View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Pre-seed investing should be super simple, so any signs of pro-rata rights, tranched financings, charging the company for value-added services, etc. As an inexperienced founder, you are very likely to take at least two rounds of financing before a series A, so the round to try to skip is any sort of second seed. should be avoided.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

The Times Square Strategy discussion I had with Eric Ries , was still top of mind, so instead of my standard Customer Development lecture , I offered my thoughts on: the origin of Customer Development, where we are today, and where does Customer Development go, and how you can help get it there.

Customer Development 227

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 227

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a key lean startup concept.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Here’s the punchline: if you run your company as if you have closed a VC equity financing round even though you actually closed a convertible debt round, you’ll be in much better shape when it comes time to raise your Series A financing. One of them used to be a lead developer at [insert hot consumer tech company here].

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

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. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter? End result?

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

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. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious.

Silicon Valley 253

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 253

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. ” Lean Business Planning: Get What You Want From Your Business. Why David Rose recommends it: “This guide takes the lean theories and shows you how to put them into practice.”. B y Eric Ries. B y Tim Berry.

Startup 80

Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. You might as well bring your lucky rabbits foot to the VC meeting.

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

If all the engineers work on the same thing at the same time, and all the marketers do the same, and QA, and ops, all the way down the line, then each department develops its own team-based private reality. Now picture product prioritization meetings in such a company. If you never have, you can create your own using Google Finance.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Markets with Customer/Market Risk are those where the unknown is whether customers will adopt the product. is whether there is a customer and market for the product as spec’d. In these markets it’s all about customer/market risk. Based on this insight, I updated my earlier diagram to look like this. (The

Vertical 162

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 162

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. a language corporate innovation groups can use to communicate to business units and finance. But the ‘ah-hah!’

Sacramento 312

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 312

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. In fact, this company hasn’t shipped any new products in months.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? And when do business planning and execution come into play?

Search 324

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 324

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Others emphasize how to build a product. If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know I believe that: 1) a product is just a part of a startup, but understanding customers, channel, pricing, etc. Therefore we developed a class to teach students how to think about all the parts of building a business, not just the product.

Wiki 316

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 316

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. He has a good team, and theyve shipped a working product to many customers.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

They communicated this to product management who looked at all of the internal requirements we had generated (e.g. some came from our customer service, some were to improve performance / scalability from tech ops, some were bug fixes, etc.) and product management worked with me to decide what to build & when.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

What if we could increase productivity and stave the capital flight by helping Life Sciences startups build their companies more efficiently? They also diagnostic products, test kits, ultrasound products, x-ray machines and medical lasers. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Science and Industrial Policy Teaching'

Startup 300

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 300

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

Our Lean Launchpad® for Life Sciences is one of them. The Lean Launchpad® for Life Sciences (the I-Corps @ NIH ) uses the Lean Startup Model to discover and validate the business model. The Lean Launchpad® for Life Sciences (the I-Corps @ NIH ) uses the Lean Startup Model to discover and validate the business model.

San Diego 265

San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 265

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

Second, the leaders of these companies tended to be those who excelled at finance, supply chain or production. ARM, a competitor, not only had a better, much lower power processor, but a better business model – they licensed their architecture to other companies that designed their own products.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

A business model diagram also shows how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. As a founder you start out with: 1) a vision of a product with a set of features, 2) a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users?

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 6, 2014

It turns out that Apple’s new product process is one of those. We used to get lots of Larry Ellison’s and these days we get more Mark Zuckerberg’s. Embodied in a program that runs on the company’s internal network, the ANPP resembled a giant checklist.

Product 84

Product Venture Capital Lean Finance 84

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

One day I heard there was an opening in the marketing department for a product marketing manager for the Z-8000 peripheral chips. I looked at the job spec and under “candidate requirements&# it listed everything I didn’t have: MBA, 5-10 years product marketing experience, blah, blah. I also knew our customers.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. existing enterprises are establishing corporate innovation groups. StageGate Process.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

There is a wealth of resources that are unique to this town and a vibrant community of hackers, product designers, business people, and investors at various stages in their career. Lean Startup Circle Boston – Meetup dedicated to the lean startup and customer development methodology. Jonathan Marino – PE Hub.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? Change who your product is for.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. So let’s be very specific: let’s assume your dream job is product manager at Google, working on the Analytics product. love to find great products and services made by entrepreneurs who are trying to change the world.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

www.startuplessonslearned.com

MAY 4, 2012

When the remaining cofounders were about to close their first round of financing, their potential funder, Mayfield, was not willing to close until Kaleil and Tom bought Chieh out and reclaimed his equity. Lean Startup Book. The Lean Startup at SXSW 2012. The Lean Startup Book Tour. The Lean Startup Book is here.

Equity 72

Equity Founder Technical Cofounder Cofounder 72

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 125

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

At Stanford, Dean of Engineering/Provost Fred Terman wanted companies outside of the university to take Stanford’s prototype microwave tubes and electronic intelligence systems and build production volumes for the military. The history of Fairchild was one of applied experimentation. It was learning, discovery, iteration and execution.

Engineer 311

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 311

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Last week the teams tested their Revenue Models hypotheses: what are customers willing to pay for? After a week of hectic customer discovery , the team further refined their new business model. Access to resources.

South Dakota 232

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 232

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

Do they “get&# Customer Development ? They understand that now’s not the time to hire a senior VP of Sales to start to scale the sales force or to look for a finance department to create income statements that say zero each month. Do They Get Customer Development? Have they heard about Customer Development ?

Founder 232

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 232

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

It seemed to make sense to have have all the parties represented at the committee, so lots of people attended – program managers who controlled the budget, the developers responsible for maintaining and enhancing the current product and building new ones, and representatives from the operating divisions who needed and would use these products.

Incubator 317

Incubator Curation Engineer Government 317

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. And yet, we so often loose sight of the fact that startups are not their products, their technological breakthroughs, or even their data. Let’s take each of these pieces in turn.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards. So when he saw the browser it instantly dawned on him that this would be the greatest customer development tool ever. This has been their formula for nearly 15 years.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

View from Seed

JANUARY 28, 2016

When we talk about seeds, we mean your first outside round of financing at the earliest stages of your business. Looking back at our current fund, 75% of our initial investments were made when the company was very much pre-product. At NextView, we pride ourselves as being a “one-product company.”

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Finance Founder Syndicate 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan realized that the traditional centralized management structures (like General Motors had in 1920) were poor fits for the management of GM’s already diverse product lines. Sloan kept the corporate staff small and focused on policymaking, corporate finance and planning. Think of the iPod family and its yearly new models.)

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 179