Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

” She looked at bit puzzled, so I continued to explain… One of the virtues of using the Business Model Canvas as part of a Lean Startup is that it helps you frame each one of your nine critical hypotheses. Or can we outsource these activities to Partners?” Filed under: Customer Development.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 2, 2014

This post is part of our series on the National Science Foundation I-Corps Lean LaunchPad class in Life Science and Health Care at UCSF. Doctors, researchers and Principal Investigators in this class got out of the lab and hospital talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them. Then reality hit.

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Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.”. It’s time to update Build, Measure, Learn to what we now know is the best way to build Lean startups. Here’s how. Build-Measure-Learn.

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Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

Business plans presume that building a startup is a series of predictable steps requiring execution of a plan which assumes a series of known facts: known customers, known features, known pricing, known distribution channel. The reality is that most business plans don’t survive first contact with customers. I did both!).

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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.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Hacking for Diplomacy takes the Lean Startup methodology and applies it to problems sourced from the State Department. Teams are continuing their relentless interviewing of customers, or beneficiaries as we call them in this class. What we’re driving at is evidence-based, entrepreneurial solutions to big diplomatic challenges.

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Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Hacking for Diplomacy takes the Lean Startup methodology and applies it to problems sourced from the State Department. Teams are continuing their relentless interviewing of customers, or beneficiaries as we call them in this class. What we’re driving at is evidence-based, entrepreneurial solutions to big diplomatic challenges.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Yet two smart VC firms, Sigma and Matrix Partners, realized that somewhere in this mess there was value. They had an existing distribution channel and their dealers and customers thought they knew who the company was and what it stood for. And with all of that they had gone broke, out of business and into Chapter 11.

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Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 165

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. The Rise of the “Lean VC’s” – Consumer Internet Gets Funded. Lean VC’s are Different.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

The classes are built on the Lean Startup methodology: Customer Discovery, Agile Engineering and the Business/Mission Model Canvas. So how do our students get out of the building to talk to customers to do Customer Discovery when they can’t get out of the building? How can you test distribution/deployment?

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Customer Business Model Restful Video 419

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2014

— Its been three and a half years since I first designed and taught the Lean LaunchPad class and lots of water has gone under the bridge since then. Like in all our Lean Launchpad classes we teach a combination of theory coupled with intense and immersive experiential learning outside the classroom.

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YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

With new online technology, lean resources (think food cart/truck versus restaurant), cloud everything, you can “test” an idea with low risk and not too much money. These are times when customer developments and industry changes coincide. If you have ambitions about creating a startup, then do it now. Enter Netflix.

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San Diego United States Technical Review Lean 100

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 26, 2013

This post is part of our series on the National Science Foundation I-Corps Lean LaunchPad class in Life Science and Health Care at UCSF. Doctors, researchers and Principal Investigators in this class got out of the lab and hospital talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Each VC firm/partner has a different spin on what to weigh more.) These types seem dangerous, yet are often the ones needed on board to get the fund to invest in the first place, seeing that the younger partners naturally have less pull during the Monday round-ups. I find the same still going on with a few firms and partners.&#

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Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

Hershey just bought Krave Jerky, a team in our 2011 Berkeley Lean LaunchPad class, for >$200 million. —– Jon Sebastiani and his team came into the 2011 Berkeley Lean LaunchPad class with several key observations: Snack foods were a large ~$35 billion but the moribund food category was starving for innovation and modernization.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

You might get a bunch of inbound emails from other press and partners, and all of these things can contribute to a feeling that you’re on your way to getting tons of traffic. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2014

In this post, I want to share some new thoughts that build on Steve’s post, and connect them to Lean Startup methods. The success of Documentum and Document Sciences, they felt, came largely from Xerox technology and customers, yet the startup companies XTV funded got all the credit. Venturing inside a corporation is a 2-front war.

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Startup Business Model Lean Russia 330

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. And it shows your company’s cost structures, how each department interacts with the others and where your company fits with other companies or partners to implement your business.

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Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 28, 2017

The latest “aha” moment for me when I was at Columbia University teaching an intensive 5-day version of the Lean LaunchPad/I-Corps class. The goal of the class is to expose students to the basics of the Lean Methodology – Business Model Design , Customer Development and Agile Engineering. Repeat for 5 days.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2015

Guest Post by Jennifer Maerz, Contributing Editor of Lean Startup Co., Here’s the thing about The Lean Startup methodology. Our customer-first, rapid trials-rapid discovery ethos is adaptable to all varieties of mission driven, enterprise, and startup companies around the world. At The Lean Startup Conference on Nov.

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Kenya Lean Community Africa 60

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

Lean Startup Circle Boston – Meetup dedicated to the lean startup and customer development methodology. Gridco Systems – Power Distribution Systems (backed by General Catalyst and Northbridge). Investors: Antonio Rodriguez – Matrix Partners, HP ( blog , @antrod). Great for recent grads or career switchers.

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Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

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. But running a Lean Startup inside an organization designed for execution is an exercise in futility. and how to price the product.

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Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners. What didn’t? Go to trade shows like it matters.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 136

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. This week they were testing their hypotheses about Partners. For example, Apple needed music from their record label partners to make the original iPod and iTunes experience complete. The Nine Teams Present.

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South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 232

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. You leave the comfort of your existing job, convince a few partners to join you and you jump off the bridge together. No building, no money, no customers, no market? Order Here.

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Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 234

Steve Blank

MAY 16, 2016

This week teams figured out how to measure mission achievement and success, and our advanced lectures were on activities, resources and partners. In companies this would be product line extensions, more efficient supply chain, new distribution channels. Advanced Lecture – Activities, Resources and Partners. Lessons Learned.

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San Diego Metrics Indonesia Silicon Valley 145

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.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Video 155

Steve Blank

JANUARY 17, 2016

Clips from their interviews are below: Wayne Sutton is a partner and co-founder of BUILDUP VC , a Bay Area non-profit that connects, mentors, and educates underrepresented technology entrepreneurs. The features didn’t match what ultimately the customers would buy or wanted. …We And download any of the past shows here.).

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Step 1: Start with a lean plan. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

GoTo.com went on to ink huge distribution deals with Microsoft, AOL & Yahoo! Secondly, they had an owned & operated (O&O) website – Google.com – and Overture had shut down GoTo.com at the request of their very profitable and large distribution partners. – the biggest Internet portals of the day.

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Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

If you were a “with it” VC you needed to have a “Content&# or “Multimedia&# company in your portfolio to impress your limited partners – educational software companies, game companies, or anything that could be described as content and/or Multimedia. We understood none of this. More detail in future posts.

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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. No, not really, but my partner owns the studio and tells me it’s spectacular and everyone will love it. Go spend some time outside the building talking to potential distribution partners.

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Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 222

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem) Lean startups don’t optimize. Instead, we try to accelerate with respect to validated learning about customers. What about companies, like Siebel, that started with partner distribution first?

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San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2019

We just finished the 8 th annual Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford. So in 2011, with support from the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (the entrepreneurship center in the Stanford Engineering School), we created a new capstone entrepreneurship class – the Lean LaunchPad. It’s the same, but different. I-Corps @ NIH ).

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Lean Business Model Balance Sheet Video 254

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

After quitting my job and starting Sorced , I spent a few months validating my business concept by creating the product mockups and doing customer development. Then, what’s missing — clearly an engineer — and why do I want a partner? Prior to Sorced, Elizabeth worked in business development at SecondMarket.

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Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2009

This is especially useful in situations, like most B2B businesses, where the total number of customers is likely to be small. This case study illustrates one company’s attempt to do customer development by testing their vision with customers before writing a single line of code. Read on and judge for yourself.

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San Francisco Customer Wiki Lean 144

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.) In a typical venture fund, the partners receive a 2% management fee. This is where the partners would make their money. They would get a share of the profits of the fund (typically 20%.)

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