Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. They communicated this to product management who looked at all of the internal requirements we had generated (e.g. some came from our customer service, some were to improve performance / scalability from tech ops, some were bug fixes, etc.)

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products.

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Creators of new products in environments of extreme uncertainty, startups face enormous risks. Insufficient capital, over investment, and low sales are just some of the reasons leading to this sobering statistic. Not doing so would end up in wasteful innovations and features that customers do not want.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

For decades startups were managed by pretending the company would follow a predictable path (revenue plan, scale, etc.) As we described in previous posts , startups fail on the day they’re founded if they are organized and managed like they are a small version of a large company. Albert Einstein. That’s the definition of insanity.

Burn Rate 248

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 248

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 264

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

You take that money and invest a good portion of it in traditional sales and marketing efforts — including product developers, creative people, and salespeople, all of whom are paid to figure out what buyers want and to say good things about your company — in a quest to get even more customers. Close the sale.

Customer 168

Customer Social Media Retention Canada 168

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 126

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 22, 2012

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff put it best when he said that even though every company knows customer references are important, most companies have a lax approach to actually managing them. Someone may hand him a list of prospective references who may or may not be happy customers, or strategically significant, or even profitable.

Programming 145

Programming Customer Social Media Advisory Board 145

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Talented product developers. Customer content and engagement built rapid growth in the success of Intel ’s social media and Web-based marketing efforts, increasing “customer contacts” by a factor of tenfold and overall page views by 100x. This has resulted in dramatic increases in sales. Highly trained salespeople.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. ———– Whether your venture is a new pizza parlor or the hottest new software product, beware: These nine flawed assumptions are toxic.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

This second kind of seed financing can be a double-edged sword for the entrepreneur and company if not very carefully managed. Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited. At month six, one of the early hires leaves, a developer who turns out wasn’t a good fit.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

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.” I’ll add I’m particularly curious about how founders recognize that point at which they need to exit / fire the old customers.

Customer 201

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 201

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2014

The Lockheed Skunk Works led by Kelly Johnson was responsible for its Advanced Development Projects – everything from the P-80 , the first U.S. Skunk works differed from advanced research groups in that they were more than just product development groups. Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan Customer Development'

Channel 288

Channel Customer Development Distribution Restful 288

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 263

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 263

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. What happened?

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 133

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 17, 2010

If this is your attitude, your conception of tech support is completely backwards and you're missing out on important channels for marketing, product development, and sales. Tech support is sales. At Smart Bear we made millions of dollars in both individual and enterprise sales without "sales.".

Technical Review 245

Technical Review Sales Turkey Software Review 245

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

To shed some light, I talked with kaChing , a destination that enables individual investors to find outstanding money managers to manage their money. kaChing launched a virtual portfolio management game on Facebook in January 2008 and a similar version shortly thereafter on kaChing.com.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2012

When he studied the numbers, Benioff found that 80 percent of the prospects who attended such events wound up becoming customers themselves — in effect, an 80 percent close rate. Cultivate customer sales and marketing people. But no one has to spend a dime training a customer to build a trusting relationship with your prospects.

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 1, 2018

Even large multi-national companies talk to their trusted customers about new ideas to get validation and or ideas for product development. Customer Development. Customers should be the core of your business – without them, you may have a great idea, but it’s not a business.

Stealth 198

Stealth Partner Developer Networking 198

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. existing enterprises are establishing corporate innovation groups. StageGate Process.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Check your assumptions, what went wrong?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

In an enterprise sales context, this is called a "repeatable and scalable sales process" - once you know how to do this, your company can graduate from early adopters and make an attempt at the mainstream. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage. The biggest source of waste in new product development is building something that nobody wants. Leverage product development with open source and third parties.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.)

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Id like to talk about a technique Ive used to help manage this growth without slowing down. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers. Managers in this area have to take a portfolio approach, promoting ideas that work and might make good candidates for further investment.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

For example, I quickly learned that when I twittered about the event, more often than not I would make a sale. So the product development team was busy creating lots of split-tests for lots of hypotheses. That’s why we have operations alerts trigger a page, but it can also work for other customer events.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

A few of the detailed case studies include: Tech legend Bill Gross building an MVP in 1999 to test demand for online car sales, which grew into CarsDirect.com. PayPal, under the leadership of David Marcus and Bill Scott, re-defining and re-engineering itself by embracing Lean Startup to improve the product experience. It's a big tent.

Lean 167

Lean Entrepreneur Agile San Francisco 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 15, 2011

Autonomow team members: Jorge Heraud (MS Management, 2011) Business Unit Director, Agriculture, Trimble Navigation, Director of Engineering, Trimble Navigation, MS&E (Stanford), MSEE (Stanford), BSEE (PUCP, Peru). The goal was to figure out whether this product could become a company. in Control Systems. Personal Libraries.

Business Model 237

Business Model Nebraska Peru Germany 237

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

Consider a failed experiment by Google''s Larry Page, who got rid of all the company''s middle managers and then had to reinstate the old system after trouble erupted. What’s customer development?) Sarah is Lean Startup Conference co-host and CEO of Lean Startup Productions. What’s the story with pivots?).

Lean 165

Lean San Francisco Cofounder Hosting 165

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan Foundation , the Sloan School of Management at MIT , the Sloan program at Stanford , and the Sloan/Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in New York. Sloan realized that the traditional centralized management structures (like General Motors had in 1920) were poor fits for the management of GM’s already diverse product lines.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 161

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

Lean 250

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2012

We had closed four $100,000 deals for our customer relationship management software. Joe Dinucci, our VP of Sales, was hot on the trail of our next big order. He had just demo’d our product to his friend, the CFO of Autodesk. At the time Autodesk’s sales organization was frustrated with their IT department.

Forecast 292

Forecast Sales Matching Customer Development 292

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

In the old days, the brand manager of a consumer packaged goods product had to spend energy inferring the effectiveness of their television ads through a combination of trailing indicators (like market share) or time-consuming market research. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 15, 2017

When managed well, your superusers can take a lot of pressure off your sales and marketing teams, while also building a rabid ‘fan’ culture that gives you confidence in making future investments. But first, you have to nurture your existing superusers while also developing new ones.

Community 124

Community LLC Customer Developer 124

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2022

To succeed they realized this isn’t simply coming up with one new product. The company had hired a leading management consulting firm that helped them select 15 critical areas of change the Tsunami Initiative was tasked to work on. It meant pivoting an entire company – and its culture. Are these the real problems?

Framework 391

Framework Distribution Channel Leadership 391

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

But instead of spending the time and money to develop products on spec, TPGTEX creates mocked-up webpages that list the features of a potential new product -- such as a system for making radio-frequency identification, or RFID, labels -- along with its price. Read the rest. For that, release early, release often will suffice.

San Francisco 137

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 137