Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

corporation – starting a new technology division bringing disruptive technology to market at General Electric. One of GE’s new divisions – GE’s Energy Storage – has been given the charter to bring an entirely new battery technology to market. He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Why they were looking to me to run marketing wasn’t clear. They sold to a set of customers I knew nothing about. The company was the laughing stock of the Mac market. The two other players in the add-on graphics business, Radius and RasterOps, had a combined 90% market share. Why I was interested was equally obscure.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. In a startup it doesn’t matter if you’re 100% right 100% of the time.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Yet for every founder there are 10-20 other employees who take the near-equivalent risks in joining an early-stage company. If you’re not a founder (by choice, timing or temperament,) you may be an early employee or a later stage startup employee. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on?

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.

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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. Now In Print!

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Ardent would be my third technology company as a VP of Marketing (Convergent Technologies and MIPS Computers were the other two.) I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” It would be the company where I actually earned the title.

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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.

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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.

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Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

So I got out out of the building to meet and understand our customers and distribution partners. I remember after a month or two of talking to 14-22 year old male gamers (our potential target market,) I realized that for the first time in my career I had no emotional connection to my customers or channel partners.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. What are Early Stage VC’s Really Asking?

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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.

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

If you’re in markets that still exhibit at them (semiconductors, communications, enterprise software, etc.,) ———— T o: Marketing Department From: Steve Subject: Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters Generating Leads Ownership If your company is going to a show to generate leads, then sales owns the show. .

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

. — An experienced team made all the difference to 2U finding success, Jeremy said: We had a phenomenal early group of people that were brought together to try to address the problem. You might look at it and say, “In some ways, that team is overkill for an early-stage company. We thought we figured it out.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

. — An experienced team made all the difference to 2U finding success, Jeremy said: We had a phenomenal early group of people that were brought together to try to address the problem. You might look at it and say, “In some ways, that team is overkill for an early-stage company. We thought we figured it out.

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Silicon Valley, New York). While startups eventually get into execution mode, their initial stages are devoted to a non-linear, chaotic search for a business model: finding product/market fit to identify a product or service people will buy in droves at a sustainable, profitable pace. Here’s how. Angels In America.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Silicon Valley, New York). While startups eventually get into execution mode, their initial stages are devoted to a non-linear, chaotic search for a business model: finding product/market fit to identify a product or service people will buy in droves at a sustainable, profitable pace. Here’s how. Angels In America.

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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. But however you do it, in companies with invention risk you want to simulate as much of process as possible, as early as possible.

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Eighty some pages later I realized that a) I had some great war stories as a good marketeer and failed CEO, b) I’d have to pay my wife and kids to read them, c) the three of them were probably the entire total available market, and d) when I looked at what I had done and what other entrepreneurs had done at their startups, that there was a pattern.

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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 had no clue what our market was when we first started. None of mine did.)

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 263

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.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.” An existing market is one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. Do you know the archetype of their customers?

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

understand who their core and tertiary customers are, and the sales and marketing process required for initial clinical sales and downstream commercialization. In order to get the healthcare community to collaborate with each other to bring new ideas to market they will need some help to catalyze the “co” part of co-working.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

No building, no money, no customers, no market? These customer and market risks need to be translated into facts as soon as possible. Customer Development This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process. Great, sign me up.

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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?

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Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Every potential startup founder should think about their level of comfort operating in chaos and uncertainty. It may not be for you. Reply spy bugs , on May 4, 2009 at 10:14 am Said: Thanks a lot, wonderful post. Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here.

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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.

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Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If you’re in markets that still exhibit at them (semiconductors, communications, enterprise software, medical devices, etc.,) Before you go to a trade show sales and marketing need to agree to measurable goals. you know they’re expensive in time, dollars and resources. Visually, demo’s, wild colors, etc.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

It didn’t make my marketing skills any worse or better, but moved me to play forever on a different field. If it was a very big mistake, I blamed the VP of Sales. “This marketing campaign didn’t work? But a series of Zen-like moments helped me move to a different level that changed how I operated.

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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. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

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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. Many founders dont like to hear that visionary customers are as smart, maybe even more so, than they are.

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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. Why do we need to wait a month to six weeks to see progress?

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

Lane also founded Wheelhouse, a Canadian organization that supports other entrepreneurs through mentorship, access to early stage capital, and connections to global business networks and executive expertise. . So we started in the academic market — because they would actually buy. ” I don’t care about that.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

It’s a paradox, but early sales success in a startup can kill its chances of becoming a large successful company. The cause is often sales and marketing execs who’ve become too comfortable with an initial sales model and panic at the first sign of a Pivot. Integrated circuits were a new market. What could go wrong?

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

However, no markets last forever. Technology changes, culture changes, customer needs change, more agile competitors emerge, etc. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Clayton Christensen describes this brilliantly in the Innovators Dilemma.) Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

He is also an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Columbia Business School , and an angel investor hailed as one of New York City’s top 100 early-stage investors. As he has worked to build Geometric Intelligence, Gary has found valuable help from other founders thanks to Silicon Valley’s pay-it-forward culture.

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