Customer Development, Lean, Restful and Sales

The Lean LaunchPad Class: It’s the same, but different

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2019

We just finished the 8 th annual Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford. So in 2011, with support from the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (the entrepreneurship center in the Stanford Engineering School), we created a new capstone entrepreneurship class – the Lean LaunchPad. It’s the same, but different. I-Corps @ NIH ).

Lean

Lean Business Model Balance Sheet Video

Innovation, Change and the Rest of Your Life

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

Everything a large company did, a startup should do – write a business plan; hire sales, marketing, engineering; spec all the product features on day one and build everything for a big first customer ship. The response was inevitably “great pipeline.” (Great pipeline means no real sales.). We now understand that’s wrong.

Restful

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose

The Customer Development Manifesto: The Startup Death Spiral (part.

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

Customer Development

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley

Times Square Strategy Session – Web Startups and Customer Development

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” It’s an impressive portfolio.

Customer Development

Customer Development Web Developer Customer

Why Founders Should Know How to Code

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

As the miles sped by I explained to Dave that he had understood only two of the three parts of what makes a Lean Startup successful. One interesting thing about the Lean Startup is that it teaches founders about Sales and Marketing (and a bit of finance) without making them get an MBA or a decade of sales experience.

Cofounder

Cofounder Founder Technical Cofounder Coder

Lessons Learned: What is customer development?

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.

Customer Development

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer

I-Corps @ NIH – Pivoting the Curriculum

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.

Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source

Blowing up the Business Plan at U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

It has replaced how to write a business plan with hands-on Lean Startup methods. To create great entrepreneurs, we had to give our students the experience of navigating the chaos and uncertainty of running a lean startup while providing the same kind of rigorous framework the business plan did in its day. Today the U.C.

Business Plan

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean

Lean startup intro (with no buzzwords)

The Startup Toolkit

DECEMBER 12, 2012

Slides from “ Lean startup intro (with no buzzwords) ” by robfitz. Lean gets bogged down in tactics & tools. This presentation is about what are, in my opinion, the big principles behind lean startup. Lean begins from there and helps us make it better. A few tools from lean startup.

Lean

Lean Startup Metrics Retention

SuperMac War Story 9: Sales, Not Awards « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject.

Sales

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas

“Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. The rest is just fluff. Reply Dan Hodgins , on November 13, 2009 at 1:12 am Said: Hi Steve, Just listened to your “Retooling Early Stage Development&# for about the 10th time tonight as I was cleaning my room.

Venture Capital

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick

The Rise of the Lean VC – Consumer Internet Gets Its Own Investors

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

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital

He's Only in Field Service

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. Some sales guy who was too busy to take the meeting was probably retired in Maui on the commissions. Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development

Entrepreneurship for the 99%

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. Alex, vice provost for Innovation & Economic Development at Weber State University in Utah and completing his first year of teaching entrepreneurship.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development

Ardent War Story 5: The Best Marketers Are Engineers

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

The rest of the vertical marketing recruits had similar backgrounds (and similar careers.) (I never could find one from the petroleum industry so I wore that hat along with the VP of Marketing title.) In short order they learned how to transition from being customers on the receiving end of a sales pitch to giving one.

Engineer

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board

The new startup arms race (for Huffington Post)

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

Luckily for the rest of us, he was able to find his path to a green card, and now employs 24 Americans in West Lafayette, Indiana. These companies produced over $52 billion dollars in sales in 2005, and employed 450,000 workers that year. Read the rest of The New Startup Arms Race at Huffington Post. He started Passageways Inc.

San Francisco

San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup

Entrepreneurs Experience – Do It and Learn It

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Berkeley and NCIIA , Jerry Engel and I first offered the Lean LaunchPad Educators Class. The class was designed to teach educators (and the adjunct entrepreneurs that support them) the Lean LaunchPad approach (Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) for teaching entrepreneurship.

Delaware

Delaware Lean Entrepreneur Advisory Board

SuperMac War Story 4: Repositioning SuperMac – “Market Type” at.

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

We knew from back-of-the-envelope calculations that I would need 3 times the combined marketing and sales budgets of the incumbents for a head-on assault. (I The 3:1 Lanchester Laws said I would need $60M in marketing and sales spending to win. If we tried to match them on their playing field we’d never catch up.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California

SuperMac War Story 2: Facts Exist Outside the Building, Opinions.

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

It wasn’t a lack of competence or skill in her job; it was just that as far as she was concerned, her job had no connection to the rest of marketing, our customers or our ultimate success as a company. “We I wanted to understand how customers bought our products. Market messages to indirect sales channels are just like that.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review

Why Corporate Skunk Works Need to Die

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2014

In the 20 th century corporate skunk works were used to develop disruptive innovation separate from the rest of the company. Skunk works differed from advanced research groups in that they were more than just product development groups. Skunk works had control over their sales channel and had direct customer feedback.

Channel

Channel Customer Development Distribution Restful

Developing a 21st Century Entrepreneurship Curriculum

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 14, 2012

Berkeley and NCIIA , Jerry Engel and I first offered the Lean LaunchPad Educators Class. The class was designed to teach educators (and the entrepreneurs that support them) the Lean LaunchPad approach (Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) for teaching entrepreneurship.

Developer

Developer Arizona Lean Business Model

5 Tips to Becoming a More Customer Centric Organization

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

We spent time out in the marketplace talking with customers, looking at their solutions, comparing ourselves with our competition and then squirreling ourselves away in our offices designing our next set of features. Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. Tim started to change our processes.

Customer

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico

SuperMac War Story 10: The Video Spigot « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

They had this great architecture, and Apple had figured out to get movies into their own computers for a demo, but for the rest of us there was no physical device that allowed an average consumer to plug a video camera or VCR into and get video into a Mac. But the rest of the management team really skeptical.

Video

Video Silicon Valley RSS California

The Curse of a New Building « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

This happened to us at SuperMac when our sales skyrocketed. Stay hungry, stay lean. I don’t want to be hungry and lean (nor do I want to be full and fat). It was an odd feeling at that time, we thought we have made it and fail to stay lean and hungry. That’s when things went south. Don’t let it happen to you.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile

Entrepreneurs Experience – Do It and Learn It

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Berkeley and NCIIA , Jerry Engel and I first offered the Lean LaunchPad Educators Class. The class was designed to teach educators (and the adjunct entrepreneurs that support them) the Lean LaunchPad approach (Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) for teaching entrepreneurship.

Delaware

Delaware Lean Entrepreneur Advisory Board

The Lean LaunchPad – Teaching Entrepreneurship as a Management Science

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. General Marketing, Sales Funnel, etc.

Wiki

Wiki Lean Management Business Model

When Krave Jerky Showed up in Class with a $435,000 Check

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

I remind my students that I’m teaching them a methodology they can use the rest of their careers, not running an incubator. Hershey just bought Krave Jerky, a team in our 2011 Berkeley Lean LaunchPad class, for >$200 million. What Do You Mean You Only Spoke to 1 Customer? But Jon had much bigger ambitions.

North America

North America Lean Customer Development Distribution

SuperMac War Story 5: Strategy versus Relentless Tactical.

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

You can imagine the rest of the conversation; my sounding reluctant to let our own tests outside our building, the magazines begging us to let them have them, and finally a deal gets struck where we let the benchmarks out to the test labs of these magazines under their own name “The Potrero Benchmark Suite” without attribution to us.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review

Can You Trust Any vc's Under 40?

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

billion for a company with less than $50 million in sales. In the Fall of 2008, the credit crisis wiped out mergers and acquisitions as a path to liquidity as M&A collapsed with the rest of the market. On its first day of trading, Netscape stock closed at $58/share, valuing the company at $2.7 So what’s left?

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital

10 lessons I learned by taking the entrepreneurial Red Pill

The Next Web

JANUARY 27, 2013

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. I couldn’t write a single line of code, and I didn’t have any clue how to start a business. You’re not alone.

Netherlands

Netherlands Technical Review Software Review Cofounder

Lessons Learned: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done.

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

This technique rests on three things: identifying the kinds of work that need to get done, creating the right type of teams for each kind, and steering the company by allocating resources among them. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

If You Want To Start a Business Start Here

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

” As the managing editor of Bplans, I’ve had the good fortune to learn about business via the content we share; through interviews with LivePlan customers and other business owners; and thanks to brilliant, informal coaching from people like Tim Berry, Noah Parsons, and the rest of the executive leadership team at Palo Alto Software.

Curation

Curation Lean Software Review Finder

Marching through quicksand

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

But, as any startup can tell you, this opens up a tremendous set of opportunities for the rest of us. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. If they don’t, there are a new breed of lean startups who understand this deep in the bones ready to take their place.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution

Fear of Failure and Lack of Speed In a Large Corporation

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

They’ve found product/market fit (what products customers want to buy). 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.) and how to price the product. What We Now Know about Corporate Innovation.

Widget

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics

Lessons Learned: Don't launch

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

In particular, a marketing launch can help you do three things (courtesy, as is most of my marketing advice, of The Four Steps to the Epiphany ): Drive customers into your sales pipeline. Do some Customer Development instead. The rest can believe what they want. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

San Francisco

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage

Tesla and Adobe: Why Continuous Deployment May Mean Continuous Customer Disappointment

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

But businesses are finding that Continuous Deployment not only changes engineering but has ripple effects on the rest of its business model. And these changes may have unintended consequences leading to customer dissatisfaction and confusion. Smart companies will figure out how to educate their customers and communicate these changes.

Continuous Deployment

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud

Lies Entrepreneurs Tell Themselves « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

His marketing and sales instincts and skills seemed magical and he built the company into a $400 million OEM supplier, ultimately selling the company to Unisys. A great vacation with my wife wasn’t going to make up for being AWOL from home the rest of the year. But this story is not about Convergent. The Adventure of a Lifetime.

Entrepreneur

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS

Lessons Learned: Refactoring yourself out of business

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Instead of waiting for that to happen, make sure there is a mechanism for sharing refactoring lessons with the rest of the team. This is usually exacerbated by zealous sales persons who oversell the features, or even more typical, promise completely new features. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

The Mission Model Canvas – An Adapted Business Model Canvas for Mission-Driven Organizations

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

The Lean Startup is the way most innovators build startups and innovate inside of existing companies. Customer Segments is changed to Beneficiaries. Customer Relationships is changed to Buy-in/Support. The rest of this blog post explains the how and why of these changes to the canvas. Here are our collective thoughts.

Business Model

Business Model Revenue Channel Community

Lo, my 2295 subscribers, who are you?

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

If you are willing, please take a moment to fill it out before proceeding with the rest of the post; itll mean less biased results, and youll have a better idea what Im talking about later. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

Three decisions to make on virtual goods

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2008

Your challenge will be incentivizing your developers to create, and managing the volume of their output. How do you help customers find the best of the best? And what do you do with the rest? You may have to staff up a large customer service department to review and approve all of the items. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

The cardinal sin of community management

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

It took hundreds of years for newspapers to learn to behave as worthy holders of this public trust and cover the news without fear or favour, and create a firewall between news and views and the ad-sales side of the operation. I agree that listening and communicating is a key to success, but customer development can only do so much.

Community

Community Management Lean Software Review

Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 21: Grant Warner

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2016

While finding product-market fit is important, getting the rest of the business model right is the difference between and a great demo and a great business. We did do a lot of … customer discovery. We did a lot of talking to customers, trying to understand who really had the need. That helped us develop a product. .

Cofounder

Cofounder DC Entrepreneur Silicon Valley

The Taxonomy of the Lean Startup Pivot

blog.startupsquare.com

APRIL 13, 2010

2 Comments Tags: Customer Development , lean startup , pivot , Strategy. Having gone through 51 iterations of my mockups and gathered as much as feedback as I could with our primitive alpha, I feel confident about our basic customer problem hypothesis. So I decided to make a list of my potential pivots.

Lean

Lean Startup Cofounder Architecture

The Lean LaunchPad Class: It’s the same, but different

Innovation, Change and the Rest of Your Life

Trending Sources

The Customer Development Manifesto: The Startup Death Spiral (part.

Times Square Strategy Session – Web Startups and Customer Development

Why Founders Should Know How to Code

Lessons Learned: What is customer development?

I-Corps @ NIH – Pivoting the Curriculum

Blowing up the Business Plan at U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School

Lean startup intro (with no buzzwords)

SuperMac War Story 9: Sales, Not Awards « Steve Blank

“Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch

The Rise of the Lean VC – Consumer Internet Gets Its Own Investors

He's Only in Field Service

Entrepreneurship for the 99%

Ardent War Story 5: The Best Marketers Are Engineers

The new startup arms race (for Huffington Post)

Entrepreneurs Experience – Do It and Learn It

SuperMac War Story 4: Repositioning SuperMac – “Market Type” at.

SuperMac War Story 2: Facts Exist Outside the Building, Opinions.

Why Corporate Skunk Works Need to Die

Developing a 21st Century Entrepreneurship Curriculum

5 Tips to Becoming a More Customer Centric Organization

SuperMac War Story 10: The Video Spigot « Steve Blank

The Curse of a New Building « Steve Blank

Entrepreneurs Experience – Do It and Learn It

The Lean LaunchPad – Teaching Entrepreneurship as a Management Science

When Krave Jerky Showed up in Class with a $435,000 Check

SuperMac War Story 5: Strategy versus Relentless Tactical.

Can You Trust Any vc's Under 40?

10 lessons I learned by taking the entrepreneurial Red Pill

Lessons Learned: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done.

If You Want To Start a Business Start Here

Marching through quicksand

Fear of Failure and Lack of Speed In a Large Corporation

Lessons Learned: Don't launch

Tesla and Adobe: Why Continuous Deployment May Mean Continuous Customer Disappointment

Lies Entrepreneurs Tell Themselves « Steve Blank

Lessons Learned: Refactoring yourself out of business

The Mission Model Canvas – An Adapted Business Model Canvas for Mission-Driven Organizations

Lo, my 2295 subscribers, who are you?

Three decisions to make on virtual goods

The cardinal sin of community management

Entrepreneurs are Everywhere Show No. 21: Grant Warner

The Taxonomy of the Lean Startup Pivot

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