Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money. Would you mind sharing them? Order Here.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend. Never mind The first idea for our new company was a software product that looked something like Hypertext. We were going to be guessing.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Business customers were starting to ask for “office automation solutions” – word processing, spreadsheets, graphing software on a desktop. Computer hardware companies were faced with their customers asking for low-cost (relatively) desktop computers they had no experience in building. Their engineers hated us.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

His most recent company, Filtrbox, participated in the inaugural Techstars class (Techstars Boulder 2007) and was a win for all parties involved; Filtrbox was acquired in 2010 by Jive Software (NASDAQ: JIVE). Following is his advice to early stage entrepreneurs for creating structure in their company.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Michael Eidsaune , co-founder of Carely , a software platform that facilitates communication among families caring for sick or elderly relatives. Michael Eidsaune. .

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Dino and I kept in touch as he moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Startups in Bend.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies. Provide early seed capital, and be the ones to make those introductions. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. Victor Hugo.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 12, 2012

Robert Graham of WhiteTail Software (and this awesome guest post on cold calling ) asks: @whitetailsoft When do you stop #custdev efforts and build the product? from his blog post ) …some civil engineers think the world of project management in their field is ripe for revolution, but do I know enough of them?

Customer 252

Customer Customer Development Dilution Engineer 252

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

One would think that designing a medical device would be a simple engineering problem, and startups would be emerging right and left. Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Science and Industrial Policy , Teaching.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. He was constantly in front of customers, listening, selling, installing and learning. I got to spend time inside his company while I was using their software to analyze early-stage ventures. And that’s where the problem was.

Founder 316

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 316

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? But all things are never equal.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 26, 2013

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. We kept track of all this data by instrumenting the teams with LaunchPad Central software.). Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Life Sciences Teaching'

Lean 237

Lean Customer Development Video Early Stage 237

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

A discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students. In 2002 I became exposed to the idea of “agile software development&# and subsequently was a first round investor in Rally Software which is now the market leader in Agile application lifecycle management software.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Since the term “cloud computing” was coined in 1996—at least as we have come to understand its meaning—the software as a service industry has exploded. If you use software like LivePlan, you can create this initial “lean plan” in under an hour and then spend your time where it really matters—on validating your idea. Wireframes.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

— I just watched a very smart company try to manage innovation by hiring a global consulting firm to offload engineering from “distractions.” This was a very large and established tech company; its engineering organization developed the core day-to-day capabilities of the organization. There’s a much better way.

Incubator 312

Incubator Curation Engineer Government 312

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Should you co-found your company with a software development shop? I’ve talked with a number of software development shops who are eager to get into the business of cofounding companies, i.e., getting product revenue and equity instead of just consulting revenue. mentor VCs, e.g., most VCs. Our model at Casual Corp.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. With that information in hand, Engineering estimates delivery dates and development costs.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 15, 2011

Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. The process they use to guide that search is "Customer Development" ; and to track their progress startups now have a scorecard to document their week-by-week changes – the business model canvas.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Startup Early Stage Business Model 118

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

My son is planning a software product that will take the mystery out of wikis and make the technology easier for consumers to use. Unfortunately, they are disinterested in doing the hard work to help early stage entrepreneurs and companies. Retention cohort analysis. Funnel averages over time. 3comments: Charles Crawford said.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

www.instigatorblog.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

.&# But having thought about this for some time, I’m not sure the numbers provided as guidelines above really do incent early employees to have an emotional ownership of the product and company. This is especially true when you think of a tech startup, where the first few hires are typically engineers/programmers.

Equity 41

Equity Employee Startup Vesting 41

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that. However, for the Web 2.0

Vertical 128

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 128

www.ashmaurya.com

AUGUST 29, 2012

Robert has been working in software since 2005. You can learn more about his approach to developing customer relationships in his new book Cold Calling Early Customers. Best practices are a good play for an industry like engineering consultants. He is a Ph.D. dropout who spent time working for Google.

Email 52

Email Customer Tennessee Software Review 52

BeyondVC

MAY 5, 2004

In addition, I met a number of interesting companies, a couple of which were service businesses in the process of transitioning their models to become product-driven software companies. This makes a ton of sense as the entrepreneur gets to understand a particular market and pain point for customers.

Product 60

Product Software Review Technical Review Early Stage 60

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.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. It bears repeating: an early-stage startup must focus on making one customer group excited by a mission-aligned product.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

This post is about the how the Chinese government engineered technology clusters. The Torch program created Innovation Clusters by creating national Science and Technology Industrial Parks (STIPs), Software Parks, and Productivity Promotion Centers. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

Programming 278

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 278

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If you’re in markets that still exhibit at them (semiconductors, communications, enterprise software, medical devices, etc.,) If you think you are going to offend your customers or embarrass your engineering organization, get out of the marketing department. you know they’re expensive in time, dollars and resources.

Silicon Valley 178

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 178

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

This post is about the how the Chinese government engineered technology clusters. The Torch program created Innovation Clusters by creating national Science and Technology Industrial Parks (STIPs), Software Parks, and Productivity Promotion Centers. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

Programming 170

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 170

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 4, 2013

During my senior year, I took “Startup Essentials for Software Engineering” (taught by Zach Nies of Rally Software) and I can confidently say it was the best class I ever took at CU. We learned how to do customer development, conduct empathy interviews, and build a real MVP (not just an alpha version).

Startup 130

Startup Vesting Cofounder Lean 130

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

I liked the flattering Venture Hacks commentary so much Ill just quote it: Many founders believe that early stage startups are endeavors of execution. The customer is known, the product is known, and all we have to do is act. He believes that many early stage startups are labors of learning.

Lean 74

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 74

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. So I have a question for you, Jason.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Video Games At SuperMac , Peter Barrett was the witty and creative 24-year old Australian engineer who had designed several of our most successful products, culminating with the software for the Video Spigot. The CDROM content business in the early 1990’s was one of the many of the long line of venture capital fads.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

. ————– We’ve spent the last 3 years building a methodology, classes, an accelerator and software tools and we’ve tested them on ~500 startups teams. Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering.

Oakland 326

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? This is the usual reason given for a marketing launch, but for most early stage startups, its a failure. Do some Customer Development instead.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 20, 2009

For short stories - I think it is always good to introduce some practical problem (you might have heard from entrepreneur at early stage) and how the lean startup method helped solved that. How I would frame the topic for business/tech readers: Is Seed,Series A->C funding destined to disappear for software startups?

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

What all these teachers had in common were two things: they were technology early adopters that were willing to take a chance on a new software product, and they all had similar problems organizing their classes and students. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 60