Customer Development, Engineer, IPO and Silicon Valley

Early-stage Regional Venture Funds–part 2 of 3 of Bigger in Bend

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. Why Valley Rules Don’t Work in Regional Economies.

Early Stage

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review

Lessons Learned: What is customer development?

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way.

Customer Development

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer

How Scientists and Engineers Got It Right, and VC’s Got It Wrong

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. Why It’s “Silicon” Valley. ———-.

Engineer

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital

SuperMac War Story 10: The Video Spigot « Steve Blank

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. My first IPO at Convergent.

Video

Video Silicon Valley RSS California

Some IPO speculation

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 15, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, July 15, 2010 Some IPO speculation Inspired by Steve Blank’s post today about the “lost decade&# of IPO’s , I’d like to make some predictions. The fact that IPO’s are disappearing makes intuitive sense to me. Let me be clear: Steve is the historian.

IPO

IPO San Francisco Lean Silicon Valley

Building a new startup hub

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Its easy to take Silicon Valley for granted. Ive written a little bit about the origins of Silicon Valley because I think its important for us to understand how we got here in order to make sure we preserve what is best about our community. And do your customer development.

San Francisco

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean

New Rules for the New Internet Bubble

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit. Carpe Diem.

Internet

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile

Paul Graham on fundraising

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 2, 2008 Paul Graham on fundraising I have found no better primer on the current realities of starting a new technology company in a startup hub like Silicon Valley than Paul Grahams essays. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile

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

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment

The Leading Cause of Startup Death – Part 1: The Product.

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The startup develops its first positioning statement and uses this to explain the company and its benefits to venture capitalists.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development

Lessons Learned: Where did Silicon Valley come from?

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, November 11, 2008 Where did Silicon Valley come from? I think the absolute best reading on this subject is a book called Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee Saxenian. And what were they doing beforehand?

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Thank you

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Id like to call special attention to Kurt Carr s perspective (lets hope he finishes his five-part series): Now that I’m back in Ohio (I was one of the token foreigners in a room full of Silicon Valley residents), I have found myself reliving and rethinking much of what I saw there. We all owe him our thanks for persevering.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review

Lessons Learned: Using AdWords to assess demand for your new.

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. What is customer development?

Demand

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: Principles of Lean Startups, presentation for.

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. For customer development, start with Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany or take a look at his recent Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lecture.

Lean

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: ScienceDaily: Corporate culture is most important.

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

At Toyota , they are called Chief Engineer : Toyota realizes that the Chief Engineer job is probably the most important one in the company because the Chief Engineer listens to the customer and then determines what the functions need to do to address the customer’s desires. What is customer development?

San Francisco

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

Vertical Markets 4: Putting it All Together « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing

Lessons Learned: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done.

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

► 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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development?

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

The Lean Startup Workshop - now an O'Reilly Master Class

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Take a look: This full-day Master Class focuses on how to build a startup from the ground up to focus on customers, markets, and speed of iteration. Im working on a future post where Ill share the details of how I used customer development to shape both the content and packaging of this event, so look for that soon.

Lean

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review

The Lean Startup Tokyo edition

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, June 9, 2009 The Lean Startup Tokyo edition I had a blast speaking at Startonomics Tokyo , which was organized to foster ties between the startup cultures in Japan and Silicon Valley. Yet its one of those features thats only ever requested by investors and engineers - never by customers.

Lean

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment

Join the Lean Startup discussion at Web 2.0 Expo for free

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

I plan to apply these models to my own ventures, especially within new contexts separate from software and web development. The problem is that the most authentic innovators and entrepreneurs are in the Valley. I want more than anything to come to Silicon Valley after I graduate and join the vibrant ecosystem.

Lean

Lean San Francisco Web Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: Please teach kids programming, Mr. President

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Im not offering extensive studies or research to support this conclusion; the evidence from my peers right here in the innovation capital of America, Silicon Valley, is absolutely overwhelming. Asked to help, I am confident that Silicon Valley and every other innovation center will step up. They are nerds.

Programming

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the Lean Startup)

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 20, 2010

Heres an excerpt: Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster - WSJ.com Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists often churn out how-to business books and fancy themselves as management gurus, but few see their methodologies adopted. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Lean

Lean San Francisco Arlington Continuous Deployment

Marching through quicksand

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Most publishers are still caught up in an outdated “vision vs. metrics&# argument, which is already obsolete here in Silicon Valley. The world is generally not as tech-savvy as Silicon Valley and will continue to rely on traditional mechanisms for content distribution for the foreseeable future.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution

Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23, 2010 in SF)

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 9, 2010

The event is being produced in partnership with Charles Hudson, who puts on many of Silicon Valleys top events, including the forthcoming Freemium Summit. The event is being produced in partnership with Charles Hudson, who puts on many of Silicon Valleys top events, including the forthcoming Freemium Summit.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup

Lo, my 2295 subscribers, who are you?

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

If youre used to pitching your company in a startup hub, like here in Silicon Valley, you may suffer from a debilitating disease: the inability to describe your product to normal people. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

Tell your Startup Visa story

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

This is especially true if you live outside the echo chamber of Silicon Valley. This is especially true if you live outside the echo chamber of Silicon Valley. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? There are four ways to get involved below.

San Francisco

San Francisco DC Startup Lean

Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and media buyers

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

► 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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development?

Advertising

Advertising San Francisco Media Continuous Deployment

The Secret History of Silicon Valley 11: The Rise of “Risk Capital.

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2009

This is the first of two posts about the rise of “risk capital” and how it came to be associated with what became Silicon Valley. ———————– Building Blocks of Entrepreneurship By the mid 1950’s the groundwork for a culture and environment of entrepreneurship were taking shape on the east and west coasts of the United States.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Securities and Exchange Commission Venture Capital RSS

Lessons Learned: The ABCDEF's of conducting a technical interview

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

Finding great engineers is hard; figuring out whos good is even harder. For software engineers, I think this absolutely has to be a programming problem solved on a whiteboard. I have found this quite rare in engineers. Many of us engineers are strong introverts, without fantastic people skills.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Agile Java

The Secret History of Silicon Valley 12: The Rise of “Risk Capital.

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

This is the second of three posts about the rise of “risk capital” and how it came to be associated with what became Silicon Valley. ———————– The First Valley IPO’s Silicon Valley first caught the eyes of east coast investors in the late 1950’s when the valleys first three IPO’s happened: Varian in 1956, Hewlett Packard in 1957, and Ampex in 1958.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley SBIC San Francisco RSS

10 years of entrepreneurship

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

And then, at my first Silicon Valley startup , I watched friends get laid off in successive waves as it started to fail. Almost all of them got scooped up by pre-IPO Google this time. That year, right before the IPO, those months mattered a great deal in terms of financial outcomes.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

Lo, my 1032 subscribers, who are you?

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

► 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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development?

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, December 7, 2008 The hackers lament One of the thrilling parts of working and writing in Silicon Valley is the incredible variety of people Ive had the chance to meet. And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time!

Software Review

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco

Lessons Learned: Five Whys

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Its why, at my previous job, we were able to get a new engineer completely productive on their first day. Most engineers would ship code to production on their first day. Let me show you what this looked like after a few years of practicing five whys in the operations and engineering teams at IMVU.

Software Review

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment

What would you want to tell Washington DC about startups?

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

Much of what makes the USA, and Silicon Valley in particular, such a great place to start a company is the result of good government policy. I started my last company with 100% off-shore resources because I could never have completed Customer Development at a reasonable cost of money or regulatory burden had I employed US Citizens.

DC

DC Washington San Francisco SBIR

Lessons Learned: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done.

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

For example, should we invest a week of engineering time into making our website more failure-proof (which were pretty sure will pay off right away) or into experimenting with a new technology (that might pay off in months, years, or never)? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

The free software hiring advantage

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

This is especially true in Silicon Valley. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thats all helpful for recruiting, retaining, and ramping-up a new employee. You dont have to guess who their mentor will be. Youre not competing with every other company in town.

Software Review

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco

Lessons Learned: Don't launch

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Do some Customer Development instead. IMVU was a top-1000 website in the world, with millions of customers and making millions of dollars without getting any significant press coverage. In fact, we often felt frustrated when new startups with a fraction of our success got terrific write-ups in Silicon Valley-centric venues.

San Francisco

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage

Lessons Learned: Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to.

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

► 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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development?

.Net

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean

Lessons Learned: Achieving a failure

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

After years of engineering effort, changing these assumptions was incredibly hard. Without conscious process design, product development teams turn lines of code written into momentum in a certain direction. Worse was the large staff in departments appropriate to a mainstream-scale product, especially in customer service and QA.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment

Innovation, Change and the Rest of Your Life

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I’ve seen the Valley grow from Sunnyvale to Santa Clara to today where it stretches from San Jose to South of Market in San Francisco. I’ve watched the Valley go from Microwave Valley – to Defense Valley – to Silicon Valley to Internet Valley. So how did this happen? Where is it going?

Restful

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose

Startup Resources

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Firebase : Are all your developers front-end engineers? Google Custom Search Engine. Google App Engine. Search Engine Optimization Tools. usability testing for designers and developers. Google App Engine â?? Codeacademy. Steve Blank.

Software Review

Software Review Technical Review Startup

Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campaign trail

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

► 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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development?

Campaign

Campaign San Francisco Lean Agile

The cardinal sin of community management

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

I agree that listening and communicating is a key to success, but customer development can only do so much. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Eric September 13, 2009 11:32 AM Joel Andren said. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Community

Community Management Lean Software Review

Early-stage Regional Venture Funds–part 2 of 3 of Bigger in Bend

Lessons Learned: What is customer development?

Trending Sources

How Scientists and Engineers Got It Right, and VC’s Got It Wrong

SuperMac War Story 10: The Video Spigot « Steve Blank

Some IPO speculation

Building a new startup hub

New Rules for the New Internet Bubble

Paul Graham on fundraising

Lessons Learned: Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile

The Leading Cause of Startup Death – Part 1: The Product.

Lessons Learned: Where did Silicon Valley come from?

Thank you

Lessons Learned: Using AdWords to assess demand for your new.

Lessons Learned: Principles of Lean Startups, presentation for.

Lessons Learned: ScienceDaily: Corporate culture is most important.

Vertical Markets 4: Putting it All Together « Steve Blank

Lessons Learned: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done.

The Lean Startup Workshop - now an O'Reilly Master Class

The Lean Startup Tokyo edition

Join the Lean Startup discussion at Web 2.0 Expo for free

Lessons Learned: Please teach kids programming, Mr. President

Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the Lean Startup)

Marching through quicksand

Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23, 2010 in SF)

Lo, my 2295 subscribers, who are you?

Tell your Startup Visa story

Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and media buyers

The Secret History of Silicon Valley 11: The Rise of “Risk Capital.

Lessons Learned: The ABCDEF's of conducting a technical interview

The Secret History of Silicon Valley 12: The Rise of “Risk Capital.

10 years of entrepreneurship

Lo, my 1032 subscribers, who are you?

Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Lessons Learned: Five Whys

What would you want to tell Washington DC about startups?

Lessons Learned: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done.

The free software hiring advantage

Lessons Learned: Don't launch

Lessons Learned: Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to.

Lessons Learned: Achieving a failure

Innovation, Change and the Rest of Your Life

Startup Resources

Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campaign trail

The cardinal sin of community management

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