Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

We think teaching teams a formal methodology around the Lean Framework (Business Model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) is a natural evolution of how successful incubators/accelerators will build startups. Technology in search of a market. The next customer segment we tried was startup founders.

Lean 319

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 319

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? Search Versus Execution.

Search 324

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 324

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink. Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter?

Incubator 414

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 414

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. “Customer Development” to test the hypotheses outside the building and. We’ve pivoted our Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum.

Intellectual Property 286

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 286

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

If you want to compete with them, you’re going to have to develop a reputation and a strong web presence yourself. When it comes to making money online, business and personal branding are huge drivers of sales and influence. Company branding builds trust and an emotional connection between businesses and potential customers.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development. I was an aggressive, young and a very tactical VP of marketing at Ardent , a supercomputer company – who really hadn’t a clue about the relationship between profound beliefs, customer discovery and strategy. What do you think?”

Business Model 331

Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 331

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. They’ve tested their hypotheses with literally hundreds of customer interviews on every continent in the world. Corporate elephants can dance.

Silicon Valley 234

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 234

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 13, 2013

Like most startup entrepreneurs, when I began my first company in 1999 I had no formal sales experience. I did have the wherewithal to visit potential customers and try to understand the pain points that I thought could be solved with our solution. question in sales. This article originally appeared on Inc.com.

Sales 393

Sales Startup Framework Search 393

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

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

So the departments either didn’t have the capacity to pay or it would be an endless sales-cycle, where we would spend lots of time on the sales, but it still wouldn’t close. I tell these stories to lay the groundwork for what I am going to call Revenue Development. In a nutshell, Product Development is about building something.

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2016

From manufacturing to sales to finance, the supply chain routinely fails to command the respect it deserve. 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.

Management 145

Management Forecast Los Angeles San Francisco 145

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. Starting in the 1950’s, Stanford’s engineering department became “outward facing” and developed a culture of spinouts and active faculty support and participation in the first wave of Silicon Valley startups. Seeing Is Believing. The Business Plan is Dead.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Little Indians and Big Indians At MIPS Computers , my second semiconductor company, I was the VP of Marketing and defacto head of Sales. Isn’t that what I was supposed to do?

Customer Development 283

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 283

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 12, 2020

If people aren’t coming into your physical store, consider whether you can refocus sales online. Some of the most effective online marketing tactics include: SEO (search engine optimization). A lot of independent stores have started creating their own app to help with online sales. Focus more attention online. Email marketing.

Marketing 246

Marketing Social Media PPC SEO 246

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a key lean startup concept.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

We spent time out in the marketplace talking with customers, looking at their solutions, comparing ourselves with our competition and then squirreling ourselves away in our offices designing our next set of features. Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. Tim started to change our processes.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 19, 2017

In e-commerce, retaining customers is essential to the survival of your business. It has long been known that keeping a customer is much cheaper than acquiring a new one, as those customers tend to be far more receptive to sales and promotions after they have made an initial purchase with you. Understand your customers.

Software Review 133

Software Review Technical Review Retention Channel 133

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

You take that money and invest a good portion of it in traditional sales and marketing efforts — including product developers, creative people, and salespeople, all of whom are paid to figure out what buyers want and to say good things about your company — in a quest to get even more customers. Close the sale.

Customer 168

Customer Social Media Retention Canada 168

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. These founders specify, design, and build a fully featured product using classic product development methods without ever leaving their building. Focusing on the launch date.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

“I’ve been running our company, cycling through Customer Discovery and Validation and the board suggested that I was running out of bandwidth and needed some help in closing our initial orders. They suggested I get a VP of Sales to help.”. They helped me hire the best VP of Sales I could find. It was deja vu all over again.

Startup 316

Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 316

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

You can almost set your watch to six months or so after first customer ship, when Sales starts missing its “numbers,” the board gets concerned and Marketing tries to “make up a better story.” Having failed to deliver the promised revenue, the VP of Sales in a startup who does not make the “numbers” becomes an ex-VP of Sales.

Burn Rate 250

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 250

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

Our small training department had been without a manager for months and finding a replacement didn’t seem to be high on the VP of Sales list. I walked into the VP of Sales’ office and with my knees trembling, I politely asked for the job. It is a skill you need to either have or develop. What’s Marketing?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

Sales process: buyer/ user/ influencer etc.? The Agora team decided to formalize the customer discovery process by coming up with a set of Customer Discovery principles and questions that were as good as any I’ve seen. We pointed out that get, keep and grow customers are different for physical versus virtual channels.

Customer 239

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 239

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2014

A startup is a temporary organization in search of a repeatable, scalable business model. innovating new products and services within an already scaled business model), the processes that companies have optimized for execution inevitably interfere with the search processes needed to discover a new business model.

Startup 329

Startup Business Model Lean Russia 329

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

Large companies had VP’s of Sales and Marketing, so VC’s made startups organize that way as well. Tools to help them manage the search for a repeatable and scalable business model. And they needed tools that recognized that most startups go from failure to failure as they searched for, and discovered, product/market fit.

Business Model 266

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 266

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2010

Wait a minute, what about the rest of Customer Development ? Aren’t you going to validate your hypotheses by first getting some customers?”. Now I was confused, and I asked, “Well what do you guys believe – Customer Development or launch on a schedule?” I was unprepared for what they said next. To Do list.

Customer Development 312

Customer Development Singapore Channel PR 312

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. Hiring Channel Sales. “So Why doesn’t this sound like the right thing to do for channel sales?” They thought about it for a moment and said, “Well we feel like we understand how to build things, but sales is something we thought we’d hire an expert to do.”.

PR 318

PR China Lean Channel 318

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

Established businesses execute business models while startups search for them. Yet everyone – investors, entrepreneurs, academics — expected new startups to follow the same practices that worked for large companies – write a business plan, forecast 5-year sales projections and build the product without ever talking to customers.

Lean 223

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 223

Steve Blank

AUGUST 22, 2011

Having sat through these job discussions as an entrepreneur, board member, and now an interested observer, here’s what I concluded: Decide whether you’re hiring someone to help search for the business model or to help execute a business model you’ve already found (same is true is you’re looking for a job – are you going to be searching or executing?)

Hiring 295

Hiring Non-Compete Search Customer Development 295

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. Alex, vice provost for Innovation & Economic Development at Weber State University in Utah and completing his first year of teaching entrepreneurship.

Silicon Valley 310

Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 310

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Since no benchmarks existed, we enlisted our engineering department in a serious software development effort and wrote our own. And we made sure that instead of some artificial numbers, the benchmarks truly measured performance on these four key applications our customers told us were important. “Hey, we can make these surveys shorter.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 125

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

In turn, these new strategies drove the need for companies to be structured around functions (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, etc.). In the 1920’s companies restructured from monolithic functional organizations (sales, marketing, manufacturing, purchasing, etc.) In the U.S. each with its own profit and loss responsibility.

Business Model 334

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 334

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule. For a startup, having great sales DNA is a wonderful asset. The problem stems from selling each customer a custom one-time product.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Startups that are searching for a business model need to keep score differently than large companies that are executing a known business model. A startup is a search for a repeatable and scalable business model. As a founder you are testing a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users?

Balance Sheet 303

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 303

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 10, 2014

The customer saw your ad on a totally unrelated web search or a website. Automated loyalty programs can be constructed using new cloud-based POS systems that allow for individual customer profiles and that track sales and inventory for your business. When a customer buys something, keep tabs on what they buy.

Customer 244

Customer Retention Programming Customer Development 244

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

In this post we’re going to offer a new definition of why startups exist : a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Your startup is essentially an organization built to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Winston Churchill. A Business Model. Sort of…but better.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

In contrast, startups search for a business model. (Or Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.) There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.)

Wiki 315

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 315