article thumbnail

Times Square Strategy Session – Web Startups and Customer Development

Steve Blank

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” It’s an impressive portfolio.

article thumbnail

Launching a Portfolio Acceleration Platform at a Venture Capital or Private Equity Fund

David Teten

I propose here a framework for prioritizing your platform buildout. Real Ventures , an early-stage, Canadian-based fund, runs a two-day Founder Camp every six months. Customer Development. A well-developed model is Andreessen Horowitz’s Executive Briefing Center.

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Blowing up the Business Plan at U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School

Steve Blank

Over my career as a serial entrepreneur I observed that since the late 1990s, no early-stage Silicon Valley investor had used business plans to screen investments. Traction and evidence from customers were what investors were looking for – even in “slow” sectors like healthcare and energy. Seeing Is Believing.

article thumbnail

A New Way to Teach Entrepreneurship – The Lean LaunchPad at Stanford: Class 1

Steve Blank

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. While we were going to teach theory and frameworks, these students were going to get a hands-on experience in how to start a new company.

Lean 298
article thumbnail

Lean Startups aren't Cheap Startups

Steve Blank

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
article thumbnail

How VCs Can Accelerate Portfolio Company Returns

David Teten

The company teams they work with are usually highly motivated entrepreneurs trying to engage in extensive product and customer development efforts for a product they don’t typically have a full vision of, for a customer whose needs are opaque, and for a use case which is ambiguous.

Portfolio 144
article thumbnail

How Investors Make Better Decisions: The Investment Readiness Level

Steve Blank

While it doesn’t eliminate great investor judgment, pattern recognition skills and mentoring, we’ve developed an Investment Readiness Level tool that fills in these missing pieces. Prior to having the Investment Readiness Level framework, this “how to get ready for an investor” discussion had been a “soft” conceptual discussion.