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

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

After I retired, I began teaching Customer Development , a theory of how to reduce early stage risk in entrepreneurial ventures. Am I a Founder? Raising Money Using Customer Development……… 47. Customer Development Manifesto. Customer Development In the Real World.

Silicon Valley 202

Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 202

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

It was amazing to see the two founders, Fred Durham and Maheesh Jain, build a $100 million company from coffee cups and T-shirts. But Cafepress’s most memorable moment was when the founders used a “Lessons Learned” VC pitch to raise their second round of funding and got an 8-digit term sheet that same afternoon.

Venture Capital 209

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

We Don’t Need Domain Experts When I looked around at our executive staff, there wasn’t a single founder who was a gamer. Only in Silicon Valley could we have got funded with this idea, and not surprisingly, it was our technology that had the VC’s confused. Nor was there anyone with game experience on our board.

Silicon Valley 207

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 207

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. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back. Order Here.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

The culture and work ethic of Convergent had earned it the title “the Marine Corps of Silicon Valley”. Oh, and since it was not code compatible with anything, we were going to have to port all the key scientific applications our customers needed (as soon as we figured out who they were.) A few days later Gordon became a founder.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing. Our “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” story played great in Silicon Valley, they ate it up in Hollywood, and the business press tripped over themselves to talk to us. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

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. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

a new type of graphics architecture, or a new communications chip architecture) mean you may not know if the chip performs as well as you thought until you get first silicon. In contrast, customer acquisition, brand, reputation, etc. are much softer and much, much harder to measure (or believe) in a very early stage startup.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Jeremy Johnson.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

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 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

At a university business plan competition, for the first time they can swim in the sea of expertise that we/I take for granted in the middle of Silicon Valley. I love business plan competitions (and with my valley-centric bias, I think Berkeley and Stanford have two of the best.)

Business Plan 140

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Jeremy Johnson.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Its easy to take Silicon Valley for granted. Ive written a little bit about the origins of Silicon Valley because I think its important for us to understand how we got here in order to make sure we preserve what is best about our community. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Continuous Deployment 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. Silicon Valley, New York). The process they use to guide their search is customer development. Victor Hugo. Here’s how.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

female founders. founder friday. Lessons learned from female founders and women entrepreneurs. Startup Quote: Wendy Tan White on Building a Successful Startup » FounderDating: How I Found My Co-Founder. Tweet By Elizabeth Knopf (Co-Founder & CEO, Sorced). Scoring Founder “Dates” On My Own.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Silicon Valley, New York). A veteran board can bring 50-100x more experience into a board meeting than a first time founder. From a founder’s point of view there are three reasons for board meetings. 2) Founders who have a great board do recognize the uncanny pattern recognition skills that good VC’s bring.

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Silicon Valley, New York). A veteran board can bring 50-100x more experience into a board meeting than a first time founder. From a founder’s point of view there are three reasons for board meetings. 2) Founders who have a great board do recognize the uncanny pattern recognition skills that good VC’s bring.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 2, 2012

Using mTurk to interview 100 customers (in 4 hours) | Customer Development Labs - [link]. Lessons from a top Angel Investor: Fabrice Grinda talks about his 100 early-stage investments – [link]. Google App Engine is ready for primetime says Reddit/Hipmunk co-founder – [link]. ” - [link].

Social Media 93

Social Media Small Business Design Media 93

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

This product development diagram had become part of the DNA of Silicon Valley. And even more importantly, was there any way to reduce risk in early stage ventures? familiar with Customer Development you should be. It’s very different than the traditional product development model.

Product Development 143

Product Development Developer Silicon Valley Product 143

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

The life sciences community is still warming-up to the value of customer development in the early stages of building new ventures”, says David Schonthal , MATTER Co-founder and Clinical Assistant Professor of entrepreneurship & innovation at the Kellogg School of Management.

San Diego 261

San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 261

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

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

But what I remind them is that great grades and successful founders/technology entrepreneurs have at best a zero correlation (and anecdotal evidence suggests that the correlation may actually be negative.) And founders don’t apply for jobs. From the king of customer development, Steve Blank: [.]

Silicon Valley 327

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 327

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. What is customer development?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

As a founder you need to prepare yourself to think creatively and independently, because more often than not, conditions on the ground will change so rapidly that the original well-thought-out business plan becomes irrelevant. Every potential startup founder should think about their level of comfort operating in chaos and uncertainty.

Silicon Valley 170

Silicon Valley Iraq RSS Vietnam 170

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. We’ll look at the model stage-by-stage. Very thought provoking.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. Do you know the archetype of their customers? Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

Silicon Valley 181

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

Customer Development This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process. Reply An Interview with Mark Fletcher, Founder of Bloglines and ONEList — TechDrawl , on July 10, 2009 at 3:56 pm Said: [.] Employ customer development.

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 212

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, June 9, 2009 The Lean Startup Tokyo edition I had a blast speaking at Startonomics Tokyo , which was organized to foster ties between the startup cultures in Japan and Silicon Valley. benjaminjoffe : early adopters of buggy product are visionary customers, sometimes smarter than founders!

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Yet the processes that early-stage companies were using were identical to that of large corporations. It’s a process that doesn’t exist in large companies with existing customers and markets. The “Customer Development” model is a paradox because it is followed by successful startups, yet articulated by no one.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 127

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 13, 2011

Silicon Valley, New York). Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology that helps startups optimize their chances for success while reducing risk. Here's how. VCs sit on six to 12 boards at a time. What's Wrong With a Board Meeting?

Silicon Valley 117

Silicon Valley Balance Sheet Metrics Early Stage 117

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

And Silicon Valley’s pay-it-forward culture is a huge help to startup founders. Gary Marcus , one of the country’s best-known cognitive psychologists, is a professor of psychology and neural science at NYU and founder of Geometric Intelligence. The stuff founders are made of. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Silicon Valley New York 120

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

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

Values – who and what founders and customers hold dear – were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Ryan Smith. Lane Merrifield.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 145

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 22, 2009

Ignoring the Red Flags While I had lots of people willing to talk to me, we never really pushed hard to see if any customers were willing to buy and pay for the product before it shipped. Early startup customers are visionaries just like the founders selling to them. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Silicon Valley 172

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 172

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

Values – who and what founders and customers hold dear – were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Ryan Smith. Lane Merrifield.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 120