YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2016

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. Develop relationships with each of your supply chain partners and make communication a top priority.

Management 145

Management Forecast Los Angeles San Francisco 145

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Learning could be about product features, customer needs, the right pricing and distribution channel, etc.) Rather it is the simplest thing that you can show to customers to get the most learning at that point in time. They are: value proposition, product/service the company offers (along with its benefits to customers).

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

Finally to have a better chance of a viable enterprise, they need to test all the other hypotheses in their business/mission model (pricing, demand creation, revenue, costs, etc.). The key principles of customer development are: There are no facts inside the building so get the heck outside. An MVP is an experiment.

Customer 415

Customer Business Model Restful Video 415

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Each VC firm/partner has a different spin on what to weigh more.) Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

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. But other critical hypotheses such as activities, resources, partners, channels needed testing offshore. With 317 million people the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

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

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. And they’ve been figuring out the feasibility of how they deliver the value proposition on the right side of the canvas.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. And they’ve been figuring out the feasibility of how they deliver the value proposition on the right side of the canvas.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

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. Lessons Learned.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 26, 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 239

Lean Customer Development Video Early Stage 239

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. What Do You Mean You Only Spoke to 1 Customer? Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching.

North America 120

North America Lean Customer Development Distribution 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Second, and full disclosure, I’ve invested in a few of these funds ; and third my teaching partner Ann Miura-Ko is a partner in one of these funds. But these VC’s aren’t Lean because they fund startups with web-based distribution models. Quickly iterate the product in front of customers.

Lean 260

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 260

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

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. As a founder you are testing a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? What’s the distribution channel? Who are our partners?

Balance Sheet 300

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 300

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. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.) and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

Last week the teams tested their Revenue Models hypotheses: what are customers willing to pay for? 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. Week 8 of the class.

South Dakota 223

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 223

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

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. In a company you know you’ve been successful when you generate revenue and profit.

San Diego 143

San Diego Metrics Indonesia Silicon Valley 143

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

I thing I’ve learned over the years is that technology purists hate advertising even when it is that revenue stream that truthfully drives much of our industry. GoTo.com went on to ink huge distribution deals with Microsoft, AOL & Yahoo! He created GoTo.com (later renamed Overture) out of a frustration with search.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

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. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

1) It all starts from the Growth Hacking Funnel - in the early stages, startups should not just focus on top/bottom line metric like unique users and revenue. They should understand the different states of the user (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue) and focus on moving users from one state to the next. Distribution Hacks.

API 167

API Viral Startup Retention 167

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.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

It would make a lot of sense for someone else to just come along and build our hardware and sell our software without paying for 15 people doing development and engineering, but nobody did that. flavor of a question-and-answer, poll-your-friends site with a distant revenue model and no user acquisition strategy. Shocking, I know.

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010

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. Often times, that comes in the form of analytics, which is what a biz dev partner would want in order to check on the success of the deal.

Early Stage 120

Early Stage Developer Technical Review Widget 120

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Should you charge from day one, testing the revenue model first? What about companies, like Siebel, that started with partner distribution first? Systematically testing the assumptions that support the vision is called customer development , and it’s a parallel process to product development.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

What is the best advice you can give for finding a business partner? Don’t quickly choose any business partner. 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.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

In Meebo’s case, for example, I was lucky enough to partner up with Elaine and Sandy. No looking for partnerships (who’s going to partner with you anyway?). Trust me, once you’ve launched and achieved traction, you’ll have your pick of mentors, VCs, partners and all the legal expenses you need. Partner up? No legal muck.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2019

The class was unique in that it was 1) team-based, 2) experiential, 3) lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering). When we started this class, the concept of Lean (business models, customer development, agile, pivots, mvp’s) was new to everyone. Class Velocity/Depth.

Lean 251

Lean Business Model Balance Sheet Video 251

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

" => I have not bothered to put up a landing page, survey to test customer demand, or done any customer development whatsoever. "Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life?" There are no self-appointed rockstar developers which you want to partner with.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

You can argue that the DNA created by Microsoft's over emphasis on distribution (Steve) and development (Bill), has ultimately cost it $50bn or more in lost revenue, market share and market capitalization. Developers have worn the crown for the last 30 or more years in the technology industry - rightly.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

But it became clear that if IMVU was ever going to become a mainstream business, we had to effectively fire these early customers. Suffice to say that our partners, vendors, and most importantly regular mainstream customers all found the idea disturbing. The reasons were many and complex, so I won’t rehash them all here.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158