Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

” She looked at bit puzzled, so I continued to explain… One of the virtues of using the Business Model Canvas as part of a Lean Startup is that it helps you frame each one of your nine critical hypotheses. Or can we outsource these activities to Partners?” Filed under: Customer Development.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

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. to get hard-earned information.

Lean 304

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 304

Steve Blank

JANUARY 2, 2014

This post is part of our series on the National Science Foundation I-Corps Lean LaunchPad class in Life Science and Health Care at UCSF. Doctors, researchers and Principal Investigators in this class got out of the lab and hospital talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them. Then reality hit.

Lean 249

Lean Algorithm Customer Development IP 249

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

As our Lean LaunchPad for Life Sciences class winds down, a good number of the 26 teams are trying to figure out whether they should go forward to turn their class project into a business. I pointed out that the “data” you gather in 10 weeks (talking to 100+ customers, partners, payers, etc.,) see 0:30 in the video below).

Cofounder 329

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 329

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.”. It’s time to update Build, Measure, Learn to what we now know is the best way to build Lean startups. Here’s how. Build-Measure-Learn.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Or, if you can’t skip a round, when should you try to work extra hard to minimize dilution and when should you be prepared to take more dilution for the right partner/situation? Also, the benefit of raising a pre-seed from great partners probably outweighs the cost. Founders with limited experience.

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

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

The last couple of years has also seen the huge initial success of Ycombinator, the Lean Startup and many other product driven approaches to going to market. That died with waterfall software development. Let’s take your revenue line. How will your costs scale as your revenue scales. Here’s why.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

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. What we’re driving at is evidence-based, entrepreneurial solutions to big diplomatic challenges.

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. What we’re driving at is evidence-based, entrepreneurial solutions to big diplomatic challenges.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. The Rise of the “Lean VC’s” – Consumer Internet Gets Funded. Lean VC’s are Different.

Lean 263

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 263

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Each VC firm/partner has a different spin on what to weigh more.) Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 2, 2013

We talk a lot about Customer Development, but there’s nothing like seeing it in action to understand its power. But the big payoff came when their discussions with medical device customers revealed an entirely new way to think about pricing —potentially tripling their revenue. the Customer Life Time (CLT)).

Customer 327

Customer Churn Rate Customer Development Lean 327

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2014

Since the Pivot is one of the core concepts of the Lean Startup I was puzzled. A pivot is a fundamental insight of the Lean Startup. A pivot may mean you changed your customer segment, your channel, revenue model/pricing, resources, activities, costs, partners, customer acquisition – lots of other things than just the product.

Business Model 332

Business Model Lean Customer Development Channel 332

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

My co-author and business Partner Bob Dorf spends much of his time traveling the world teaching countries and companies how to run the Lean LaunchPad program. The program is funded by the Colombian government and modeled after the NSF Innovation-Corps program created and built by my partner and co-author Steve Blank.

Colombia 325

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 325

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

When a startup finds a repeatable sales process and steadily increasing revenue, its investors wants to harvest the rewards and build a culture of “execution.” 4) You don’t see any revenue gain past three years. 5) The customer’s needs don’t match your long term direction. Fire might be a strong word.

Customer 216

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 216

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Instead you will be getting your hands dirty talking to customers, partners, competitors, as you encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup actually works. What are the 9 parts of a business model?

Wiki 316

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 316

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. This week they were testing who the customer, user, payer for the product will be (and discovering if they have a multi-sided business model , one with both buyers and sellers.) This post is part four. Syllabus is here.

Customer 240

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 240

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

My co-author and business Partner Bob Dorf spends much of his time traveling the world teaching countries and companies how to run the Lean LaunchPad program. The program is funded by the Colombian government and modeled after the NSF Innovation-Corps program created and built by my partner and co-author Steve Blank.

Colombia 289

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 289

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2012

———– The Lean LaunchPad class for the National Science Foundation (NSF). Over the last 6 months, we’ve been teaching a version of the Lean LaunchPad class for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps. In an incubator, the Lean LaunchPad develops angel or venture-funded startups.

Lean 258

Lean Incubator Business Model Georgia 258

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

The classes are built on the Lean Startup methodology: Customer Discovery, Agile Engineering and the Business/Mission Model Canvas. So how do our students get out of the building to talk to customers to do Customer Discovery when they can’t get out of the building? All you have are a series of untested hypotheses.

Customer 419

Customer Business Model Restful Video 419

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 26, 2013

This post is part of our series on the National Science Foundation I-Corps Lean LaunchPad class in Life Science and Health Care at UCSF. Doctors, researchers and Principal Investigators in this class got out of the lab and hospital talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them.

Lean 241

Lean Customer Development Video Early Stage 241

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

This makes sense in a company where your customers, channel and competition are known. And your revenue plan is something more than a hallucination. Yet year after year, decade after decade, VC’s would watch as no startup business plan survived first contact with customers. It takes a ton of face-face customer interactions.

Business Model 267

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 267

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. And it shows your company’s cost structures, how each department interacts with the others and where your company fits with other companies or partners to implement your business. Who are our partners?

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

Hershey just bought Krave Jerky, a team in our 2011 Berkeley Lean LaunchPad class, for >$200 million. —– Jon Sebastiani and his team came into the 2011 Berkeley Lean LaunchPad class with several key observations: Snack foods were a large ~$35 billion but the moribund food category was starving for innovation and modernization.

North America 120

North America Lean Customer Development Distribution 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

They’ve learned the best distribution channel to get the product from their company to the customer. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.) Therefore, in a large company, failure to meet a goal – revenue, product delivery, service, etc.– and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

From the point of view of scientists and engineers in a university lab, too often entrepreneurship in all its VC-driven glory – income statements, balance sheets, business plans, revenue models, 5-year forecasts, etc. They’ll explore the best way to deliver the product to customers, the resources required, as well as competing technologies.

Engineer 284

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 284

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

We’re deep into teaching a Lean LaunchPad class for Life Sciences and Health Care (therapeutics, diagnostics, devices and digital health) at UCSF with a team of veteran venture capitalists. The class has talked to 1,440 customers to date.). Filed under: Customer Development , Life Sciences , Teaching. This can be taught.

Lean 264

Lean Customer Business Model Customer Development 264

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? This week they were testing their hypotheses about Partners. They worked on understanding their partners.

South Dakota 232

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 232

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Week 3 of the class and our teams in our Stanford Lean LaunchPad class were hard at work using Customer Development to get out of the classroom and test the first key hypotheses of their business model: The Value Proposition.

Cloud 237

Cloud Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 237

Steve Blank

MAY 5, 2016

Well, here we are with $5 million in annual revenues and we’re a consumer company that starts with teachers first, and we don’t charge them a dime. I partnered with people all over the company and I basically built new products. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. Don’t do that.”.

Brazil 163

Brazil Entrepreneur Cleveland Cofounder 163

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

Do they “get&# Customer Development ? And some larger funds that specialize in later stage deals may have a partner or two who likes to invest at this stage. Do They Get Customer Development? Have they heard about Customer Development ? Lean Startups ? Is Your VC Founder Friendly?

Founder 232

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 232

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. Also, the “customer relationships” section didn’t seem to fit for many traditional businesses.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

MAY 16, 2016

This week teams figured out how to measure mission achievement and success, and our advanced lectures were on activities, resources and partners. In a company you know you’ve been successful when you generate revenue and profit. In those case revenue will become an additional metric. This post is a continuation of the series.

San Diego 145

San Diego Metrics Indonesia Silicon Valley 145

Steve Blank

MAY 5, 2016

Well, here we are with $5 million in annual revenues and we’re a consumer company that starts with teachers first, and we don’t charge them a dime. I partnered with people all over the company and I basically built new products. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. Don’t do that.”.

Brazil 120

Brazil Entrepreneur Cleveland Cofounder 120

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 1, 2011

From the point of view of scientists and engineers in a university lab, too often entrepreneurship in all its VC-driven glory - income statements, balance sheets, business plans, revenue models - seems like another planet. And they'll do this using the business model-customer development-agile development solution stack.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Balance Sheet Lean 118