Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

The Japanese edition of The Startup Owner’s Manual hit the bookstores in Japan this week. I asked Tsutsumi-san to write a guest post for my blog to describe his experience with Customer Development in Japan. The result: great success of my third startup, a load balancing technology for web servers back in the late 1990’s.

Japan 296

Japan Customer Development Developer Customer 296

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

You would think that would be enough to get wrong, but entrepreneurs and investors compound this problem by assuming that all startups grow and scale by executing the Revenue Plan. All discussion focused on “missing the revenue plan.”. Revenue Plan Needs to Match Market Type. They don’t. What went wrong?

Revenue 231

Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 231

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. For a little while, the team can resort to the last defense of entrepreneurs in trouble: the promised hockey-stick. One thing that is often overlooked about the hockey-stick growth shape: its most distinctive characteristic is the long, flat part.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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.”

Customer Development 203

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 203

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

A lot of entrepreneurs think that their startup is the next big thing when in reality they’re just building a small business. How can you tell if your startup has the potential to be the next Google, Intel or Facebook? A first order filter is whether the founders are aiming for a scalable startup. The Scalable Startup.

Hockey Stick 284

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 284

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

In today’s language of Customer Development , RIM positioned the Blackberry as a segment of an existing market – pager users who needed two-way communication. RIM, the Blackberry and its network had more inventions per square inch than most startups. New Market Revenue Curve. Except there was one problem.

Hockey Stick 272

Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 272