time or in the wrong way.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

Founder Dialogues : Eric Paley plays talk show host on this recurring fireside chat style event that has featured Boston’s BEST founders. OnStartups: One of the largest online startup communities founded by HubSpot founder Dharmesh Shah. Boston Hardware Startup Meetup – Meetup organized by the founders of BOLT.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Both venture firms sought my advice for their portfolio companies. I began to gain an appreciation of how world-class venture capitalists develop pattern recognition for these common types of problems. It was a long way from Ellis Island.) Surprisingly, I enjoyed seeing other startups from an outsider’s perspective.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Version One Ventures

APRIL 20, 2021

Filebase is very much an API-as-a-marketplace – similar to our portfolio companies Shippo and Patch. Decentralized storage networks are among the most distributed and secure networks in the world, but they can also require custom development and complex integration. It’s not simple. P.S.: Filebase is hiring !

API 102

API Portfolio Distribution Networking 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

kaChing launched a virtual portfolio management game on Facebook in January 2008 and a similar version shortly thereafter on kaChing.com. Because kaChing prefers its portfolio managers to have a long track record, the marketplace launch (i.e., A portfolio manager’s entire track record & holdings had to be disclosed.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

produced this analysis of engineering representation within VC firms: Selected VCs with Highest Representation of Developers in Workforce. Signal is a fundraising tool for founders run by NFX Guild, which identifies the most relevant VCs for you. . VC Firm. $ Tech % of workforce. Google Ventures (GV). 17% (13 / 80). Greylock Partners.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Customer/Market Risk Versus Invention Risk One day I was having lunch with a VC sharing what I learned from my students. If the product does work, and say we’ve developed a drug that cures a type of cancer, your only problem is how big is the licensing deal going to be – not about whether there will be customers.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

Pre-launch customer development data is another way, sometimes in the form of user surveys for consumer companies or interviews with potential beta customers for B2B businesses. One of our portfolio investments, a B2B SaaS company, was a pre-product startup at the time of the seed round. B) Post-Product Companies.

Seed Stage 149

Seed Stage B2B Seed Capital Revenue 149

Hunter Walker

FEBRUARY 20, 2021

Great founders are always recruiting. A sales and marketing tactic as much (or even more) than a customer development one, try setting up a Customer Council Advisory Board. Highlighted Homebrew Portfolio Jobs. Plaid is a developer-first company making it easy for financial data to move between apps.

Advisory Board 151

Advisory Board Equity Vesting Startup 151

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

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Talking to potential customers and competitors customers. Managers in this area have to take a portfolio approach, promoting ideas that work and might make good candidates for further investment. Usually, that will be about finding new segments of customers that the company can profitably serve.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Should you co-found your company with a software development shop? portfolio operator VCs, e.g., Andreessen Horowitz, ff Venture Capital, First Round Capital, Google Ventures. portfolio operator VCs, e.g., Andreessen Horowitz, ff Venture Capital, First Round Capital, Google Ventures. mentor VCs, e.g., most VCs. The discounts?

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

Values – who and what founders and customers hold dear – were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Ryan Smith. Lane Merrifield.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 145

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

Values – who and what founders and customers hold dear – were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Ryan Smith. Lane Merrifield.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 120

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

VC’s invested their limited partners’ “risk capital” in a portfolio of startups in exchange for illiquid stock. They’ve created virtual IPO’s for founders and employees via late-stage private financing. In either case Customer Development provides entrepreneurs with a methodology for being capital efficient.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 13, 2014

On Tuesday night Michael Breidenbruecker , founder of Last.fm, RJDJ and all round nice guy gave a talk for around 50 of our friends and portfolio company staff (thanks again Michael). As regular readers of this blog will know I’m a big fan of methodologies like lean, design thinking, and customer development.

Lean 122

Lean Portfolio Design Customer Development 122

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. — As executive director Stanford University’s Office of Technology Licensing , Kathy Ku oversees the licensing of Stanford-developed technologies.

Government 120

Government Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Silicon Valley 120

View from Seed

JANUARY 28, 2016

As a founder, you and your team are building value every day, but there are certain step-function moments where the value creation significantly increases. Regardless of check size, the reality is that the earlier a company is in its lifecycle, the more time we tend to spend with founders.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Finance Founder Syndicate 120

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

As you know, the Google productivity apps portfolio is getting very good traction within enterprises, and through our Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing series , we've heard from various CIOs who are moving from Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange to Google's Office suite. A second is collaboration. Building new apps is also not as simple.

Entrepreneur 114

Entrepreneur India Silicon Valley Massachusetts 114

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. Founders should understand what the customer hopes to accomplish , or what their job to be done is.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

We Don’t Need Domain Experts When I looked around at our executive staff, there wasn’t a single founder who was a gamer. Was my response to stop development of the games? However the VC’s are managing a portfolio while you, the entrepreneur are managing one company – yours. I said, “That can’t be true!

Silicon Valley 207

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 207

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 17, 2010

In addition to supporting their portfolio companies in coming to the event, they also have taken the additional step of underwriting a limited number of discounted tickets that are available to the general public. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 107

San Francisco Romania Cleveland South Africa 107

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 8, 2010

Discounted Tickets As part of their sponsorship, Baseline is offering discounted tickets to their portfolio companies. Discounted Tickets As part of their sponsorship, Baseline is offering discounted tickets to their portfolio companies. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 97

San Francisco South Africa Spain North America 97

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

We have a portfolio of more than 500 brands and 4000 products and people invite us into their lives more 1.8 For most big, established companies like us, our business models were developed years—even decades ago. in developing these new models. billion times a day. Our market cap is around $170B. And why wouldn’t it be?

Lean 326

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 326

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

Last night at the NY Tech Meetup, John Britton of our portfolio company Twilio showed how it is done. Before I get into the details for founders, let me talk about options-hungry employees. Seth Levine's VC Adventure , August 30, 2010 Paul Graham, founder of Y-Combinator , sent out a tweet on Friday saying: “Convertible notes have won.

Startup 191

Startup CTO Hire Cofounder Venture Capital 191

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

We also cavalierly lampoon the “suits” that get brought in to run startups after the founders are fired by callous VC’s. They have the ultimate responsibility in a venture-backed company of deciding whether to fire the founders and bring in “professional management.” I also frequently see the reverse. And there’s a worse fate, too.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

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 420

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 420

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. These three tools allow startups to focus on the parts of an early stage venture that matter the most: the product, product/market fit, customer acquisition, revenue and cost model, channels and partners.

Oakland 326

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 6, 2009

One of the other speakers is someone I know well: Seth Sternberg , founder of Meebo. Hes a very smart guy who, as a Sequoia portfolio CEO, can tell you all about the " RIP good times " strategy. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Rob Go

JANUARY 28, 2016

As a founder, you and your team are building value every day, but there are certain step-function moments where the value creation significantly increases. Regardless of check size, the reality is that the earlier a company is in its lifecycle, the more time we tend to spend with founders.

Cofounder 28

Cofounder Finance Founder Syndicate 28