SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Draw Your Ideas - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 16, 2010 I saw Jack Dorsey give this talk at The 99% Conference last month. The Yin and Yang of Product and Engineering - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 22, 2010 For a tech company, product and engineering are the heart and soul of the business.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

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 We found 4 different major groups of startups that all have very different behavior regarding customer acquisition, time, product, market and team. I was feeling pretty old.

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Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. The combination of Venture Capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. The NSF will fund 100 science and engineering research projects every year. billion U.S.

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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.) What plan says that?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Since I wasn’t an engineer, my contribution was around the team-building and fund raising. Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one.

Silicon Valley 179

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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

MARCH 29, 2010

In my last post I described my approach to one of the three classes I teach at Stanford in the engineering school: Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship. After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner. They set up and keep the class web site updated.

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Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

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. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2011

I spent a few days in March in Ann Arbor Michigan as a guest of Professor Thomas Zurbuchen , Associate Dean for Entrepreneurial Programs, and Doug Neal , Director of Center for Entrepreneurship in the Engineering School at the University of Michigan. Venture Capital ; met with the local hardware/software venture capital firm.

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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. The real risk in markets like Web 2.0

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

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 Thanks Steve!

Silicon Valley 120

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The Next Web

MAY 4, 2013

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Stefano Bernardi, who is on the founding team of Betable , where he heads Customer Development. Previously, he worked in venture capital in Europe. Talk to competitors, executives, engineers, recruiters. You can check out his blog and follow him on Twitter.

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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. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Lets take venture capital and grow this thing into a real business.”. Typically the size of their opportunity and company doesn’t lend itself to attracting venture capital. The Web and Startups. Herein lies the confusion; not every business on the web can scale big. The Scalable Startup.

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Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires. We will accomplish this through demand-creation activities (advertising, PR, tradeshows, seminars, web sites, etc.),

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Brendan McManus said: “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [link] #startup #advice [.] Your “Customer Development Process&# has really resonated for me. Your results may vary.

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Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209

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.” As the engineers were busy rearchitecting the original Stanford MIPS chip into a commercial product, one of my jobs was to find out what features customers wanted.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s engineered financial transactions, working with entrepreneurs to brand, hype and take public un profitable companies with grand promises of the future. Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. You have to deliver.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

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. Jon Feiber of Mohr Davidow Ventures and Ann Miura-Ko of Floodgate are co-teaching the class with me (and Alexander Osterwalder is a guest lecturer.) Their objective is to get users, orders, customers, etc.

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Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Rather than invent a new form of corporate governance, venture investors adopted the traditional board meeting structure from large corporations. Silicon Valley, New York). Here’s how. Because We’ve Always Done It This Way.

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Rather than invent a new form of corporate governance, venture investors adopted the traditional board meeting structure from large corporations. Silicon Valley, New York). Here’s how. Because We’ve Always Done It This Way.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 1, 2011

Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. The combination of venture capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. The NSF will fund 100 science and engineering research projects every year. Until today.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Balance Sheet Lean 118

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2010

That process involves rapid hypothesis testing, validated learning about customers , and a disciplined approach to product development. Myth: The Lean Startup methodology is only for Web 2.0/internet/consumer Truth: The Lean Startup methodology applies to all companies that face uncertainty about what customers will want.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that. However, for the Web 2.0

Vertical 128

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 128

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. Seed-stage investors are learning the metrics of traction, and are getting better at identifying those companies that are really achieving validated learning about customers. Though technology tools and Web 2.0 ideas (e.g.

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SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Who better to answer than the company's engineering lead. I’d been around the web long enough to remember the dozens of companies before YouTube that tried to create crowdsourced video sites and failed. Competing To Win Deals - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 7, 2010 The venture capital business is highly competitive.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If you think you are going to offend your customers or embarrass your engineering organization, get out of the marketing department. If you’re in markets that still exhibit at them (semiconductors, communications, enterprise software, medical devices, etc.,) you know they’re expensive in time, dollars and resources.

Silicon Valley 178

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 178

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2011

As it turned out, rather than run me out of town on a rail, the two venture capital firms that had lost $12 million in my failed startup actually asked me to work with them. And to their credit…Berkeley’s Business School and then Stanford’s Engineering School let me write and teach a new course based on my ideas.

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ReadWriteStart

JUNE 13, 2011

Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology that helps startups optimize their chances for success while reducing risk. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Silicon Valley, New York).

Silicon Valley 117

Silicon Valley Balance Sheet Metrics Early Stage 117

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. This wave of 1950′s/’60′s startups (Watkins-Johnson, Varian, Huggins Labs, MEC, Stewart Engineering, etc.) And these microwave engineers were working at startups – not large companies.

Silicon Valley 270

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

Categories and indexes on the web pages aren’t quite the right metaphor or substitute for random access. After I retired, I began teaching Customer Development , a theory of how to reduce early stage risk in entrepreneurial ventures. Raising Money Using Customer Development……… 47.

Silicon Valley 202

Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 202

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

It’s a particularly popular strategy in the world of product development and is used to quickly and quantitatively test a product or a product feature. Eric Ries, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup, popularized this strategy for web applications. venture capital. Seek out venture capital funding.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Since there was very little documentation my time was split between the design engineers who built the system and the test and deployment team getting the system ready to go overseas. After I was done teaching each the day, I continued to write the operations manuals and work with the test engineers. (I Are You Single? Sign me up.

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Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 245

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

They have many, many man-years of development and customer development in them. I want to go to this homepage and think me, as the founder of WP Engine, I want to go in here and think, ‘Oh my God, we need this,’ and then sign up. No, I’m a very happy customer actually. Jason: Yeah. Edwin: Right.

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

If you’re a startup raising money or just want to see your name online, there’s not a better blog on the web. Reading this TechCrunch post made me remember the first time I saw someone confront a worldview they didn’t expect. Discovering that your worldview is wrong or mistaken can be a life-changing event.

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

The timing is perfect, there is more than a little overlap with Vivek Wadhwa’s guest post on venture capital earlier today. The best composition is probably one engineer whose passion lies in the pixels on the screen and another engineer whose passion is making bits fly really fast through servers. Sorry, folks.

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Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84