Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

Talking to customers seems like a simple idea, but most founders find it’s one of the hardest things they have to do. Founders innately believe they understand a customers problem and just need to spend their time building a solution. You can test your hypotheses with a series of experiments with potential customers.

Customer 413

Customer Business Model Restful Video 413

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. to understand distribution channel landscape, potential partners and rough cost of customer acquisition. With 317 million people the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

A business model diagram also shows how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. As a founder you start out with: 1) a vision of a product with a set of features, 2) a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users?

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2013

Part 4: This Will Save us Years – Customer Discovery in Medical Devices. Part 5: Value proposition and customer segments in Life Sciences. Part 6: Distribution channels in Life Sciences. Part 7: Revenue Streams in Life Sciences. Part 8: When Customers Make You Smarter –Customer Discovery in Digital Health.

Lean 241

Lean Customer Development IP Agile 241

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Putting together a financial model and having the founders understand the interrelationships of the variables that can make or break a business is a worthwhile exercise. I had been confused for years why I had to update an income statement each board meeting that said zero for 18 months before we had any revenue. Customer Acquisition.

Balance Sheet 298

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 298

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

These new entrants disrupted their food categories by offering high quality proprietary recipes, outsourcing their manufacturing, and using their cash and resources on sales and marketing to build distribution and a differentiated brand. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching. Customer Development Teaching'

North America 120

North America Lean Customer Development Distribution 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) After that you’ve become a battle-hardened realist.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

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. What is the right revenue model?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

Bob looked wistful, “Our founders built a company known for taking risks and moving fast. They’ve found product/market fit (what products customers want to buy). They’ve learned the best distribution channel to get the product from their company to the customer. and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

In the Udemy course, Alistair and Ben expand these basics into a description of how to create empathy, stickiness, virality, revenue, and scale. Stickiness, Ben and Alistair say, is where people move on too quickly--they don’t make sure they really have a product that has the right features and functionality to meet their customers’ needs.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

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

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 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

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. Lets see why.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

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.

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

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.) What happened to him?

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. We created UpKeep to fill this void—a cloud-based solution that was affordable for any size business.” – Ryan Chan, founder of UpKeep.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010

If you’re a non-technical founder, while your team is building and refining your product, you’ve got to figure out what to do with your time. It’s the kind of thing you can repeat in an elevator, simple to understand , universally applicable , and, most importantly, doesn’t burden your tech team with a lot of custom development.

Early Stage 120

Early Stage Developer Technical Review Widget 120

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Our tests suite takes nine minutes to run (distributed across 30-40 machines). As Ive argued elsewhere , my belief is that startups (and anyone else trying to find an unknown solution to an unknown problem ) have to measure progress with validated learning about customers. On commit automatically run all tests.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

I would focus on one product and set a goal to generate $1M in yearly revenue from it. Near shoring development with your team (ex: your team is based in Canada / India) is cool, but not outsourcing. Outsourcing is something a big company, with a known customer / problem (that has revenue & traction) does to save cost.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

When you read stories of successful startups in the popular and business press, you usually hear about how the founders anticipated several of these challenges in their initial vision. Should you charge from day one, testing the revenue model first? What about companies, like Siebel, that started with partner distribution first?

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

For startups that are tempted to mimic this behavior, I suggest reading the great account of the early Apple in Founders at Work.) Not even if its generating revenue. The only efforts a new product team should be expending are those that lead to validated learning about customers.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Slowly, over time, we optimized (or eliminated) each step in the process of becoming a customer by giving us money. And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

In fact, in the early days, when IMVU would experience unexpected surges of revenue or traffic, it was inevitable that every person in the company was convinced that their project was responsible. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Either way, you would have been better off focusing your split-test on high level metrics that measure how much customers like your product as a whole. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. In later posts I’m going to get into more detail on specific topics like hiring, raising money, what types of ideas have the potential to get big, finding your founders, and the like.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Non-Technical Co-Founders Co-Founders Technical Co-founders Finding Co-Founders Startups & "How Important Are Ideas?" " Web Development Startups Solo Founders I am a creative guy with a startup idea.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Team Configuration 500 Startups Guerilla Marketing Organizations Entrepreneurship Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs Startups Startup Incubators and Seed Programs Seedcamp Y Combinator TechStars Lean Startups What is the perfect startup team? They are many more examples.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

This single decision wound up costing the company significant revenue and over the course of several months sent its customer growth into decline. As a founder of a company, there is nothing more painful than to see your most loyal and devoted customers suffering. That is what company founders and staff do not get.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158