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.

Customer Development 283

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 283

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

—– Lean Innovation Management. In the last five years “ Lean Startup ” methodologies have enabled entrepreneurs to efficiently build a startup by searching for product/market fit rather than blindly trying to execute. We can adapt these startup tools for use inside the corporation. Here’s how.

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Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2013

This post was written by Sarah Milstein, co-host of The Lean Startup Conference. Exciting news: we’ve nailed down dates for The Lean Startup Conference 2013. We know Lean Startup methods are being applied by people around the globe, in startups and established organizations alike, and in sectors of every stripe.

Lean 167

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10 weeks. While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ), Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique.

Lean 410

Lean Security Asia SBIR 410

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 8, 2008 The lean startup Ive been thinking for some time about a term that could encapsulate trends that are changing the startup landscape. After some trial and error, Ive settled on the Lean Startup. The lean startup is an application of Lean Thinking.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

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. ” Hawken School has now given us an answer.

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Lean Cleveland Ohio Business Model 206

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. Heres the catch.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

Most startups fail. The product or website (be it software, e-commerce, or a service) might be awesome , but if it puts itself in front of the wrong market, or packages itself so the right market can’t figure out why it’s awesome, the startup will fail. Same goes for e-commerce, SaaS or any startup really.

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Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 31, 2015

The following is a guest post by Kirsten Cluthe and Ritika Puri from The Lean Startup Conference team Wondering what’s new in the Lean Startup community? Every year, our team conducts more than 500 customer development calls to understand what challenges the community is facing.

Lean 60

Lean United States Fractional CTO Startup 60

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’ve pivoted our Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum. We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. “Customer Development” to test the hypotheses outside the building and. Lessons Learned.

Intellectual Property 286

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 286

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

How do you figure out what’s the right mix of skills for the co-founders of your startup? I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup. I told Radhika this is a perennial question for startups. ——-.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

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. Do startups have a manual? Lean Planning is born.

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Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. VCs and Angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). Chief Risk Officer.

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, November 4, 2008 Principles of Lean Startups, presentation for Maples Investments Image via Wikipedia Steve Blank and I had the opportunity to create a presentation about lean startups for Maples Investments. Agile software development. Customer development.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ) Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique.

Oakland 312

Oakland Asia Lean Video 312

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

Last week one of our mentors abruptly resigned from coaching one of the Lean LaunchPad student teams after claiming the students were ignoring his practical advice and years of expertise in the field. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. A match made in heaven?

Vertical 333

Vertical Agile Customer Development Lean 333

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

You think startups are hard? The idea of exploitation versus exploration was central in my own work in building the lean methodology for start-ups. In sharp contrast, start-ups operate in “search/ explore ” mode, seeking a repeatable and profitable business model. Today, lean is the de facto method for building new start-ups.

Incubator 414

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 414

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

You may have read my previous posts about the Lean LaunchPad class taught at Stanford , Berkeley, Columbia , Caltech and for the National Science Foundation. Ten years ago I started thinking about why startups are different from existing companies. Berkeley asked me to teach a class in Customer Development. Sign up here.

Lean 321

Lean Georgia Michigan Business Model 321

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

By the end of the 20th century entrepreneurship education fell into two categories: 1) starting small businesses and 2) starting high-growth, high-risk scalable startups. The case method and business plans are the antithesis of how entrepreneurs create startups. Neither cases nor business plans replicate the actual startup experience.

Lean 436

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 436

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. Fundamentally, lean startups do more with less, because they systematically find and eliminate waste that slows down value creation. That depends.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. VCs and angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). Chief Risk Officer.

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. Most startups fail. The most common mistake startups make is assuming they can operate the same way big companies do, and expect success with little to no feedback from potential customers. This is a customer development problem.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. VCs and Angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). Chief Risk Officer.

CTO Hire 252

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 252

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

Last week one of our mentors abruptly resigned from coaching one of the Lean LaunchPad student teams after claiming the students were ignoring his practical advice and years of expertise in the field. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching. Customer Development Teaching' Everything else is secondary.

Customer Development 225

Customer Development Vertical Agile Lean 225

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

A Proof of Concept center, which is not the same as a full-fledged incubator, would also be responsible to develop a companywide core competence in business model and open innovation design and a VC-like, staged-risk funding decision criteria for new market opportunities. Developing a program to generate new ideas is the easy part.

Programming 269

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 269

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

In every startup I did, every new course I created, and everything I’ve taught, the phrase “make every day count” took on new meaning when I knew how many were left. When I retired after 21 years working in 8 startups, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the business school at the University of California Berkeley.

Lean 223

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 223

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

In 2012 I got together with Alexander Osterwalder , Henry Chesbrough and Andre Marquis to think about the Lean and the future of corporate innovation. In our case, we’re local in over 200 countries with operations in basically every city on the planet. in developing these new models. to create exponential growth. It never is.

Lean 329

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 329

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

We tend to associate the government with words like bureaucracy rather than lean innovation. Department of Defense by adopting Lean Methodology inside their agency. The NGA has adopted Lean Innovation methods to make this happen. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) is a great example. The Innovation Insurgency.

Lean 181

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 181

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

We tend to associate the government with words like bureaucracy rather than lean innovation. Department of Defense by adopting Lean Methodology inside their agency. The NGA has adopted Lean Innovation methods to make this happen. The National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) is a great example. The Innovation Insurgency.

Lean 181

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 181

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2012

Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or Customer Development there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. I want to tell you a story about how a team pivoted and succeeded by synchronizing product and customer development. ———-.

San Jose 259

San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 259

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Once upon a time every great organization was a scrappy startup willing to take risks – new ideas, new methods, new customers, targets, and mission. And by product, I mean the creation of new hardware, services, software, tools, operations, tradecraft, etc. Companies Run on Process. Process Versus Product.

Government 319

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 319

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

Pete Newell and I were working with a company that was getting its butt kicked from near-peer competitors as well as from a wave of well-funded insurgent startups. This was a very large and established tech company; its engineering organization developed the core day-to-day capabilities of the organization. Who are the customers?

Incubator 316

Incubator Curation Engineer Government 316

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

My service startup quickly grew and became a platform to identify new problems we could solve for clients. 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. Image source ).

PR 120

PR B2B Lean Audience 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

I was having coffee with the CEO of a new startup, listening to her puzzle through how to communicate to potential customers. I reminded her that all the Lean tools she learned in class–Customer Discovery, business model and value proposition canvases– contained her answer. Customer Discovery Never Stops.

Marketing 315

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 315

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. VCs and Angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Chief Brand Officer.

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

Some great content around the intersection of startups and being a Startup CTO in June this year. This continues my series of posts: Top 30 Startup Posts in June 2010 Top 29 Startup Posts May 2010 Startup CTO Top 30 Posts for April 16 Great Startup Posts from March The following are the top items based on social signals.

Software Review 217

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Technical Review 217

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. How can established companies benefit from implementing Lean Startup? Of course, you can also continue the conversation by attending The Lean Startup Conference. What can Lean Startup do about this?

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Lean Silicon Valley Agile Cofounder 167