Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Max entered Stanford in the fall of 2010 as a freshman, took as many of the engineering entrepreneurship classes as he could and independent study with me. (He They went to work gathering deep knowledege of what makes successful Internet startups. Max and his partners interviewed and analyzed over 650 early-stage Internet startups.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

For the last 10 years China essentially closed its search, media and social network software market to foreign companies with the result that Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Dropbox, and 30,000 other websites were not accessible from China. 70% of Chinese Internet users are under 30. business models. New Rules for China.

China 216

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 216

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

We’re now in the second Internet bubble. Dot.com Bubble ( 1995-2000): “ Anything goes” as public markets clamor for ideas, vague promises of future growth, and IPOs happen absent regard for history or profitability. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. Carpe Diem.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

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. Freemium models have their own scorekeeping.)

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

Everybody and their mom uses the internet to discover new brands, influencers and ultimately to buy new products and services. If you want to compete with them, you’re going to have to develop a reputation and a strong web presence yourself. Custom development. Even more so than pricing, reviews and location proximity.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

It took me 8 startups and 21 years to get it right, (and one can argue success was due to the Internet bubble rather then any brilliance.) No internet, no blogs, no books on startups, no entrepreneurship departments in universities, etc. Since I wasn’t an engineer, my contribution was around the team-building and fund raising.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 185

SVPG

OCTOBER 14, 2014

We focus on scale and execution during times of peace, but once we encounter serious threats to our business from changing technology, evolving markets, and emerging competitors, this requires a war time mindset and a relentless focus on continuous innovation. In any case, the Internet happened. I call this problem “IT Mindset.”

Product 91

Product Technical Review Engineer CTO Hire 91

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Ardent would be my third technology company as a VP of Marketing (Convergent Technologies and MIPS Computers were the other two.) I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” It would be the company where I actually earned the title.

North Carolina 126

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 126

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

Present at the Creation It was early 1991 and Apple’s software development team was hard at work on QuickTime , the first multimedia framework for a computer. At the time no one (including Apple) knew exactly what consumers were going to do with multimedia, it was still pre-Internet. The software was idiot proof.

Video 168

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 168

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

It ultimately failed because she was focused on engineering the product, but didn’t validate the rest of her business model (product/market fit, distribution channel, customer acquisition, etc.). Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. I always tell people … “99.9%

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

We had thought really hard about “ market type ” and decided to reposition the company from a technology provider to a solutions provider. Metrics – Mine is Bigger Than Yours The first thing SuperMac needed to do was to change how our potential color desktop publishing customers viewed our products versus our competitors’ products.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 29, 2018

If you want to take your business to the next level, you should consider app development. Are you are a startup that needs to market your products and services ? Either way, custom software development is an effective way to build brand awareness and give your business a competitive edge.

Developer 93

Developer Offshore Software Developers Software Development 93

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." Thats why eBay advertises on search engines, and Facebook doesnt. All three probably make attempts at world-of-mouth marketing - its just that for Viral, its life-or-death.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Little Indians and Big Indians At MIPS Computers , my second semiconductor company, I was the VP of Marketing and defacto head of Sales. I was just in marketing.

Customer Development 280

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 280

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering. But since I spent a long time in a hybrid CTO/VP Engineering role, I still have this nagging question. I want to add one last idea, even though I recognize it is controversial, bordering on the boundary between the CTO and VP Engineering. Heres my take.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

I was an engineer on the engineering team. For one, the engineers consider the artists stupid; the artists consider the engineers arrogant. The engineering team would then build that feature, mimicking the UI as close as they could using the current primitives supported by the system. The meeting was tense.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

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 got my start programming on an old IBM XT; it was thanks to MUDs that I first discovered the internet. An engineer who can talk intelligently about gender!

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. They work hard to keep their house in order at all times, and there are strict rules and guidelines in place that prevent engineers and teams from doing things their own way.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

At the very least, you can plug those assumptions into your financial model, now that you have a sense for what the cost of acquiring new customers might look like. Even more importantly, you can start to experiment with feature set, positioning, and marketing - all without building a product. Eric -- This is a pretty interesting idea.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

She was an academic on leave from Stanford now selling SAAS software to large companies, but was being inundated with marketing communications advice. “My I reminded her that all the Lean tools she learned in class–Customer Discovery, business model and value proposition canvases– contained her answer. Here’s how.

Marketing 312

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 312

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. Terrorists harnessing the internet to radicalize and recruit new members. A giant fork in the road.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. Terrorists harnessing the internet to radicalize and recruit new members. A giant fork in the road.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

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

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Over time the idea that winners in new markets are the ones who have been the first (not just early) entrants into their categories became unchallenged conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley. Soon every other VC was using the phrase to justify the reckless “get big fast” strategies of dot-com startups during the Internet Bubble.

Silicon Valley 319

Silicon Valley Differentiation United States Customer Development 319

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

It is becoming easier and cheaper for companies to bring products to market, leveraging free and open source software , cloud computing, open social data (Facebook, OpenSocial ), and open distribution (AdWords, SEO). Lean startups have the ability to use this commodity stack to lower costs and, more importantly, reduce time to market.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

It required hearing customers say it over and over again for us to take a serious look, and eventually to realize that social networking was core to our business. Later, when the company was much larger, we had everyone on our engineering team agree to sit in on one usability test every month. Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

As a consumer internet company with millions of customers, it may seem to have little relevancy for an enterprise software company with only a handful of potential customers, or a computer security company whose customers demand a rigorous audit before accepting a new release. Why does it work?

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. I met one recently that is working on a really innovative product, and the stories I heard from their development team made me want to cringe.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

In the early fall of 2009, as kaChing prepared for its marketplace launch, the management team showed the app—which included real time market data, SEC-grade accounting, analytics, compliance and customer management tools—to a number of investment pros to get feedback and endorsements. Thus far the results are encouraging.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

I thought a good place to start was with the origins of the idea that "software design" should be considered a discipline in its own right, on par with computer science, software engineering, and computer programming. Great engineers see it and smile. This is called set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE). [1]

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

The human tendency to moralize about debt affects engineers, too. Just as a business incurs some debt to take advantage of a market opportunity developers may incur technical debt to hit an important deadline. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

We just finished our Lean LaunchPad class at UC Berkeley’s engineering school where many of the teams embedded machine learning technology into their products. The technology’s broad market applicability and relevance are clearly paying off. Get of the building and test those hypotheses using customer development.

Artificial Inteligence 320

Artificial Inteligence Lean Exit Strategy Startup 320

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 10, 2014

by Francois Bondiguel , Online Marketing Manager at VendHQ.com. The job market. Today, you need ways to keep customers coming in the door. That’s the magic behind this devilishly ingenious marketing strategy. It can also annoy customers if they catch on that you’re following them all over the web. The economy.

Customer 244

Customer Retention Programming Customer Development 244