Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

At the same time we were educating the press , we began to educate our own marketing department about what exactly we were supposed to be doing inside the company. During the first few weeks I asked each of my department heads what they did for marketing and the company. Titles are not the same as what your job is. This is a big idea.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. And in the 1960s ESL’s customers asked the company to analyze and interpret telemetry data even though this was a traditional function of the “customer.&# If you think the Cold War turned out the right side up (i.e.

Silicon Valley 194

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 194

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.” An existing market is one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. Do you know the archetype of their customers?

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 206

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If you’re in markets that still exhibit at them (semiconductors, communications, enterprise software, medical devices, etc.,) Before you go to a trade show sales and marketing need to agree to measurable goals. you know they’re expensive in time, dollars and resources. Visually, demo’s, wild colors, etc.

Silicon Valley 203

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 203

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

Today, Grizzle is a full-service content marketing and SEO agency that provides B2B and SaaS companies end-to-end services. Here, I’ll show you the journey we took to finding our place in the market by testing, pivoting, and re-pivoting our serving offerings and value propositions so you can grow your agency faster, without fewer wrong turns.

PR 120

PR B2B Lean Audience 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to listen to customers. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a smart VP of Marketing who was getting early feedback from customers and screaming that the games didn’t match the hype.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

The quintessential California couple, they stood out in our crowd as the engineer (in his late 20′s, respected by his peers and the customer) had hair down to his shoulders, sharply contrasting with the military crewcuts of the customers and most of the other contractors. I’m not buying it… literally.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 210

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Does any of this match your experience or people you know? Yet I am surprised given how much is written about the attributes of a startup founder, how little has been written about what “makes” a founder. Let me know what you think. Comments and brickbats welcomed.

Founder 310

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 310

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. How to differentiate yourself in a crowded market (and when perhaps you shouldn’t try). How cofounders can collaborate without going crazy.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2009

We had moved our game development facilities from Berkeley and Palo Alto and consolidated into one building on Townsend Street in the “ South of Market &# neighborhood in San Francisco. Our receptionists’ desk was built on the wing of a WWII P-51 fighter plane, and the rest of the office décor matched.

Silicon Valley 137

Silicon Valley San Francisco RSS Vertical 137

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

Now we were faced with the fact that even though we were gaining market share daily, there was nothing coming out of Engineering. Each of my competitors each had 5-10 graphics boards covering a range of prices with performance to match. All tailored to our color publishing market. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Silicon Valley 145

Silicon Valley Product RSS Engineer 145

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

founder paired with a mentor who had two operating companies in this space, who had developed and sold vertical market software to companies in this space, and had studied the field as an academic specialty. A match made in heaven? Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching. Not exactly.

Vertical 334

Vertical Agile Customer Development Lean 334

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

founder paired with a mentor who had two operating companies in this space, who had developed and sold vertical market software to companies in this space, and had studied the field as an academic specialty. A match made in heaven? Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching. Not exactly.

Customer Development 225

Customer Development Vertical Agile Lean 225