Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2012

Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or Customer Development there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. I want to tell you a story about how a team pivoted and succeeded by synchronizing product and customer development. Filed under: Customer Development.

San Jose 256

San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 256

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2009

Gathering real-world feedback from customers is a core concept of Customer Development as well as the Lean Startup. When I asked him if he actually had personally left the building and talked to these potential customers, or even had gotten them on the phone, he sounded confused. Posted in Customer Development Manifesto.

Metrics 239

Metrics Customer Customer Development Lean 239

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 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. shoes in order to deduce possible competitors’ moves and anticipate customer needs. What do you think?

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

To move innovation faster, we now have 21 st century tools — Business Model Canvas , Customer Development , Agile Engineering – all adding up to a Lean Startup. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development , Science and Industrial Policy. Fast forward to today.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

It taught lean theory ( business model design , customer development and agile engineering) and practice. The irony is that once you’ve gone through the lean cycle, you have all the information that goes in a business plan: customers, sales strategy, product features, and financial metrics. Seeing Is Believing.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Founders that learn are more successful : Startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders raise 7x more money and have 3.5x Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. Startup Genome Report. Some of their key findings : 1. better user growth.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2014

2:21: Accounting Metrics in a Large Company vs. Metrics that Matter in a Startup. 6:07: Engineering: Waterfall Development in a Large Company vs. Minimum Viable Product in a Startup. 1:49: Use Customer Development to Test Your Hypotheses. 4:24: No Business Plan Survives First Contact with Customers.

Founder 327

Founder Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 327

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. As hokey as it is, when confronted with uncertainty or unknowns, human beings like to be reassured by comparative metrics.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

JUNE 21, 2017

6:22 What’s Customer Development. 32:05 No Innovation Pipeline, Guidance or Metrics. 41:39 Moral Obligations Filed under: Corporate Innovation , Customer Development , Hacking For Defense , Hacking for Diplomacy , Lean LaunchPad , NSF (National Science Foundation) , Teaching. 10:01 Lean in Corporations.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Lean Government Boston 222

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

Customer Development 278

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. Entrepreneurs should always communicate their business’ very latest stage of customer development as part of their investor presentation.

Sacramento 306

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 306

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

When we looked at the color graphics board market, our competitors had defined the market as one measured by technical metrics: screen resolution, number of bits of color, screen refresh rates, acceleration, etc. It didn’t take much imagination to realize that what we had to do was to tell our story around one key metric performance ?

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2013

In this case the basis of competition on the X/Y axes are metrics defined by the users in the existing market. The competitive diagram is how develop your first hypotheses about who your customers are. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. Customer Development Teaching Venture Capital'

Venture Capital 335

Venture Capital Customer Development Business Model Lean 335

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

A decade later, I began to teach the foundations of Lean, first at UC Berkeley (Customer Development) and then at Stanford using cases and business plans. Lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering). Third, the tools for customer discovery (videos, sample experiments, etc.)

Lean 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And the results weren’t the traditional PR metrics of number of articles or inches of ink. We were constantly creating metrics to see the effects of different PR messages, channels and audiences on end-user purchases. It wasn’t measured by how busy you were, it was measured by results. I couldn’t care less about those.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

MAY 27, 2011

8:05 – Metrics for Success. 15:36 – How to Get Customer Centric – an unnatural act. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching , Venture Capital. We covered a wide range of topics. 0:22 – the Entrepreneurial explosion. 1:45 – Are we in a Bubble? 3:20 - The Last Bubble.

Silicon Valley 287

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Lean Social Network 287

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

If you are following Customer Development , the answer is easy. Board meetings are about measuring progress measured against the hypotheses in Customer Discovery and Validation. Do the metrics show that the business model you’re creating will support the company you’re trying to become? Startup Metrics.

Balance Sheet 298

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 298

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Venture Capital | Tagged: Entrepreneurs « Customer Development Manifesto: Market Type (part 4) Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) » 16 Responses Jon Ziskind , on September 14, 2009 at 9:19 am Said: Steve – Great post and really great advice.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. It’s one of the subtle distinctions that at times gets lost in the process.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

In fact, you could say that all that remains from my last book are the four steps of Customer Development. Integrates Alexander Osterwalders “Business Model Canvas” as the front-end and “scorecard” for the customer discovery process. Briefly, the new book.

Entrepreneur 289

Entrepreneur Lean Business Model Customer Development 289

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. Financial progress is tracked using metrics like income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow. Filed under: Customer Development.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

As a consequence, corporations used metrics like return on net assets (RONA), return on capital deployed, and internal rate of return (IRR) to measure efficiency. These metrics make it difficult for a company that wants to invest in long-term innovation. Filed under: Corporate Innovation , Customer Development.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

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. There are financial metrics (Return on Investment, Hurdle Rate, etc.) Lessons Learned.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

And the final lesson was that we were keeping score on our packaging with the wrong metrics – it wasn’t about awards, it was about sales in the retail channel. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.)

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

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. They measure their success on metrics that reflect success in execution, and they reward execution.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

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 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

3) An experienced board brings an extensive network of customers, partners, help in recruiting, follow-on financing, etc. The Wrong Metrics. Traditional startup board meetings spend an insane amount of wasted time using Fortune 100 company metrics like income statements, cash flow, balance sheet, waterfall charts. Not Real-time.

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2010

Customer Discovery. Metrics That Matter (Business Model Metrics). None of the students were domain experts in their areas, and each team had to figure out how to contact potential customers and channel partners. Yet every team did figure out how to conduct extensive out of building Customer Discovery. (By

Intellectual Property 226

Intellectual Property Business Model Customer Development Distribution 226

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

In other words, how can we adapt the Business Model Canvas when the metrics of success for an organization is not revenue? In the defense and intelligence community the metrics of success are not revenue but mission achievement. Changed Customer Segments to Beneficiaries. Change Customer Relationships to Buy-in/Support.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2010

You win in an existing market when you are better or faster on those metrics that customers have told you are the basis of competition. Your competitive analysis must be around those metrics. 2) addresses the specific needs of a customer segment that the existing suppliers have failed to address.

Customer Development 259

Customer Development Metrics Differentiation Engineer 259

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

Or depending on your metrics for success, get users, grow traffic, etc.). A business model diagram also shows how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. Your job as a founder is to quickly validate whether the model is correct by seeing if customers behave as your model predicts.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

3) An experienced board brings an extensive network of customers, partners, help in recruiting, follow-on financing, etc. The Wrong Metrics. Traditional startup board meetings spend an insane amount of wasted time using Fortune 100 company metrics like income statements, cash flow, balance sheet, waterfall charts. Not Real-time.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 21, 2012

She suggested that how cofounders fight was a key metric in predicting the success of a founding team. Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career/Culture. But Jessica Alter , Cofounder & CEO of FounderDating , pointed out that co founders did not mean two founders in the same room.

Cofounder 329

Cofounder IPO Early Stage Green 329

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

Do they “get&# Customer Development ? Do They Get Customer Development? Do they have metrics and a methodology they use for early stage companies that differs from companies that have already found a business model? Have they heard about Customer Development ? Is Your VC Founder Friendly?

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Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231