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 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

You get increasing growth by optimizing the viral loop , and you get revenue as a side-effect, assuming you have even the most anemic monetization scheme baked into your product. Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

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

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) Thanks to Suns amazing PR blitz, there was tremendous demand for experts on Java, and I did my best to convince people that I was one of that mythical breed. Looking forward for your future posts.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

Roominate , one of my favorite Lean LaunchPad teams came out to the ranch last week for a strategy session. As soon as they had designed the product, they found a contract manufacturer to build the product in China. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire.

PR 206

PR China Lean Channel 206

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 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Whats striking about these stories, if you get past the PR hype, are two very important themes: These prodigies were self-taught, and had a fundamental fascination with technology from a very young age. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Lean Startups/Back to Basics (2000-2010): No IPO’s, limited VC cash, lack of confidence and funding fuels “lean startup” era with limited M&A and even less IPO activity. Startups needed millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product out the door to customers.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

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

While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners. Send PDF versions of brochures and product sheets as soon as you get back to the office.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. And Jennifer is now my co-instructor in the Stanford Lean LaunchPad class.). The MVP Tree. The MVP Tree.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Every product ultimately is satisfying a need in the customers who buy it or use it. Products that dont solve satisfy any need for any customers tend to die out quickly. The more painful curse for startups is the product that satisfies a need or solves a problem - but that problem is not very important.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

Knapp talks about focusing on only the essential activities for shipping new products and testing new ideas. And so, the concept for a digital PR service was born. Using my existing skills and resources (including an old domain name), I tested a productized digital PR offer. Another three came on board 45 days later.

PR 120

PR B2B Lean Audience 120

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, February 24, 2009 The lean startup at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Image by Jessica_Mah via Flickr Last week I had the opportunity to lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at Haas, which is always a great learning experience - for me at least! Eric takes a different approach.

Lean 74

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 74

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

“My engineers say our website is old school, and we need to be on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, my VP of Sales says we’re wasting our marketing dollars not targeting the right people and my board keeps giving me their opinions of how we should describe our product and company. Who’s the user of product? with a strategy.

Marketing 310

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 310

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

The higher the vanity ratio, the more effective the PR. Failures, pivots , and crappy minimum viable products are generally elided. It helps companies with PR. This is also why I get so outraged when people treat Lean Startup like a religion. The higher the vanity ratio, the more effective the PR.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Metrics PR 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

We'll be discussing the Lean Startup movement, the upcoming conference, and whatever else you decide you want to ask about. Throughout the hour (from 10am-11am) we'll be picking people to win free tickets to the Lean Startup Conference on December 3. There are several ways to tune in: In the Bay Area, tune your radio to 88.5

Lean 159

Lean San Francisco Houston Engineer 159

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards. So when he saw the browser it instantly dawned on him that this would be the greatest customer development tool ever. This has been their formula for nearly 15 years.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

This "success theater" is occasionally useful for PR or getting through a tough board meeting. Establish baseline metrics by building the minimum viable product — the minimum required to measure the response of early adopters. Then, in each development cycle, use the insights gained by studying customers to make improvements.

Metrics 121

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 121

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 17, 2010

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

San Francisco 107

San Francisco Romania Cleveland South Africa 107

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. Product launch) In todays world, there is no reason you have to do these two things at the same time. Do some Customer Development instead.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Yet we hadn’t shipped a single product. All this activity occurring before we actually shipped a product. Believing Your Own BS is Toxic Lots of noise and smoke before a product ships seems to be a toxic byproduct of enthusiastic entrepreneurs. Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

The Message Sitting around a conference room table brainstorming messages that might resonate with customers, or worse having a PR agency doing that for you, is a firing offense in a small company. You should be brainstorming messages with current and potential customers. Who would buy your product?

Silicon Valley 178

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 178

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

Take a look at The App Store after the gold rush - FierceDeveloper : According to a recent BusinessWeek feature , the flood of new games, productivity tools and related iPhone software is making it difficult for the vast majority of apps to crack the consumer consciousness. Acqusition competition is how new apps get new customers.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

While I love TechCrunch, the post and the quote about the PR agency (“one PR firm has discovered a dynamite strategy, throw ethics out the window&# ) left me wondering; how do PR agencies interact with TechCrunch and other blog and review sites? Is this behavior an outlier or is it the norm in the PR industry?

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. Step 1: Start with a lean plan. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

Its latest product was an oscilloscope, the HP 150a. That year HP introduced its first computer, the HP 2116A , as an instrument controller for HP’s test and measurement products. The original Hewlett Packard which made test and measurement products was spun-out and renamed Agilent. It was still a year away from its IPO.

Silicon Valley 164

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 164

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Engineers are offenders in this category too, but so is any gender-segregated activity, like an all-female PR or marketing team. The work product is a more realistic test, although it requires much more work on the part of the candidate. I already advocate cross-functional teams as part of the lean startup methodology.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We go to mixers, buy fancy offices, focus on PR, and try to one-up each other. Instead, lets focus on building companies that matter , on creating real value for customers, and learning. All my products and ideas focus on early cash and a business model that works from the first day. Ultimately your product must be useful.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

So I asked the fatal question, “Has anyone ever looked at the customer registration cards? Has anyone ever spoken to a customer?” The one or two product mangers who should have known better glanced down at their shoes. Then someone asked, “Well, who do you think our customers are?” Ah, a leading question. If so, where?

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 185

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem) Lean startups don’t optimize. Instead, we try to accelerate with respect to validated learning about customers. There are often counter-intuitive changes in customer behavior that depend on little details.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

In lean times, it’s most important to focus on cutting costs in ways that speed you up, not slow you down. Journalists, PR firms, investors, and the public at large love a scrappy come-from-behind story about two guys in a garage who figured out how to take down Goliath. A crisis is sometimes needed to force that reexamination.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

To give our leadership an estimate of the Soviet’s nuclear production capacity, the CIA also had to estimate how many nuclear weapons could the Soviet Union make. Where were their production facilities? The military needed to answer these same questions about the nuclear armed missiles the Soviets were putting on their submarine force.

Silicon Valley 153

Silicon Valley RSS Europe Germany 153

The Next Web

JANUARY 27, 2013

Amazed at all the beautifully designed products that came out of only 76 hours. Four books helped me out a lot over the last few years: Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank, Running Lean by Ash Maurya, The Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris and Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson. You’re not alone.

Netherlands 159

Netherlands Technical Review Software Review Cofounder 159

The Startup Toolkit

JUNE 27, 2012

Similarly, I think that working nights & weekends is an awesome way to start doing customer development and answering the big questions about your business. That’s because, historically, the default mistake was to do the opposite & over-commit too soon.

Burn Rate 35

Burn Rate PR Campaign Hiring 35

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

Lean Business: Capacity Management, Overhead, and Your Business – [link]. The science of how temperature and lighting impacts our productivity | The Buffer – [link]. Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Crowdsourced Workforces Rising | Xconomy – [link].

Social Media 105

Social Media Small Business Design Media 105

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Customer Development There was nothing wrong about Rocket Science having a vision radically different than the conventional wisdom. Customer Development says having a vision, faith and a set of hypotheses are a normal part of the startup experience. Rocket Science was just another one of those companies (with better PR).

Silicon Valley 207

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 207