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The Customer Development Manifesto: Reasons for the Revolution.

Steve Blank

The first hint lies in its name; this is a product development model, not a marketing model, not a sales hiring model, not a customer acquisition model, not even a financing model (and we’ll also find that in most cases it’s even a poor model to use to develop a product.) release of the product.

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This Week in Venture Capital – Episode 2

Both Sides of the Table

I was on This Week in Venture Capital (TWiVC) again this week with Jason Calacanis. They bought distribution and engineering talent. My take was that this follows three trends: a) customer involvement in product design, b) mass customization [e.g. Tags: This Week in Venture Capital VC Industry.

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Corporate Venture Capital: Obligatory or Oxymoron?

David Teten

She had so much insight to share that we broke the interview into two parts, 1) Corporate Venture Capital and more broadly, 2) How the Fortune 500 Can Buy, Invest and Partner with the Innovation Economy (coming soon). . I recently had a chance to interview Mari Joller , an expert on corporate innovation, on this topic.

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

Steve Blank

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 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds. Part 3: Engineering a Regional Tech Cluster.

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Ardent War Story 5: The Best Marketers Are Engineers

Steve Blank

While the last post was titled “ You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When They Offer You a Job “, this post should probably be titled, “You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When You Offer Them a Job.&# Context here.) At the time this was a pretty controversial decision.

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When Hell Froze Over – in the Harvard Business Review

Steve Blank

There was nothing suggesting that startups and new ventures needed their own tools and techniques, different from those written about in HBR or taught in business schools. 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.

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How Private Equity and Venture Capital Investors Are Eating Their Own Dogfood

David Teten

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund and mutual fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. produced this analysis of engineering representation within VC firms: Selected VCs with Highest Representation of Developers in Workforce. Google Ventures (GV).