Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. You can imagine how well that worked. On the minus side, that has made it a wee bit hard to understand.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Unfortunately, positioning our product as an "IM add-on" was a complete mistake.

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Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

While our teams have mentors, socialize a lot and give great demos, the goal of our class final presentations is “ Lessons Learned ” – about product/market fit, pricing, acquisition/activation costs, pricing, partners, etc. From the first 10 interviews, we learned that video is a big problem for researchers who use that medium.

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

And I got to experience a type of customer buying behavior I had never seen before – the Novelty Effect. But the team believed adding video as an integral part of an operating system and user experience (where there had only been text and still images) would be transformative. The software was idiot proof.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. In most agile development systems, there is a notion of the "product backlog" a prioritized list of what software is most valuable to be developed next.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

– while simultaneously building a series of minimal viable products. Unlike traditional demo days or Shark Tanks which are, “Here’s how smart I am, and isn’t this a great product, please give me money,” a Lessons Learned presentation tells the story of a team’s 10-week journey and hard-won learning and discovery.

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ConversionXL

MARCH 28, 2014

You’ve likely already heard that explainer videos can boost conversions anywhere between ten and ten bazillion percent. With over 100 years of movie & video history embedded in our collective subconscious, your customer’s expectations are really high. What Is An Explainer Video? A Tutorial. image source.

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Video Software Review Cofounder Metrics 122

Steve Blank

MARCH 12, 2014

Therefore we needed them to think and learn about two parts of a startup; 1) ideation - how to create new ideas and 2) customer development – how do they test the validity of their idea (is it the right product, customer, channel, pricing, etc.). Customer Discovery in the Real World.

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Lean Customer Development Startup Silicon Valley 334

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

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Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

32 students were scattered across the globe and given a seemingly impossible assignment- they had 10 weeks to understand and then solve a real Dept of Defense problem – by interviewing 100 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, et al while simultaneously building a series of minimal viable products – all while never leaving their room.

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Oakland Asia Lean Video 311

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 30, 2012

The class teaches founders how to dramatically reduce their failure rate through the combination of business model design, customer development and agile development using the Startup Owners Manual. More importantly, it makes no demands of you to stand and deliver your weekly customer development progress in front of your peers.

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Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

As part of our Lean LaunchPad classes at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and for the National Science Foundation, students build a startup in 8 weeks using Business Model Design + Customer Development. Set up the Lean LaunchLab or a WordPress blog to document your Customer Development progress. Size the market opportunity.

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Lean Web Coder Business Model 334

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

The Times Square Strategy discussion I had with Eric Ries , was still top of mind, so instead of my standard Customer Development lecture , I offered my thoughts on: the origin of Customer Development, where we are today, and where does Customer Development go, and how you can help get it there.

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 223

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2021

I realized that pre-pandemic I had put together a series of two-minute videos called “See Why.” The Minimal Viable Product. How to Get, Keep and Grow Customers ? What is Customer Development. What is Customer Discovery and Why Do it? A short article on how to do Customer Discovery via Zoom.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 6, 2009 Lean Startup fbFund slides and video As a follow-up to my previous post on my talk for fbFund at Facebook , there was enough interest in watching video of the talk that I have finally uploaded it using Apples MobileMe. If you want to see the original video, use the link above.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. The product manager was clearly struggling to get results from the rest of the team. Lets start with what the product manager does.

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San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 251

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. Here’s what the product development diagram looks like from a sales perspective.

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 225

The Startup Magazine

DECEMBER 17, 2021

Feature them prominently, and it will highlight that your business has placed a large amount of faith in the abilities of its developers. Test Your Product. Everything you develop needs to be of quality. Without it, trust in your developers will be exceptionally hard to come by. Things can change with software too.

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Software Developers Software Development Reputation Software Review 180

Steve Blank

JUNE 28, 2014

If you can’t see the video click here Filed under: 2 Minute Lessons , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching. 2 Minute Lessons Business Model versus Business Plan Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching'

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Customer Search Lean Business Model 317

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. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter? End result?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 212

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

He’s a founder of Andreessen Horowitz, which has backed Facebook, Skype, Jawbone, and dozens of other companies whose products you use. And the whole site was developed in just 9 weeks. He’ll be running a hands-on session on how to make a compelling business video. Eric Ries will interview him.

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Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. Even if they did, what if the assumption – that we had developed a better approach to teaching entrepreneurship – was simply mistaken?

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Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 303

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

Founders innately believe they understand a customers problem and just need to spend their time building a solution. To build products that people want and will really use, founders first need to validate the problem/need, then understand whether their solution solves that problem (i.e. finding product/market fit).

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Customer Business Model Restful Video 418

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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 266

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc. It is the key to “customer development” that Steve Blank talks about. I’m going to save that for a future blog post.

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PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

Everybody and their mom uses the internet to discover new brands, influencers and ultimately to buy new products and services. If you want to compete with them, you’re going to have to develop a reputation and a strong web presence yourself. Even if you have cheaper pricing or a better product, branding can make or break your success.

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Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 29, 2018

If you want to take your business to the next level, you should consider app development. Are you are a startup that needs to market your products and services ? Either way, custom software development is an effective way to build brand awareness and give your business a competitive edge. Better lines of communication.

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Developer Offshore Software Developers Software Development 107

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. Price is as important as any other feature to determine product/market “fit.” ” How many times have you seen someone struggle with an inferior product because they cannot afford the better one? .”

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Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

Founders of startups (and new ventures inside existing companies) are searching for product/market fit and a repeatable and scalable business model. An entrepreneur must start with the belief that all their assumptions are simply hypotheses that will undoubtedly be challenged by what they learn from customers. experiential.

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Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 436

Steve Blank

JANUARY 13, 2015

The Art of the Minimal Viable Product. If you can’t see the video click here Filed under: 2 Minute Lessons , Customer Development. 2 Minute Lessons Customer Development' 2 Minutes to Find Out Why.

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Product Customer Development Video Developer 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

The disadvantage is that its methodology was based on the old waterfall model of product development and not the agile and lean methods that startups use today. It taught lean theory ( business model design , customer development and agile engineering) and practice. The Business Plan is Dead.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2014

Kauffman launched Founders School - a new education series to help entrepreneurs develop their businesses during the startup stage by highlighting how startups are different from big companies. You’ll learn how to: get to know your customers. get, keep and grow customers. 0:24: What is Customer Development?

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. We didnt think wed able to compete with that.

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Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I set up an advisory board as a vehicle to get these industry experts engaged with the company and product. Velvet Painting Period - MFLOPS Poster Engineers as Marketers There was one other reason I was talent-spotting our advisors and potential customers.

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 214

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 141

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 141

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

While I was consulting for them, I got a call from a recruiter for a company called SuperMac, which made add-on products for the Macintosh. They sold their product through the computer retail channel, something I knew nothing about. They sold to a set of customers I knew nothing about.

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