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?

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 25, 2014

The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions – crowdspring.co/1nHT6tS. The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions – crowdspring.co/1nHT6tS. Early Stage Startups: The Biggest Killers | Forbes – crowdspring.co/1mtenKl. A 3-Day Weekend…Every Weekend? 1ms6D8K.

Social Media 92

Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

First Round Search , Startupschool , and GSV Passport are examples of comprehensive founder resources from investors. I have developed a founder curriculum on my blog. Real Ventures , an early-stage, Canadian-based fund, runs a two-day Founder Camp every six months. Customer Development. AskAnything.VC

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

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.&# The search for a profitable and scalable business model might require a startup [.] That’s why startups are agile. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

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.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

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. This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile.

Cofounder 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

VCs tout themselves as frontier technology investors, but most are using the same infrastructure tools they have used for the past 20+ years: Excel and recent college grads searching Google. Coalesce address the more general problem of searching through large data sets for best fits. But beyond that, not much.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

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. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. So it’s helpful to have a structure that helps “search”?

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up. Some startups in this field are actually beginning with Customer Development while others struggle with the classic execution versus search problem. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Science and Industrial Policy , Teaching.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

The Equity Kicker

MAY 7, 2015

Steve Blank gave us this now famous definition of a startup: A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. We think the best next step is to find a point of emotional connection with customers. we re-join Blank).

Business Model 60

Business Model Search Due Diligence Early Stage 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Even when we went out to dinner before we hired him he said, he said he read the Four Steps and couldn’t wait to try this Customer Development stuff.”. “So I’m probably going to fire him and start a search for another one, but what do I do wrong?”. Startups Need Different Titles to Search For an Unknown Business Model.

Startup 312

Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 312

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

The role of a founding CEO in a startup searching for a business model is radically different than a CEO building and growing a company. What startup stage do they typically invest in? Do they “get&# Customer Development ? What Startup Stage Do they Invest In? Do They Get Customer Development?

Founder 231

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

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. Filed under: Customer Development.

Founder 316

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 316

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 Continuous Deployment 113

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2010

One of the toughest problems for entrepreneurs is to keep score as they search for their business model. One of the key concepts of Customer Development is writing down your initial hypotheses (guesses) of all the parts of your business model, then updating them with the facts you find outside the building. Keeping Score.

Customer Development 211

Customer Development Business Model Early Stage Channel 211

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. Early stage board meetings are often clones of large company board meetings.

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 10, 2012

Until you have the roadmap nailed down, you can’t scale sales (it would be like throwing money at a big search campaign before you know your lifetime values and conversion rate). It’s as big of a deal as getting your viral loop working — it’s how you’re going to acquire customers at scale.

Hiring 51

Hiring Founder Viral Early Stage 51

Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

The class is intensely and deliberately experiential to develop the mindset, reflexes, agility and resilience an entrepreneur needs to search for certainty in a chaotic world. The premise of the class is that startups, are not about executing a plan where the product, customers, channel are known. And do it in 8 weeks.

Lean 256

Lean Business Model Agile United States 256

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. Early stage board meetings are often clones of large company board meetings.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

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

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

MAY 13, 2010

They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. So I met the entrepreneur and asked him how his search for a business model was going. Here’s what I told him: A startup exists to search for a scalable and repeatable business model. No consultants as you search for your business model. I couldn’t agree more.

Founder 199

Founder Cofounder Business Model Customer Development 199

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 21, 2012

And it clicked in my head – one of the key things to pay attention to in a search for a cofounder is how you fight. Entrepreneurship and early stage companies are about moving fast; if you’re caught in a disagreement for days at a time it means decisions are not being made and/or people are walking around feeling resentful.

Cofounder 329

Cofounder IPO Early Stage Green 329

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

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010

It’s the kind of thing you can repeat in an elevator, simple to understand , universally applicable , and, most importantly, doesn’t burden your tech team with a lot of custom development. Often times, that comes in the form of analytics, which is what a biz dev partner would want in order to check on the success of the deal.

Early Stage 120

Early Stage Developer Technical Review Widget 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

The people who are the lifeblood of an early-stage startup are earlyvangelists. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? For example, my experience with teenagers is that they are very reluctant to call or email asking for support, even when they have a severe problem.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

A discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The event will include a talk from Eric on The Lean Startup over dinner, followed by moderated table discussion and then final Q&A with Eric.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 13, 2011

Board meetings that guide startups haven't changed since the early 1900's. Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. Silicon Valley, New York). Here's how. What are the most important hypotheses to test now?

Silicon Valley 117

Silicon Valley Balance Sheet Metrics Early Stage 117

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

LSC: Tell us about the customer development you did for your book: Alistair: We''ve been thrilled at how Lean Analytics seemed to resonate with founders. We spoke with the head of innovation at one Fortune 500 company who told us his only metric for early-stage innovation is “how many assumptions have you tested this week?”

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

Unfortunately, they are disinterested in doing the hard work to help early stage entrepreneurs and companies. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

Many founders dont like to hear that visionary customers are as smart, maybe even more so, than they are. Startups need to spend time with these customers. In fact, early stage companies shouldnt be able to get time from anyone else - who else would be crazy enough to try an truly innovative new product?

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

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

When it becomes possible to build products "live" with customers, the cycle time changes and design becomes a much more dynamic process. We still struggle to create Firm software that is defect-free, and it still requires customer insight (and maybe some customer development) to discover what will Delight.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

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

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. Coming next Part 2: What’s Wrong with Product Development as a Model?

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

In other words, we want to use the spreadsheet to quantify our progress using the most important unit: validated learning about customers. One way to conceive of our goal in an early-stage venture is to incrementally “fill in the blanks&# for the business model that we think will one day power our startup.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

In fact, the most likely customers, computer designers were openly hostile as they saw integrated circuits doing what they were supposed to be doing – designing circuits. So selling integrated circuits meant a search for a business model. I see this same pattern in early stage startups. The Land of the Living Dead.

Silicon Valley 239

Silicon Valley Technical Review Spain Engineer 239