Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Experienced entrepreneurs We’ve got speakers who are justifiably respected by a lot of entrepreneurs. For example: Mitch Kapor was a founder of Lotus. He’s a founder of Andreessen Horowitz, which has backed Facebook, Skype, Jawbone, and dozens of other companies whose products you use. Eric Ries will interview him.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

When it comes to being an entrepreneur, establishing a personal brand through a website is critical to success. If you want to compete with them, you’re going to have to develop a reputation and a strong web presence yourself. Here’s the entrepreneur’s guide to getting your first website off the ground.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

I don’t recommend anyone become an entrepreneur. The tools and temperament needed to get from startup idea to startup success were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Jeremy dropped out of Princeton to become an entrepreneur. Wanting to create impact is great. It’s too hard.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

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 1: Bend, Oregon Ecosystem and Entrepreneurs. Part 3: Engineering a Regional Tech Cluster.

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Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 286

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

If you’re a technical startup founder, one of the painful lessons is that it’s not enough just to build a great product. You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). Clay Hebert , founder of Crowdfunding Hacks. Clay Hebert.

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

We think teaching teams a formal methodology around the Lean Framework (Business Model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) is a natural evolution of how successful incubators/accelerators will build startups. The next customer segment we tried was startup founders. Technology in search of a market.

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Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

I don’t recommend anyone become an entrepreneur. The tools and temperament needed to get from startup idea to startup success were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Jeremy dropped out of Princeton to become an entrepreneur. Wanting to create impact is great. It’s too hard.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Funding challenges and other issues founders face in the early days of starting up were the focus of interviews with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern). Will Zell , co-founder and CEO of Nikola Labs wireless power company.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2014

Kauffman just launched Founders School - a new education series to help entrepreneurs develop their businesses during the startup stage by highlighting how startups are different from big companies. 1:46: The Differences: Accounting, Engineering & Sales. 1:49: Use Customer Development to Test Your Hypotheses.

Founder 327

Founder Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 327

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. Instead the business press dumped on the founders for “selling out.” Many founders mentioned this as a reason not to incorporate or grow their companies in Finland. Lessons Learned.

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Finland Naming Russia Government 324

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

Either way, the “hurdle” for successful, scalable startups is high, and it gets higher every day as customer acquisition challenges continue to increase. Without passionate customers, even the most passionate entrepreneur will flounder at best. Dropbox is a great example.

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Startup Cofounder Customer Development Viral 332

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

Finally, when everyone else had their turn, the grey-haired VC turned to the founder and said, “If you do what we tell you to do and fail, we’ll fire you. He turned to the other VC’s and added, “That’s why we write the checks and entrepreneurs run the company.”. And if you do what you think is right and you fail, we may also fire you.

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Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 332

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2015

So will failing to understand your customers. Successful founders have a laser-like focus and commitment; a keen understanding of customers’ needs; and a tenacious spirit, said the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on Sirius XM Channel 111. Reetu Gupta. Mandela Schumacher-Hodge. We made it.”

Cofounder 120

Cofounder India Entrepreneur Maryland 120

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Eric Ries , entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Lean Startup. Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Taking My Class.

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Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. This engineering manager is a smart guy, and very experienced.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

While it sounds simple , the Build Measure Learn approach to product development is a radical improvement over the traditional Waterfall model used throughout the 20 th century to build and ship products. Back then, an entrepreneur used a serial product development process that proceeded step-by-step with little if any customer feedback.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

The email continued, &# The problem I’m working on is that many founders are either making uninformed decisions or inefficiently learning the new skills they need. The solution I’m exploring is a just in time learning methodology that accelerates founders’ learning curve by aggregating relevant content, peers and mentors.&#.

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Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Enter “ The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses “, a New York Times bestseller by founder of IMVU (creator of 3D avatars) Eric Ries. Not doing so would end up in wasteful innovations and features that customers do not want.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

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. He runs H4X Labs.

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Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

Luckily, in a room full of entrepreneurs, plenty of new businesses popped up to bring people food and water. (If 1,000 startup founders, investors, and press! Seth Sternberg Co-Founder & CEO Scott Chacon CIO Kevin Hale Senior Product Manager NEW! Juan Diego Calle CEO Dharmesh Shah Co-founder & CTO Ross Snyder Sr.

Lean 165

Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering 165

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Almost every entrepreneur I met was using VPN to circumvent the Great Firewall. There’s a noticeable lack of tenacity in young, new entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial Culture.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 6, 2012

Entrepreneurs as Dissidents. When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, he ran the Think Different ads, a brilliant marketing campaign to make Apple’s core customers believe that Apple was still fighting for the brand. But some small segment of founders are truly artists – they see something no one else does. Lessons Learned.

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Entrepreneur United States Customer Development Business Model 335

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 9, 2010 Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# theory of management At any given time, something like four percent of the US population is engaged in some form of new-company-creation. What motivates all these entrepreneurs? What do entrepreneurs look like?

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San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

A startup founder needs to never lose sight of the vision, but be extremely adaptable to pretty much everything else. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. How startup ideas are conceived and nurtured was the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show.

Cofounder 274

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

We have a slew of workshops you can choose from—the last two just added: Validate Your Learning Engines with Janice Fraser and Laura Klein. In this workshop, Fraser, Founder/CEO of LUXr and Klein, Director of Product & UX at One Jackson will offer practical techniques for getting and using customer feedback.

Lean 154

Lean Cofounder Analytics Startup 154

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

A startup founder needs to never lose sight of the vision, but be extremely adaptable to pretty much everything else. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. How startup ideas are conceived and nurtured was the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show.

Cofounder 274

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

But founders need to know how to ask for their advice and when to ignore it. Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers. Startup Insights From Paul English, Co-Founder of Kayak - OnStartups , May 10, 2010 I’m just wrapping up several weeks of attending conferences across both coasts. They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said.

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Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

A founder’s conviction will help get a startup off the ground. Why it’s important for entrepreneurs to temper confidence with regular reality checks was the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Andy Cunningham , founder and CEO of Cunningham Collective. You are the entrepreneur.

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Washington Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Cofounder 285

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

APRIL 14, 2013

Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Almost every entrepreneur I met was using VPN to circumvent the Great Firewall. There’s a noticeable lack of tenacity in young, new entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurial Culture.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

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.

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Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

Maybe you worked there or a co-founder or investor has some juice). Don’t tell me “they need to see a working product before they’ll have a chat” or any other typical, lame excuse engineers (including me!) make for not putting customer development before writing code. You’re just stalling.

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Customer Software Review IP Technical Review 231

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Lean 333

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 333

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

In the last five years “ Lean Startup ” methodologies have enabled entrepreneurs to efficiently build a startup by searching for product/market fit rather than blindly trying to execute. Horizon 3 is where companies put their crazy entrepreneurs. Lean is The Engine for the Ambidextrous Organization. A 50x speedup kind of fast.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

What it’s like to go from the comfort of the lab bench to the chaos of a startup was the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more.

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 190

www.kernelmag.com

MARCH 8, 2012

The Scene Developers Nailing that elusive technical co-founder. In another example, at GroupSpaces we use services from Recurly to power our subscription billing engine and Assistly to power our helpdesk, which helped us to get up and running within a day. Are there any ‘Founders Dating’ events coming up?”.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Coder 43

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Computer hardware companies were faced with their customers asking for low-cost (relatively) desktop computers they had no experience in building. Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.)

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138