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. gather data essential to customer partnerships/collaboration/purchases before doing the science.

Lean 269

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 269

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

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

JULY 24, 2012

I Know A Great Customer. As other startups were quickly automating all the department of large corporations (SAP-manufacturing, Oracle-finance, Siebel and Onyx-Sales) our first thought was that our company was going to automate enterprise-marketing departments. I left with enough code so our engineers could get started immediately.

Seattle 259

Seattle Cofounder Engineer Sales 259

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

—— I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. Ironically one of the things that’s holding back the Finnish cluster is Tekes , the government organization for financing research, development and innovation in Finland. 9-to-5 Venture Capital.

Finland 324

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 324

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

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 26, 2015

To move innovation faster, we now have 21 st century tools — Business Model Canvas , Customer Development , Agile Engineering – all adding up to a Lean Startup. Lean is The Engine for the Ambidextrous Organization. Fast forward to today. We can adapt these startup tools for use inside the corporation.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

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 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Here’s the punchline: if you run your company as if you have closed a VC equity financing round even though you actually closed a convertible debt round, you’ll be in much better shape when it comes time to raise your Series A financing. Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 23, 2015

Knowing your customers is the single biggest driver of startup success, and there’s no substitute for getting out of the building to learn about their problems and needs. Jason Young , co-founder of MindBlown Labs , which makes mobile social games to teach young adults about personal finance. And download any of the past shows here.).

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Colorado Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

A 20 th century VC was likely to have an MBA or finance background. Everything a large company did, a startup should do – write a business plan; hire sales, marketing, engineering; spec all the product features on day one and build everything for a big first customer ship. Where is it going? We now understand that’s wrong.

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Prior to founding Carely , Michael Eidsaune earned his MBA in finance and spent several years in investment management, eventually earning his level 1 CFA certification.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Prior to founding Carely , Michael Eidsaune earned his MBA in finance and spent several years in investment management, eventually earning his level 1 CFA certification.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

I know that this all seems obvious now with the movements started by Steven Blank ( Four Steps of Epiphany ) with the whole Customer Development processes / Lean Startup movements also popularized by people like Eric Ries. Many people at a young startup are trying to manage their finances like the rest of their user base.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention. In these markets it’s all about customer/market risk.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? And when do business planning and execution come into play?

Search 320

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 13, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford's Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology detailed in his book, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany."

Finland 158

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 158

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Managewith.us - Collaborative Task Manager Mavenlink - manage project communications, documents, schedules, budgets, payments Industrial Logic – Agile eLearning Misc Office Help Google Apps – cloud mail server, calendar, docs, etc.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

Second, the leaders of these companies tended to be those who excelled at finance, supply chain or production. For the first 75 years of the 20 th century, when capital for new ventures was scarce, the smartest engineering talent went to corporate R&D labs. Risk capital has provided financing for new ideas in the form of startups.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

And I understood engineering since I interacted with them almost daily. I also knew our customers. And finally, I had a great working relationship with our engineers who designed the chips. As part of the sales organization, I thought I kind of figured out what the function of the sales department was. (In

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

Other than measuring engineering progress, there’s no standard language to communicate progress. a language corporate innovation groups can use to communicate to business units and finance. Entrepreneurs should always communicate their business’ very latest stage of customer development as part of their investor presentation.

Sacramento 306

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 306

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

In Customer Development the goal of a minimum feature set is to pare the features of the first product release to the minimum necessary for early customers. The finance system didn’t talk to the sales system which didn’t know the manufacturing system even existed. All the Data and Not a Drop to Think.

San Francisco 228

San Francisco Database Advisory Board Silicon Valley 228

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

In fact, this crisis was at the heart of Steve Blank ’s original impetus to develop customer development as an alternative set of milestones to use for startups.) LTV focuses on the integration of marketing and engineering functions and emphasizes implementation rather than strategy formulation issues.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

One would think that designing a medical device would be a simple engineering problem, and startups would be emerging right and left. Recently, the financing of innovation in medical devices has collapsed even further with most Class III devices simply unfundable. Life Sciences II – Medical Devices. Regulatory Issues.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

The Next Web

JANUARY 27, 2013

Especially because I could have used this time on marketing, sales and customer development, and actually helped our business move forward. I believe that picking up programming should be to acquaint yourself with the particular challenges of engineering. I found this a real waste of time and energy. You’re not alone.

Netherlands 159

Netherlands Technical Review Software Review Cofounder 159

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

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2010

The engineering co-founder had created a consumer electronics security product that created an entirely new category. As the revenues grew, engineering continued to pursue sustaining innovations - incremental improvements on its core technologies. Filed under: Customer Development , Durant versus Sloan: Startups Verus Companies.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley Cofounder Acquisition Kansas 267

Steve Blank

MAY 10, 2011

These diagrams are the visual representation of the how and the what a team learned in the class – how they tested their hypotheses by getting out of the building using the Customer Development process and what they learned about each part of their business model. is just another engineering process, not building a business.

Lean 279

Lean Business Model Agile Customer Development 279

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

If all the engineers work on the same thing at the same time, and all the marketers do the same, and QA, and ops, all the way down the line, then each department develops its own team-based private reality. If you never have, you can create your own using Google Finance. Go ahead and try it, then come back.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

Lean Startup Circle Boston – Meetup dedicated to the lean startup and customer development methodology. Raizlabs – Mobile Development. Intrepid – Mobile development. Extension Engine - Software engineering and design. Startup Institute – Practical training program to prepare you to join a startup.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

I’ve introduced a new class at Stanford to teach engineers, scientists and other professionals how startups really get built. We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. ——————– Engineering 245.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Customer service. Firebase : Are all your developers front-end engineers? Google Custom Search Engine. Google App Engine. Search Engine Optimization Tools. Codeacademy. Lean Methodology Sources. Steve Blank. SW Courses. Part 1- Intro. SlideShare.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2010

One of the classes I teach in the engineering school at Stanford is E145: the Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship , an introduction to building a scalable startup. Accounting Basics and Multi-stage Finance. Yet every team did figure out how to conduct extensive out of building Customer Discovery. (By

Intellectual Property 226

Intellectual Property Business Model Customer Development Distribution 226

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2016

She and her team ran a successful Kickstarter campaign, went through the Techstars Boulder 2015 accelerator program, and recently closed a $3 million financing round with The Foundry Group. . Filed under: Customer Development. Jacqueline Ros left a teaching job to found Revolar.

Entrepreneur 260

Entrepreneur Cofounder San Francisco Campaign 260

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

He argued that software engineers don’t finish what they start, and that you’re better off paying a technical person than partnering with one. He picked engineers who were technically-driven but not entrepreneurially-driven. He picked engineers who weren’t comfortable taking risks as great as he wanted to take.

Technical Cofounder 42

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42