Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 16, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. As Lean Startup methods have been used now for a number of years, we’ve become increasingly interested in how companies use them to sustain growth. The new process let us manage the velocity of change in the codebase low, keeping the resistance manageable.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Software Engineering Agile 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. Through HBR I discovered the work of Peter Drucker and first read about management by objective. Today, we’ve come full circle as Lean goes mainstream.

Technical Review 327

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 327

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 28, 2013

While the Lean LaunchPad class has been adopted by Universities and the National Science Foundation , the question we get is, “Can students in K-12 handle an experiential entrepreneurship class?” They both attended our latest Lean LaunchPad Educators Class. The Lean LaunchPad methodology is proven. We’re ready,”.

Lean 201

Lean Cleveland Ohio Business Model 201

Steve Blank

MAY 19, 2021

To help a large Defense organization wrestle with how to increase the velocity of innovation in their ranks Steve Blank and I spent the better part of last week with our heads together reviewing everything we learned in the five years since we merged the concepts of problem curation and Lean while launching the innovation pipeline.

Curation 344

Curation Technical Review Lean Australia 344

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

Over the last three years our Lean LaunchPad / NSF Innovation Corps classes have been teaching hundreds of entrepreneurial teams a year how to build their startups by getting out of the building and testing their hypotheses behind their business model. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. You can imagine how well that worked. On the minus side, that has made it a wee bit hard to understand.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. Through HBR I discovered the work of Peter Drucker and first read about management by objective. Today, we’ve come full circle as Lean goes mainstream.

Technical Review 219

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 219

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 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

Although the class was run completely online, and even though they were suffering from Zoom fatigue, the 10 teams of 42 students collectively interviewed 1,142 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, industry partners, etc. Team Fleetwise – Vehicle Fleet Management. All the presentations are worth a watch.

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

In January, we introduced a new graduate course at Stanford called the " target="_blank">Lean LaunchPad. It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. But we could be wrong.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Lean 333

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 333

Steve Blank

JANUARY 15, 2017

I-Corps uses Lean Startup methods to teach scientists how to turn their discoveries into entrepreneurial, job-producing businesses. But I haven’t forgotten that before everyone else thought that teaching scientists how to build companies using Lean Methods might be a good for the country, there was one congressman who got it first.

Lean 238

Lean Technical Review Government Programming 238

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Today, I want to introduce you to a new concept for starting and growing successful companies: Lean Planning™. Before I dive too deeply into the Lean Planning methodology, it makes sense to talk about its history and where it comes from. Lean Planning is born. At the time, we used Business Plan Pro and Basecamp for this.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

They could have helped us anticipate and solve organizational challenges and agree on how we planned to manage the risks. We should have asked for a broader innovation time off and incentive policy for employees, managers, and executives. Developing a program to generate new ideas is the easy part.

Programming 265

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 265

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

Second, doing customer discovery via video actually increased the number of interviews the students were able to do each week. The eight teams spoke to over 945 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, warfighters, legal, security, customers, etc. Our goal was to teach both theory and practice.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

Steve Blank

JANUARY 15, 2017

I-Corps uses Lean Startup methods to teach scientists how to turn their discoveries into entrepreneurial, job-producing businesses. But I haven’t forgotten that before everyone else thought that teaching scientists how to build companies using Lean Methods might be a good for the country, there was one congressman who got it first.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Review Government Programming 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

— I just watched a very smart company try to manage innovation by hiring a global consulting firm to offload engineering from “distractions.” A canonical Lean Innovation process inside a company or government agency would look something like this: Curation. A shorter version of this post first appeared on the HBR blog.

Incubator 312

Incubator Curation Engineer Government 312

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, March 25, 2009 The Lean Startup at Agile Vancouver April 21st A surprising number of respondents in the latest Lessons Learned survey hail from one of the flourishing startup hubs in Canada. This workshop brings together leading thinkers from Lean Production and Lean software.

Agile 60

Agile Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

These days, many agencies start as a lean operation. Inversely, if you’re using the agency model to fund another startup or product, you should probably keep things lean. This approach takes a lot of work, so it’s worth taking a lean approach when starting. Why—or why not—pivot your agency service offering? Image source ).

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PR B2B Lean Audience 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Hacking for Diplomacy takes the Lean Startup methodology and applies it to problems sourced from the State Department. Teams are continuing their relentless interviewing of customers, or beneficiaries as we call them in this class. He’s hoping to take some of the Lean methods back to his work in economics. “I

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Hacking for Diplomacy takes the Lean Startup methodology and applies it to problems sourced from the State Department. Teams are continuing their relentless interviewing of customers, or beneficiaries as we call them in this class. He’s hoping to take some of the Lean methods back to his work in economics. “I

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 22, 2009 Pivot, dont jump to a new vision In a lean startup , instead of being organized around traditional functional departments, we use a cross-functional problem team and solution team. Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

A Lean Startup methodology offers entrepreneurs a framework to focus on what’s important: Business Model Discovery. Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. Over 10 weeks each team gets out and talks to 100 customers.

Oakland 326

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

PHP can do what no other language or framework can (albeit django). The proliferation of high quality, best practices frameworks - such as CakePHP (rails for PHP), Zend Framework (my personal favorite), Simfony and Seagul just to name a few. and Rails as a web framework. Keep HTML HTML and Javascript Javascript.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Up and Running

DECEMBER 5, 2016

Lean Planning is a concept that we introduced back in 2012 as an evolution in business planning. However, the traditional business plan took too long to write, often wasn’t read by anyone outside the business, and wasn’t used properly to start, grow, and manage businesses. But, where did Lean Planning come from?

Lean 60

Lean Silicon Valley Business Model Forecast 60

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2019

The eight teams spoke to over 820 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, warfighters, legal, security, customers, etc. Followed by an 8-minute slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the presentations are worth a watch. Team: Panacea.

Oakland 266

Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 266

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 28, 2020

With the theme “Build Back Better” Jerry Engel , Pete Newell , Steve Weinstein and I co-hosted nearly 500 Lean Educators from 63 countries and 235 universities online for a three-hour session to share what we’ve learned about educators on how we can help our communities rebound, adjust, and recover. — Background. Breakout Sessions.

Lean 399

Lean Community San Jose Africa 399

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

And when companies pursue sustaining innovations — like a product line extension or a new technology designed to serve an existing customer segment — this procedure makes complete sense. Safely because it is clear that the manager in question didnt do his homework. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

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 320

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 29, 2010

Traveling the past year, I have heard loud and clear that its time for the Lean Startup movement to enter its next phase. Tactics were discussed out of context, and there wasnt an overarching framework for figuring out what works for what kinds of companies, industries, and stages of growth. Is design important to lean startups?

San Francisco 120

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 120

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

One of the most common questions I get about the lean startup methodology is, "but what about Steve Jobs ?" When I try to unpack what people mean by the question, heres my best take on what they are asking: "Look, Steve Jobs doesnt go out and ask customers what they want. He tells customers what they want, and he gets it right.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. What can you do about it?

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Managing these situations is hard for any company, but potentially lethal for a startup. The theory is that there is some truth in both camps, and the right way to manage the disagreement is to sprinkle a little bit of both into our plans. To the people being managed that way, it feels like the boss is being capricious or arbitrary.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I am convinced one of Joel Spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the Joel Test , a checklist of 12 essential practices that you could use to rate the effectiveness of a software product development team. Please leave feedback!) Joels Painless Bug Tracking is still the gold standard.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

They are gaining valuable customer data. These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process. For more on how this plays into the process of scaling up, see the Customer Creation stage of the customer development model.) They are closing orders.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167