Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

What you’re holding in your hand is a revolutionary document. The idea of exploitation versus exploration was central in my own work in building the lean methodology for start-ups. Today, lean is the de facto method for building new start-ups. Their book Lead and Disrupt describes how others can learn how to do so.

Incubator 411

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 411

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

These processes reduce risk to an overall organization, but each layer of process reduces the ability to be agile and lean and – most importantly – responsive to new opportunities and threats. Product people are often messy, hate paperwork and prefer to spend their time creating stuff rather than documenting it.

Government 319

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 319

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 6, 2009 Lean Startup fbFund slides and video As a follow-up to my previous post on my talk for fbFund at Facebook , there was enough interest in watching video of the talk that I have finally uploaded it using Apples MobileMe. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May. .

Lean 115

Lean Video San Francisco Continuous Deployment 115

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

500 Hats , January 10, 2010 Developing new startup ideas - Chris Dixon , March 14, 2010 Batch Processing Millions and Millions of Images - Code as Craft , July 9, 2010 jQuery Plugin: Give Your Characters a NobleCount - The Product Guy , March 23, 2010 How do the sample Series Seed financing documents differ from typical Series A financing documents?

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

VCs and Angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. This is a fancy title for a personnel manager in a large corporation who keeps track of all the hiring and firing, and has a staff to build job descriptions and personnel policy documents.

CTO Hire 252

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 252

Steve Blank

MARCH 14, 2012

Today, the second half of the Stanford Engineering Lean LaunchPad Class gave their final presentations. This team spoke face-to-face with 326 customers. As often happens, this team came into class convinced that their market research proved that their business was providing credit to underbanked customers. They taught us a lot.

Lean 251

Lean Business Model Customer Development China 251

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 3, 2009 Lean Startup fbFund wrap-up Last week I had a real blast meeting with the companies at the fbFund incubator at Palo Alto. The Lean Startup fbFund Edition View more documents from Eric Ries. See Validated learning about customers for more info. Without further ado.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

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 424

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 424

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

VCs and Angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. This is a fancy title for a personnel manager in a large corporation who keeps track of all the hiring and firing, and has a staff to build job descriptions and personnel policy documents.

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Finally, I’ll write about how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 221

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 221

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 248

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 248

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

VCs and Angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. This is a fancy title for a personnel manager in a large corporation who keeps track of all the hiring and firing, and has a staff to build job descriptions and personnel policy documents.

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Last May, I shared the news that long-time Lean Startup advocates Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits were working on a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur featuring illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. LitMotors approach to using Lean Startup to create a new vehicle category. That new book is about to hit bookstores everywhere.

Lean 167

Lean Entrepreneur Agile San Francisco 167

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

VCs and angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. This is a fancy title for a personnel manager in a large corporation who keeps track of all the hiring and firing, and has a staff to build job descriptions and personnel policy documents.

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

The last couple of years has also seen the huge initial success of Ycombinator, the Lean Startup and many other product driven approaches to going to market. So, definition: when I talk about a business plan I’m not talking about a 40-page Word document outlining your market approach. Do so at your peril. They are your map.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

These days, many agencies start as a lean operation. Inversely, if you’re using the agency model to fund another startup or product, you should probably keep things lean. Because we wanted to document every aspect of the process before partnering with new freelance writers. Why—or why not—pivot your agency service offering?

PR 120

PR B2B Lean Audience 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2019

AgileFall is an ironic term for program management where you try to be agile and lean, but you keep using waterfall development techniques. We’re helping them convert one of the critical product lines inside an existing division from a traditional waterfall project management process into Lean. All good Lean basics.

Agile 64

Agile Lean Leadership Conversion 64

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. ” Lean Business Planning: Get What You Want From Your Business. Why David Rose recommends it: “This guide takes the lean theories and shows you how to put them into practice.”. B y Eric Ries. B y Tim Berry.

Startup 80

Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

Up and Running

DECEMBER 5, 2016

Lean Planning is a concept that we introduced back in 2012 as an evolution in business planning. We proposed Lean Planning as the next step in business planning. But, where did Lean Planning come from? Here’s a quick history of how we developed Lean Planning. See Also: Lean Business Planning with Tim Berry [VIDEO].

Lean 60

Lean Silicon Valley Business Model Forecast 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

A Lean Startup methodology offers entrepreneurs a framework to focus on what’s important: Business Model Discovery. Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. Over 10 weeks each team gets out and talks to 100 customers. Those days are over.

Oakland 329

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 329

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Expo Intensive rocked, the mainstream media has started writing about the Lean Startup, and - most of all - the movement continues to grow and evolve. I went to the conference thinking that I was well grounded in the basics of the Lean Startup approach and that attendance would hone the edges of that understanding.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Of all the tactics I have advocated as part of the lean startup , none has provoked as many extreme reactions as continuous deployment , a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. It lets the customer and development team spot problems with calculations almost immediately.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

AgileZen – project management visually see and interact with your work Kanbanery – Simple online team or personal kanban board LeanKit Kanban – Great for visualizing work of product development Kanban Pad – “Nice and lean” and free online Kanban tool Banana Scrum – A tool simple as Scrum itself.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

But according to the theory, this should have been covered by the various specs and documentation we were rigorous about producing. Because the art team was considered an internal customer (and “friendly&# to boot), we didn’t waste a lot of time making the tools easy to use. This led to some pretty bizarre situations.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

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 ? And when do business planning and execution come into play?

Search 324

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 324

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

PS1- I run a small software startup in Brazil and just found out about Customer Development and your blog (I’ve been reading and listening to everything I can get my hands on online, like Venturehacks and Ries’ blog). You can get away with effective behavior in a large company.

Silicon Valley 329

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 329

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

In fact, this crisis was at the heart of Steve Blank ’s original impetus to develop customer development as an alternative set of milestones to use for startups.) One tweet read, “well, if HBS is investing in the lean startup we know it has jumped the shark.” I also frequently see the reverse.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

They take things like unit testing, design documents and code reviews more seriously than any other company Ive even heard about. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

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. Launched by Robert Adams in 1989, this $30 million fund grew to over $200 million in the next 7 years, as it launched companies like Documentum and Document Sciences out of Xerox’s fabled Palo Alto Research Center.

Startup 329

Startup Business Model Lean Russia 329

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. Recall that the biggest source of waste in product development is building something nobody wants.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Each five whys email is a teaching document. Great related post by John Shook at the Lean Enterprise Institute about technical vs. social sides of problems. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May. .

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

I know that this all seems obvious now with the movements started by Steven Blank ( Four Steps of Epiphany ) with the whole Customer Development processes / Lean Startup movements also popularized by people like Eric Ries. Customers had requested that we build out a more robust solution than our current product had.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

In lean times, it’s most important to focus on cutting costs in ways that speed you up, not slow you down. In fact, every single lean transformation documented in books like Lean Thinking took place in the midst of serious external threats. And, of course, theres the Lean Startup session at the upcoming Web 2.0

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

How about documentation that nobody reads? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? the data on a regular basis. Reports that go unnoticed?

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

The business plan is a wonderful document for organizing and planning for existing companies to launch follow-on products. In an existing corporation, the business plan is the execution document for sustaining innovation. Business Plan vs. Business Model + Customer Development. It what winners do.

Business Model 266

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 266

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

Roominate , one of my favorite Lean LaunchPad teams came out to the ranch last week for a strategy session. Then summarize it in a brief – a one, max two-page document that you hand to prospective PR agencies. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Marketing , Teaching.

PR 318

PR China Lean Channel 318

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

That data is completely consonant with the people I know who are successful technologists today, and similar patterns are documented in each recent wave of technology innovation. I documented the lesson plans etc on [link] March 4, 2009 5:25 AM Eric said. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May. .

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143