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 247

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

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. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot.

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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. Finally, I’ll write about how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided 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 221

Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

The Customer Development talk can be seen here. If you’ve never seen Eric’s Lean Startup presentation, take a few minutes to at least watch his part. That said I will be giving a Customer Development talk at TIECON , Saturday May 16th, 1:30 thanks for asking. steve Customer Development is Hard.

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 143

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. There’s lots of lore, emotion, and misconceptions of what VC’s do or don’t do for entrepreneurs. In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# Reply One difference between VCs and Entrepreneurs « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog , on April 20, 2009 at 7:06 am Said: [.]

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Other Roles in a Startup Generic advice given to entrepreneurs assumes that everyone is going to be the founder/co-founder. Reply steveblank , on June 14, 2009 at 2:22 pm Said: Actually this is the mistake most startup entrepreneurs make – particularly in tough economic times. Get customers first.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (..)

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. As a young entrepreneur in his first startup, this post hits our current situation spot on.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. While that’s not true, it is a fact that entrepreneurs only have one word for “startup.”

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 204

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) 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. Would love to get in touch.

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Entrepreneurs in Bend.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (..)

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. But at times it’s why entrepreneurs can sink their own companies. More on this in later posts.)

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 203

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. Reply steveblank , on November 26, 2009 at 10:29 am Said: Just the stories of the entrepreneurs are bigger than life. Just a reflection on my family and hopes for our children.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Platform selection and technical design - if your business strategy is to create a low-burn, highly iterative lean startup, youd better be using foundational tools that make that easy rather than hard. But I think in a lean startup, the development methodology is too important to be considered "just management." I dont think so.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Reply Karma in the Lean Startup Era , on January 28, 2010 at 5:26 pm Said: [.] Reply Relentless – The Difference Between Motion And Action « Steve Blank , on November 9, 2009 at 6:02 am Said: [.] to move their applications to our unique machine architecture.

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Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. Am I in a company with “invention risk? Or does my company have both types of risk?

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 148

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

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. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 26, 2010

Entrepreneurs see things before others do. The best entrepreneurs pivot on each hallucination until they get it right – then we call them practitioners of the Lean Startup.). (The The best entrepreneurs pivot on each hallucination until they get it right – then we call them practitioners of the Lean Startup.).

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San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean Startup 144

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

his next article on SuperMac, “Building the Killer Team – Mission, Intent, and Values&# , Steve further pounds the table on some principles of leadership that I think are [.] on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog. Reply How to close a term sheet quickly - Venture Hacks , on April 28, 2009 at 10:43 am Said: [.]

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Heres what I do know: The future strength of our economy depends on its ability to create, support, and sustain entrepreneurs. (If If you are somehow not convinced of this point, Ill let Fareed Zakaria explain ) We know who the next generation of entrepreneurs are going to be. Nerds are not entrepreneurs. They are nerds.

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Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

We four instructors would grumble and complain to one another about our lack of leadership. For entrepreneurs good things come to those who ask. Entreprenuers Know How to Ask Successful entrepreneurs have the ability to ask for things relentlessly. What’s Marketing? or whatever is necessary to build a company.

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Up and Running

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

At Palo Alto Software, I am surrounded by entrepreneurs. Our LivePlan customers are entrepreneurs, our founder and staff have run and sold companies, the Bplans readers are aspiring entrepreneurs (or actual entrepreneurs), and as I sell my own handmade jewelry, I like to think I have a very small claim to the title.

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Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

Mass TLC Unconference: Large annual conference put on by the MA Technology Leadership Council. Babson Entrepreneur Resource Center. Lean Startup Circle Boston – Meetup dedicated to the lean startup and customer development methodology. Next major event? Future M on Oct 16. University Resources: MIT 100K.

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Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

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.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 280

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. Reply 4 Anti-Lean Startup Archetypes at Market By Numbers , on August 4, 2009 at 11:30 am Said: [.]

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

For the rest of us, there is an alternative: to create credibility by building a lean startup. We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

A key lesson is that as an entrepreneur, you get to choose your segment. I like to talk about the fact that choosing your segment determines how you will reach your customer, what you will to say to them, and what the sales process will look like (since it depends on the buyer’s process). Glad to see you blogging!

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Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 145

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 21, 2010

BTW, the definition of entrepreneurship I describe at 2:50 into the video is described in detail in the post “ You’re Not a Real Entrepreneur.&# Filed under: Customer Development « Requiem For A Roommate 2 Responses steve , on October 21, 2010 at 7:05 am Said: what did Carl say at 1:12 ?

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Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Facts are the rock on which you build your strategy and tactics In a startup second-hand facts are almost as useless as opinions.

Silicon Valley 137

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The leadership art is to balance the needs of the present with the needs of the future. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Expo SF (May. .

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 76

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Marketing , SuperMac , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , SuperMac « Love/Hate Business Plan Competitions Gravity Will be Turned Off » 17 Responses EricS , on May 11, 2009 at 11:05 am Said: I loved my Spigot. It was fun watching it happen.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you’re an entrepreneur, ESL is the most important company you’ve never heard of. If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. If you think the Cold War turned out the right side up (i.e. Ah, ‘thems’ were the days.

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