Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Instead of email, they’ve grown up with QQ instant messages. Note to Chinese Communist party – the best name for your propaganda department should probably not be the “Propaganda Department.”). Their leadership has shown incredible foresight in engineering an amazing economic engine and formidable military.

China 323

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. This wave of 1950′s/’60′s startups (Watkins-Johnson, Varian, Huggins Labs, MEC, Stewart Engineering, etc.) And these microwave engineers were working at startups – not large companies.

Silicon Valley 270

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

We were sitting in our conference room in our first “system-planning meeting” trying to define the specifications of our new supercomputer and make the trade-offs between what was possible to build, and what customers in this new market would actually want and need. The conversation that day would become one of my professional watermarks.

Silicon Valley 271

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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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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers. Business customers were starting to ask for “office automation solutions” – word processing, spreadsheets, graphing software on a desktop. Their engineers hated us.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

The classes are built on the Lean Startup methodology: Customer Discovery, Agile Engineering and the Business/Mission Model Canvas. So how do our students get out of the building to talk to customers to do Customer Discovery when they can’t get out of the building? Hello, my name is xx.

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Customer Business Model Restful Video 413

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Instead of email, they’ve grown up with QQ instant messages. Note to Chinese Communist party – the best name for your propaganda department should probably not be the “Propaganda Department.”). Their leadership has shown incredible foresight in engineering an amazing economic engine and formidable military.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

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. Our vision was that just as the PC was revolutionizing the business market, we were going to do the same for scientists and engineers.

North Carolina 125

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www.ashmaurya.com

AUGUST 29, 2012

There are many channels that can produce your first early customers and contacts, but the one I see most often is cold email. This post outlines the method I use to approach cold emailing. I’ve sent poorly targeted email far too often. We ‘re just applying that to cold emails. It must fit the audience.

Email 52

Email Customer Tennessee Software Review 52

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

. … (Still) We had no idea the complexity that would be involved from sourcing the manufacturer and how long it would take once you found that manufacturer to be able to engineer the product… It’s very different when you’re engineering a product to make 100 of parts. …. We’re big fans of the show.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

When I learned that Cray users would be giving papers at the Society of Petroleum Engineering conference in Denver the next day, I got on a plane to listen and learn. Follow the Leader At the conference I attended a bunch of technical sessions, and got lost when the speaker got past, “My name is xxx.”

Silicon Valley 147

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Finally the day came, we unleashed the landing page, emailed our existing customers, and started advertising online. So, if youre interested in helping avoid mistakes like that, here are the steps: Get a domain name. It doesnt have to be the worlds catchiest name, just pick something reasonably descriptive.

Demand 167

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steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Poplytics – online surveys and analytics AskYourTargetMarket – market research surveys SurveyMonkey - granddaddy of on-line surveys Amazon Mechanical Turk – you can set up a question and get answers PickFu – A/B testing $5 for 50 opinions Collaboration Dropbox – store, sync, and, share files online.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. For the past 30 years great colleges have approached recruitment by creating a list of names from the PSATs and then sending out glossy brochures. Jeremy Johnson.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

A month or two before the QuickTime public announcement in May, the SuperMac hardware engineers (who had a great relationship with the QuickTime team at Apple) started a “ skunk works ” project. So SuperMac engineering also developed video compression software, called Cinepak. The software was idiot proof.

Video 164

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. As the CTO/VP Engineering, I was the worst offender. That means that I (and other engineers) were able to participate in the problem team discussions. Thats why its so essential to have a co-equal problem team.

San Francisco 167

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Objects in Our Mirror are Larger than they Appear Our first goal was to set up benchmarks to measure the performance of our own graphics boards on the real applications our customers used (Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator and PageMaker.) Then we were going to buy our competitors’ boards (think “secret shopper”) and compare them to ours.

Silicon Valley 124

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. For the past 30 years great colleges have approached recruitment by creating a list of names from the PSATs and then sending out glossy brochures. Jeremy Johnson.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

First, a definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products. Some caveats right off the bat. August 3, 2009 8:08 PM William Mitchell said.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. The Army offered Fred Terman, the Dean of Engineering at Stanford, a $5M contract to build an electronics countermeasures lab. HP had an ethical culture, entrepreneurial spirit, and deep Stanford engineering department connections.

Silicon Valley 171

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 171

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. So our people in the field could correct any egregious design advice I gave to customers who mattered. I looked around the room thinking I’d see the faces of the engineers in the ESL M-4 vault, but these were different people.

Silicon Valley 175

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 13, 2008 SEM on five dollars a day How do you build a new product with constant customer feedback while simultaneously staying under the radar? Trying to answer that question at IMVU led me to discover Google AdWords and the world of search engine marketing. SEM is a simple idea.

SEM 164

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. Two paragraphs, Five bullets. It didn’t take more.

Silicon Valley 259

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Duct Tape Marketing

AUGUST 29, 2014

Within the Channels report, you apply the segment named “Mobile Traffic” by clicking “+Add Segment” at the top right corner of the report. In the table below the chart, you will see a list showing whether Social, Email or another channel is the primary source for your traffic. Google Mobile Search Engines Small Business Mark Hansen'

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Analytics Mobile Channel Conversion 65

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. I help lead the Engineering Leadership SIG at SDForum and wonder if you would be interested in speaking to our group about lean starups. Blew my mind.

San Francisco 155

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering. My office is in the Terman Engineering Building.

Silicon Valley 180

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

As Im pontificating about agile, I see the name Kent Beck in my peripheral vision. Eric Names matter. By pulling in a web of associations, names help people quickly assess ideas. There is a dark side to naming. The naming question has been raised about the "lean" in Lean Startups. Eric Names matter.

Lean 140

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 140

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Return the name of the hypothesis chosen or assigned.

San Francisco 166

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

We use email; we use Word; we use task manager; we use a file sharing tool. Meetings are definitely one of those places, but email is another primary way that that comes in. Edwin: Correct, I fully agree and the name MeetingKing already says that my initial focus definitely was on meetings, right? That’s a challenge.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Beyond Apple, we can find examples of the Steve Jobs character at Toyota, in the form of the Chief Engineer. There are some good anecdotes about Chief Engineers in the Toyota Product Development Book. Some of these reaffirm that they do indeed validate assumptions through interaction with customers. 1) RE: 'At Pixar.We

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

It’s easy to overestimate the impact of this kind of traffic because it just feels good to have your name and company featured. You might get a bunch of inbound emails from other press and partners, and all of these things can contribute to a feeling that you’re on your way to getting tons of traffic. It strokes your ego.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. Every time an engineer checks in code, they are batching up a certain amount of work.

San Francisco 161

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now A great checklist of techniques and tools for making your development more agile, written from a Rail perspective. Want to learn more about me?

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

If you’re a startup raising money or just want to see your name online, there’s not a better blog on the web. Reading this TechCrunch post made me remember the first time I saw someone confront a worldview they didn’t expect. Discovering that your worldview is wrong or mistaken can be a life-changing event. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 184

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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

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Pay attention to whether people are comfortable “naming names&# in the meeting. We started with a simple wiki page with a few bullet points of things that new engineers had tripped over recently. Soon, each new engineer was assigned a mentor, and we made it part of the mentor’s job to teach the curriculum.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

A large number of these customers had mailed back their registration cards (this was pre-Internet) with their names, phone numbers, job titles, etc. So I asked the fatal question, “Has anyone ever looked at the customer registration cards? Has anyone ever spoken to a customer?” Silence. I wanted to know the facts.

Silicon Valley 185

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