Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

To fill this gap I wrote The Four Steps to the Epiphany , a book about the Customer Development process and how it changes the way startups are built. Eric Ries, who took my first Customer Development class at Berkeley, had the insight that Customer Development should be paired with Agile Development.

Technical Review 327

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 327

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Todd Branchflower took my Lean LaunchPad class having been entrepreneurial enough to convince the Air Force send him to Stanford to get his graduate engineering degree. True to his word, fast-forward three years and Todd is now Captain Todd Branchflower , teaching computer engineering at the Air Force Academy. ——-.

Lean 262

Lean Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 262

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2010

Over the last 50 years engineers have moved from building computers out of individual transistors to building with prepackaged logic gates. It’s the combination of Business Model Design and Customer Development. Business Model Design Gets Dynamic, Customer Development Gets Strategic. x86 , ARM.)

Customer Development 329

Customer Development Business Model Developer Customer 329

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

In previous posts I’ve talked about what the combination of Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Methodologies mean to startups and intrapreneurs in large companies; it’s the beginning of entrepreneurship as a science with its own rules and methodologies. She posted her notes from the talk here.)

Customer Development 270

Customer Development Business Model Developer Design 270

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Dino Vendetti a VC at Bay Partners, moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Over the years Dino and I brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Part 3: Engineering a Regional Tech Cluster. Part 1: Bend, Oregon Ecosystem and Entrepreneurs.

Early Stage 286

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 286

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

They launched an incubator for the top scientists and engineers in the U.S. 63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks , turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. government agency that supports research in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. billion U.S.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

At the last board meeting our VP of engineering explained that the root of our problems was ‘our code has accumulated a ton of “technical debt,’ it’s really ugly code, and it’s not the way we would have done it today. My observation was that the CEO and VP of Engineering were confusing cause and effect.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

To fill this gap I wrote The Four Steps to the Epiphany , a book about the Customer Development process and how it changes the way startups are built. Eric Ries, who took my first Customer Development class at Berkeley, had the insight that Customer Development should be paired with Agile Development.

Technical Review 219

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 219

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2010

I’ve been teaching Customer Development at U.C. Berkeley was brave enough to let me write and teach a class on a subject that no one had ever heard of – Customer Development. Customer Development was a process to quickly search for a profitable business model when customer needs (features, pricing, channel, etc.)

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Lean Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

After seeing the process work so well for scientists and engineers in the NSF, we hypothesized that we could increase productivity and stave the capital flight by helping Life Sciences startups build their companies more efficiently. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Life Sciences , National Science Foundation.

Lean 269

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 269

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. I hope this thinking already sounds inane to you. What plan says that?

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

This year, at one of the universities where I teach in the engineering school, our quarter was going to start right after the New Year. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching' Our first class session is definitely not a “meet and greet”.

Lean 278

Lean Customer Development Business Model Email 278

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. Finland itself has significant engineering talent, and is also attracting entrepreneurs from Russia and the former USSR. Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team for the fabulous logistics!) Lessons Learned.

Finland 324

Finland Naming Russia Government 324

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2012

Partnered with engineering trying to understand what customers really wanted, needed and would pay for, versus what we could actually build and deliver (and learning the difference between a simply good engineer and working in the presence of sheer genius.) It made me understand that they were doable, solvable and winnable.

Thailand 331

Thailand Engineer Customer Development SEO 331

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

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. The first class was an introduction to the concepts of business model design and customer development. The Adventure Begins.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

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

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

These tools—Customer Development, Agile Engineering, and Business Model design—became the lean start-up methodology , a rigorous approach to testing hypotheses and building prototypes, and, on the basis of data and evidence, adjusting or pivoting to a variant of the original hypothesis.

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

Whether they’re using a formal process to search for a business model like Customer Development or just trial and error, startup founders are intuitively goal-seeking to optimize their business model. The Customer Development model that I write and teach about is the entrepreneur’s version of Boyds’ OODA loop.).

Business Model 332

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 332

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2024

This can be the beginning of a profitable customer relationship or a disappointing sinkhole of wasted time, money, resources, and a demoralized engineering team. I was having coffee and pastries with Justin, an ex-student, listening to him to complain over the time he wasted with a potential customer.

Founder 325

Founder Engineer Sales Conversion 325

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Back then, an entrepreneur used a serial product development process that proceeded step-by-step with little if any customer feedback. The goal of Build-Measure-Learn is not to build a final product to ship or even to build a prototype of a product, but to maximize learning through incremental and iterative engineering.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

Find the right trajectory for your business and focus not only on reaching it, but on assuring that the result is a sustainable, repeatable profit engine that can perform and grow healthily over time. Filed under: Customer Development. It’s the only way to make a startup not suck.

Startup 332

Startup Cofounder Customer Development Viral 332

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. From the point of view of scientists and engineers in a university lab, too often entrepreneurship in all its VC-driven glory – income statements, balance sheets, business plans, revenue models, 5-year forecasts, etc. billion U.S.

Engineer 278

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 278

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. It is a very different skill than science, engineering, or management. George Bernard Shaw.

Agile 332

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 332

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Though they’re familiar with technology in the valley, I picked up some important cultural difference from students and startup engineers I talked to. I heard from a few investors that as the startup ecosystem is relatively new, there’s a battle for experienced engineering talent and lack of experienced C-level execs. Fear of Failure.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development. I was an aggressive, young and a very tactical VP of marketing at Ardent , a supercomputer company – who really hadn’t a clue about the relationship between profound beliefs, customer discovery and strategy. I was a great marketer.

Business Model 305

Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 305

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10 weeks. While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ), Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique.

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Eric Ries co-founded Catalyst Recruiting while attending Yale, and continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com. Taking My Class. Hear Eric explain what they learned.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, science and engineering at both Stanford and U.C. Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. It taught lean theory ( business model design , customer development and agile engineering) and practice. Customer Development works outside Silicon Valley.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. “Customer Development” to test the hypotheses outside the building and. Teams talk to 10-15 customers a week and make a minimum of 100 customer visits.

Intellectual Property 281

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 281

Steve Blank

JULY 24, 2012

I left with enough code so our engineers could get started immediately. Onyx gave us an engineering contact and he helped our team make sense of their system. Onyx gave us an engineering contact and he helped our team make sense of their system. Filed under: Customer Development , E.piphany , Marketing.

Seattle 259

Seattle Cofounder Engineer Sales 259

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley , was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. It might be its most important. ———-. Cold War Spin Outs.

Engineer 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2020

While there’s agreement that companies need to adapt to changing markets, rapidly find new markets, new customers and new revenue models, the question is how ? This is the first step before you zoom in and design the business model, engage in focused customer development or test your minimal viable products. Here’s how.

Customer 436

Customer Marketing Customer Development Lean 436

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

NYU Engineering Commencement Speech. Thank you for the opportunity to address you on your graduation from this esteemed engineering school. I saw something that they didn’t and to their credit…Berkeley’s Business School and then Stanford’s Engineering School let me write and teach a new course based on my ideas.

Lean 221

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 221

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

I’ve spent the last week in Santiago, a guest of Professor Cristóbal García at the Catholic University of Chile as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program. Here’s the course announcement from Professor Vergara (in English): Customer Development Course in Chile – Lean Launchpad. Teaching in Chile.

Chile 235

Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 235

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. They’ve tested their hypotheses with literally hundreds of customer interviews on every continent in the world. Corporate elephants can dance.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

I earnestly believe that large corporations should emulate Lean Startups (Business model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering.) Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching. Lessons Learned.

Programming 265

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 265

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

Now that you’ve gotten to know your potential channel and customers, regardless of how much money you’re going to make, will you enjoy working with these customers for the next 3 or 4 years? It was a lifelong lesson that taught me to never start a business where you hate your customers. It never goes well.

Cofounder 325

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 325