Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

They needed to be sure that what they were building was what customers wanted and needed. And if their initial guesses were wrong, they needed a process that would permit them to change early on in the product development process when the cost of changes was small – the famed “pivot”. The result?

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink. Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter?

Incubator 414

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 414

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

Compressing the Product Development Cycle. In the past, the time to build a first product release was measured in months or even years as startups executed the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. When the speed of how businesses operated changed forever. Starting now. Happy Thanksgiving.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

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

AUGUST 17, 2012

For the next several weeks, the entire E.piphany engineering department worked with Autodesk’s sales operation team to build a prototype using real Autodesk data. But to lose the sale to another startup with an inferior product would have been psychologically devastating to our little startup. A Match Made in Heaven.

Forecast 295

Forecast Sales Matching Customer Development 295

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 142

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle. In the 20 th century startups I was part of, the time to build a first product release was measured in years as we turned out the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. The founders. The founders.

Restful 238

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 238

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

No one was actually quite that good, but some VCs had “golden guts” for these kinds of operating issues. I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. “Oh Oh yes, company X, they’re having problem 343.

Silicon Valley 129

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 129

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

I know that this all seems obvious now with the movements started by Steven Blank ( Four Steps of Epiphany ) with the whole Customer Development processes / Lean Startup movements also popularized by people like Eric Ries. They had decided to take a Digg style approach to product development. Back then it seemed foreign.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

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

JULY 29, 2013

A founder typically recruits co-founders and then becomes part of the founding team involved in day-to-day company operations. In addition, the founding CEO thrives operating in chaos and uncertainty. They deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

by Bill Lee, author of “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of Your Most Important Asset “ The old paradigm works like this: Your company produces goods and services that help customers get a job done. In return, the customers pay you money. Believably promote your product.

Customer 168

Customer Social Media Retention Canada 168

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

We agreed that all her founding CEOs seemed to have the same set of personality traits – tenacious, passionate, relentless, resilient, agile, and comfortable operating in chaos. It’s why all of you operated so well in the unpredictable environment that all startups face.” And that’s just to get started.

Founder 308

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 308

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited. A bunch of potential customers are kicking the tires on the product but it seems that every engaged beta customer needs something slightly different or feels as if the product is not ready to be truly used in production.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

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

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2022

How do they make these transitions without alienating and losing their existing customers, distribution channels and partners? And how do they motivate their most important asset – their people – to operate with speed, urgency, and passion? This is a common mistake corporate innovation teams tend to make.

Framework 395

Framework Distribution Channel Leadership 395

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

To promote innovation inside the NGA, they’ve staffed an Enterprise Innovation Office (EIO) to coach, educate and advise the entire agency, from core leadership to the operational edges, with methods and concepts of validated learning through rapid experimentation and customer development.

Lean 181

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 181

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

To promote innovation inside the NGA, they’ve staffed an Enterprise Innovation Office (EIO) to coach, educate and advise the entire agency, from core leadership to the operational edges, with methods and concepts of validated learning through rapid experimentation and customer development.

Lean 181

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 181

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. Its not enough just to build a product with great features - you have to figure out if there is a market for it. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. What is customer development?

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

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

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 268

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 268

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. You just can’t half-heartedly paste a few new tactics on top of your current operations and expect advocates to start singing your praises.

Programming 145

Programming Customer Social Media Advisory Board 145

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

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. Still, a startup product development team is a service organization. Were there to serve customers direclty, as well as all of the other functions of the company.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

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. Luckily, I now have the benefit of a forthcoming book, The Principles of Product Development Flow. Small batches reduce overhead.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 22, 2008 Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to measure customer satisfaction Ive mentioned Net Promoter Score (NPS) in a few previous posts, but havent had a chance to describe it in detail yet. What is customer development? Lo, my 1032 subscribers, who are you?

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. For my first time, it was scalability problems and our operations team. Now, everyone is learning together - about your product, process, and team.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

But first I think we need to save the product manager from that special form of torture only a waterfall product development team can create. Labels: product development 8comments: Vincent van Wylick said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

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

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

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. Creating a company-wide feedback loop that incorporates both customer development and agile development is a challenge.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Lo, my 1032 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. Good luck, engineering manager. It was painful for a lot of people.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

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

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

JUNE 8, 2009

So the product development team was busy creating lots of split-tests for lots of hypotheses. That’s causing the Product Owner and team to spend more time with each other reviewing the results of experiments, which is allowing them to learn and iterate much faster. They’ve learned to see this waste.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84