Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

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.&#

Engineer 205

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 205

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

But for the last decade “innovation” in Chinese software meant something different than it did in Silicon Valley. The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Of course “copy” is too strong a word. I can’t imagine a U.S.

China 324

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 324

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Entrepreneurs beyond Silicon Valley, including those working abroad, often have to retool Lean Startup methods to apply them in places with very different business cultures. Those conversations can often circle around the difficulties of entrepreneurship outside Silicon Valley. On September 24 in the U.S.

Silicon Valley 168

Silicon Valley Lean Puerto Rico Japan 168

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products.

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley. Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. Corporate elephants can dance. So why this post?

Silicon Valley 228

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 228

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

But for the last decade “innovation” in Chinese software meant something different than it did in Silicon Valley. The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Of course “copy” is too strong a word. I can’t imagine a U.S.

China 216

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 216

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

As the emeritus Chief Technology Officer of the United States, he still connects government and Silicon Valley. He’s a founder of Andreessen Horowitz, which has backed Facebook, Skype, Jawbone, and dozens of other companies whose products you use. And the whole site was developed in just 9 weeks.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

But what made the overwhelming impression for me was finding an entrepreneurial software cluster on par with the Internet software portion of Silicon Valley. The table below maps the type of software in China to their global equivalents in each product category in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) sector.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 269

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Your product and company vision needs to match your appetite for funding. He stressed that your product and company vision needs to match your appetite for funding: One thing that we learned very early on was, have a plan for fund-raising. … Hire around you to fill those weak spots. …. Nayeem : I didn’t, no.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. For example, some startup sales execs believe hiring the core sales team is a key objective.

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

A Phone Call After I left MIPS Computers I was in New York tagging along with a friend (a computer architect whose products at Apple a decade later would change the shape of personal computing) who was consulting for a voice recognition startup. It would be the company where I actually earned the title. We’re building a supercomputer.”

North Carolina 126

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 126

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

The other departments in marketing gave the same answers; the product-marketing department said their job was to write data sheets. 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.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Was SuperMac attempting to introduce radically new products and create a new market ? Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? Was the company attempting to introduce faster and better products to an existing market? No, not really.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 144

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

But what made the overwhelming impression for me was finding an entrepreneurial software cluster on par with the Internet software portion of Silicon Valley. The table below maps the type of software in China to their global equivalents in each product category in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) sector.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 161

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 147

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 147

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 203

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 203

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Metrics – Mine is Bigger Than Yours The first thing SuperMac needed to do was to change how our potential color desktop publishing customers viewed our products versus our competitors’ products. Over the years marketers have found that using numbers to compare yourself to other products works well.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. They’ve been puzzling out what they would need to do to deploy their value proposition (a product, service or both).

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. They’ve been puzzling out what they would need to do to deploy their value proposition (a product, service or both).

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. Market Type But most startups aren’t in existing markets. I cover this in the Four Steps to the Epiphany.)

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 133

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. The department had hired a recruiter and was interviewing candidates from other chip companies. I had been teaching Z8000 design to customers for the last year and a half. I asked for the job.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 263

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. And the product that “talked to me&# , the loudest and most seductively, was the one that went home with me.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Send PDF versions of brochures and product sheets as soon as you get back to the office. Have enough dead-tree brochures and product sheets on hand before the show so you can snail-mail out the information after you emailed it. Everyone should be articulate and agile in describing and demoing the products.) What didn’t?

Silicon Valley 129

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 129

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

A college degree is great if you’re looking to get hired. ” At this time, we hadn’t even built the product yet. We hadn’t invested any money into development, so we just didn’t develop that piece. If we’d built the product first, however, we would have wasted months and thousands of dollars.

Cofounder 143

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 143

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. How did Silicon Valley start?

Silicon Valley 279

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 279

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Its easy to take Silicon Valley for granted. Ive written a little bit about the origins of Silicon Valley because I think its important for us to understand how we got here in order to make sure we preserve what is best about our community. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

A college degree is great if you’re looking to get hired. ” At this time, we hadn’t even built the product yet. We hadn’t invested any money into development, so we just didn’t develop that piece. If we’d built the product first, however, we would have wasted months and thousands of dollars.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Talented product developers. If you can harness the knowledge, natural enthusiasm, and peer influence of your very best customers — I call them “Rock Star” customers — they’ll market, sell, and help develop breakthrough products for your firm better than your internal resources can do, and often at a fraction of the cost.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, November 11, 2008 Where did Silicon Valley come from? I think the absolute best reading on this subject is a book called Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee Saxenian. And what were they doing beforehand?

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 2, 2008 Paul Graham on fundraising I have found no better primer on the current realities of starting a new technology company in a startup hub like Silicon Valley than Paul Grahams essays. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Steve Blank

JANUARY 17, 2016

Silicon Valley’s pay-it-forward culture means that others will help when you’re starting up. Yet this same network of connected people affects who gets funded, how startup teams form, and who gets hired. . And a company culture and values need to be design and engineered just like the product. .

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley North Carolina Cofounder Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. VC’s invested in things that ran on electrons: hardware, software and silicon. Quickly iterate the product in front of customers.

Lean 260

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 260

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. Startups needed millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product out the door to customers. Carpe Diem.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. Nothing made any difference.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Id like to call special attention to Kurt Carr s perspective (lets hope he finishes his five-part series): Now that I’m back in Ohio (I was one of the token foreigners in a room full of Silicon Valley residents), I have found myself reliving and rethinking much of what I saw there. We all owe him our thanks for persevering.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

It is becoming easier and cheaper for companies to bring products to market, leveraging free and open source software , cloud computing, open social data (Facebook, OpenSocial ), and open distribution (AdWords, SEO). Customer development. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102