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. And if they’re smart they’ll teach Horizon 1 teams to operate with mission and intent , not just process and procedure.). Fast forward to today.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 10, 2024

Salesforce, renowned for its robust customer relationship management (CRM) platform, serves as the nerve center for many businesses’ sales, marketing, and customer service operations.

SMS 122

SMS Customer Campaign Social Media 122

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. Such direct experiences allows one to test critical “leap-of-faith” assumptions about what customers like and dislike.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

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 Investors who provide hands-on help have little or no effect on the company’s operational performance. Startup Genome Report. better user growth.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

ConversionXL

MARCH 4, 2020

You need to know how each tool operates. Don’t choose metrics that are similar but not the same. Otherwise, it’s easy to turn a small discrepancy into a massive issue—one that torches year-over-year data comparisons and just about all of your quarterly (even annual) metrics. Every tool has its own methods for various metrics.

Analytics 88

Analytics IP Metrics Conversion 88

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.)

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Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. While Google fights on the edges, Amazon is attacking their core - Chris Dixon , May 22, 2010 Google is fighting battles on almost every front: social networking, mobile operating systems, web browsers, office apps, and so on. The Curation Team. Well, half of it. Stay Tuned.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

It wasn’t until I found the extremely obscure Lanchester Strategy for market share that I realized that these ratios had their basis in operations research and the Lanchester’s Laws.) Our company’s graphics boards were designed to speed up a key part of the Macintosh graphics operating system called QuickDraw.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

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. On the low-end, they undercut cost structures, resulting in customer migration.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 31, 2015

Every year, our team conducts more than 500 customer development calls to understand what challenges the community is facing. She shares: “We now use metrics like cost-per-learning and validation velocity to show progress since traditional things like ROI weren’t applicable.” Here are some of our favorites: 1.

Lean 60

Lean United States Fractional CTO Startup 60

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet. This is all a part of the normal product and customer development process,” the CEO tells the team. Three months in, the burn is now at $70k/month.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. 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.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

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

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

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

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. For customer development, start with Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany or take a look at his recent Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lecture.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. What is customer development?

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. 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. Compared to the million-dollar startup, they are operating at micro-scale.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

That’s because many of our reports feed us vanity metrics: numbers that make us look good but don’t really help make decisions. Yet even among those who have access to good actionable metrics, I’ve noticed a phenomenon that prevents taking maximum advantage of data. Too much of this data is non- actionable.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. The most common mistake startups make is assuming they can operate the same way big companies do, and expect success with little to no feedback from potential customers. This is a customer development problem. Website Analysis.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. You dive deep into a customer development process, working closely with a few customers who feed you requirements and are willing to trial an imperfect product that is evolving quickly. Related articles.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

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

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Business schools teach aspiring executives a variety of courses around the execution of known business models, (accounting, organizational behavior, managerial skills, marketing, operations, etc.). We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? And if you neglect maintenance, you may not have a business left at all.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2018

Much of the writing on startups focuses on two elements: finding product-market fit scaling the company once #1 is accomplished For product-market fit, we have a lot of source material to work with from the last decade: Steve Blank’s leadership on Customer Development , and Eric Ries’ on the Lean Startup ?—?along and they will.

Warrant 48

Warrant Bootstrapping Framework Hiring 48

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

An investor had few hard metrics other than the actual financials, and little technology to make the process scaleable. Over the past few decades, better metrics became available, and investors could take a more analytical, data-driven approach. ” Historically, investing was a manual, artisan process.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

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? Does legal need to sign off for cyber operations? So yes, war fighters are one customer segment, but others need to be involved before the war fighter can ever see the product. Lessons Learned.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations. When operating with continuous deployment, its almost impossible to have integration conflicts. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Small batches reduce overhead.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

It provides a basic introduction to analytics as they apply to Lean Startup, including sections on what metrics to use and how to interpret them. For instance, Ben lists out the worst of the “vanity metrics,” a term that describes appealing but meaningless or misleading numbers. Alistair: There are plenty. Consider a restaurant.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

This is another sub-optimization caused by incentivizing the wrong metric. For example, lets say you dont have an operations team, and so youre still getting paged late at night when servers crash. Is it time to make your first operations hire? This is a variant of the time-quality-money fallacy , and it is not necessarily true.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

In management jobs related to operations – that is, the people tasked with actually making and distributing physical products – this kind of thinking is now considered ludicrous, thanks to a century of progress. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 18, 2010 Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases non-events The following is a case study of one entrepreneurs transition from a traditional development cycle to continuous deployment. Many people still find this idea challenging, even for companies that operate solely on the web.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Indeed the first thing I thought when I read the first paragraphs that the product manager was operating in a white tower and that the developers felt disenfranchised. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? This post has been removed by the author. Nice write-up.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

You can train your operations or customer service staff on how it works - all live in the production environment. Monitoring of real-world metrics. In order to make continuous deployment work, teams have to get good at automated monitoring and reacting to business and customer-centric metrics, not just technical metrics.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

When it becomes possible to build products "live" with customers, the cycle time changes and design becomes a much more dynamic process. We still struggle to create Firm software that is defect-free, and it still requires customer insight (and maybe some customer development) to discover what will Delight.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87