SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

" One was an enterprise software product. In both cases, the answer was that the founder would go to find other ideas, turn those into paper descriptions and validate it with customers. Customer Validation 101. " Today I had two conversations with early stage startups (see Free CTO Consulting ). billion dollar mistake.

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Customer Fractional CTO Viral Lean 227

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 242

Steve Blank

JULY 24, 2012

The VC’s suggested I should spend a day at Onyx Software, an early pioneer in Sales Automation in Seattle. Their VP of Sales was about 6’ 3” and seemed to be almost as wide. I jokingly said, “If the software business doesn’t work out you guys got a pretty good football team here.” I Know A Great Customer.

Seattle 259

Seattle Cofounder Engineer Sales 259

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. “Customer Development” to test the hypotheses outside the building and. We’ve pivoted our Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum.

Intellectual Property 281

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 281

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

I''ve been thinking a lot lately about scaling sales. . Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. How do I build a repeatable, scalable sales process that is like an industrial machine - not a crafts project? 1) Enterprise Sales.

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Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2024

After listening to how he got into that predicament, I realized it sounded exactly like the mistake I had made selling enterprise software. And for good measure, I never even considered asking the potential customer to pay for the demo and/or my costs. (My My only excuse was that this was my first foray into enterprise sales.)

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Founder Engineer Sales Conversion 325

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Marketing and capital expenses (new factory, high R&D expense) were predicated on consumer-scale sales. I got a preview of PhotoCD when I was the head of marketing at SuperMac , a supplier of hardware and software for graphics professionals. You’d go home with a Compact Disc with your pictures on it. would want to use it.

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Search Marketing Forecast Burn Rate 256

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?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Hunter Walker

AUGUST 11, 2022

Founders seem to disproportionately come from engineering, product and sales/business unit career paths. You’re trying to build a software product, do customer development and find PMF. Founders Often Don’t Come From These Backgrounds…. Nor Do VCs.

Seed Stage 102

Seed Stage Cap Table Founder Marketing 102

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. These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

JULY 22, 2010

Startup CEO’s can’t delegate sales and expect it to happen. Customer Validation needs to have the CEO actively involved. Here’s an example in a direct sales channel. Customer Development Diagnostics over Lunch. A VC asked me to have lunch with the CEO of a startup building cloud-based enterprise software.

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Forecast Sales Customer Customer Development 270

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Jocelyn Goldfein was most recently Engineering Director at Facebook and will talk about how different types of software allow for different types of experimentation. Blair Beverly from Google ’s AdSense group will describe a stealthy method for convincing colleagues to get on board with Lean Startup.

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Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

It wasn’t so many years ago that starting a new e-commerce business on the Internet was a complex custom development project, usually costing a million dollars or more. Gone are the days of required $50K computer servers onsite, with big software license fees up-front. Social media facilitates marketing and sales.

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Cost Entrepreneur Burn Rate Social Media 405

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.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Eric Ries co-founded Catalyst Recruiting while attending Yale, and continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com. Taking My Class. Hear Eric explain what they learned.

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Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

Freshman Salesman writes: I’ve read somewhere in your blog about how you had a very large organisation as the first customer for your software. I’m putting myself in the same boat now with the solution I’m developing so could you tell me: 1. How did you reach out to your first customer? I had a $39.95

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Customer Software Review IP Technical Review 231

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

That died with waterfall software development. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? Ditto for enterprise software companies. It’s “lifetime value&# of a customer. Do so at your peril.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

He would go on to be a co-founder of two mechanical engineering software companies.) And they were responsible for helping our 3 rd party software group reach the right application providers to port their software to our computer. be a user of software (for the consumer use case).

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 19, 2017

In e-commerce, retaining customers is essential to the survival of your business. It has long been known that keeping a customer is much cheaper than acquiring a new one, as those customers tend to be far more receptive to sales and promotions after they have made an initial purchase with you. Engage your customers.

Software Review 133

Software Review Technical Review Retention Channel 133

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money. Would you mind sharing them?

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 2, 2013

We talk a lot about Customer Development, but there’s nothing like seeing it in action to understand its power. But the big payoff came when their discussions with medical device customers revealed an entirely new way to think about pricing —potentially tripling their revenue.

Customer 323

Customer Churn Rate Customer Development Lean 323

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

And I got to experience a type of customer buying behavior I had never seen before – the Novelty Effect. Present at the Creation It was early 1991 and Apple’s software development team was hard at work on QuickTime , the first multimedia framework for a computer. The software was idiot proof.

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Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2014

The importance of the customer feedback cycle & the role it plays for AWeber. How to get your software business to the point where you can hire a business development director. Hunter shares some extremely valuable insights that will prove useful in building beneficial relationships and getting highly qualified customers.

Developer 104

Developer API Cofounder New Jersey 104

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 6, 2014

The Right Way To Do A Software ROI Analysis | Feld Thoughts – crowdspring.co/1jQOLR4. Customer] Retention is King (good insights on measurement) – crowdspring.co/1haiyJt. Jessica Livingston: Why Startups Need to Focus on Sales, Not Marketing | WSJ – crowdspring.co/1h6bKMW. ” – crowdspring.co/1oDXgXm.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Software Review 94

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

We spent time out in the marketplace talking with customers, looking at their solutions, comparing ourselves with our competition and then squirreling ourselves away in our offices designing our next set of features. Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. Tim started to change our processes.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Michael Eidsaune , co-founder of Carely , a software platform that facilitates communication among families caring for sick or elderly relatives. Michael Eidsaune.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Michael Eidsaune , co-founder of Carely , a software platform that facilitates communication among families caring for sick or elderly relatives. Michael Eidsaune.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2012

He was building a better enterprise software product, and to get the word out, he organized ‘City Tour’ events and neighborhood ‘street teams.’ The City Tour events would bring his customers together with prospects and a few other interesting people for presentations and group discussion. Cultivate customer sales and marketing people.

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Kathy Sierra at Business of Software 2009 - Business of Software Blog , May 4, 2010 "In the old days, getting customers was easy. Through advertising or direct sales, these sites harvest intent. They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. Tech support is sales. You could just outspend.

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Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

This is going to be BIG.

JULY 18, 2011

Talking to customers is, of course, a good thing. I have seen, however, the customer development process wind up looking like a street corner salesman selling watches out of the inside of his coat. If you don't have unique insight into the nature or the problem, customer development is going to be random and unproductive.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Lean 115

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.” Little Indians and Big Indians At MIPS Computers , my second semiconductor company, I was the VP of Marketing and defacto head of Sales. Are you out of your !? *x!

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

Then, consider how you’ll reach your customers and what kind of relationship you want to build with them. Will you opt for direct sales, subscriptions, or a freemium model? They allow you to easily edit, share, and collaborate on documents without the need for multiple software solutions.

Intellectual Property 132

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 132

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

You take that money and invest a good portion of it in traditional sales and marketing efforts — including product developers, creative people, and salespeople, all of whom are paid to figure out what buyers want and to say good things about your company — in a quest to get even more customers. Close the sale.

Customer 168

Customer Social Media Retention Canada 168

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

For the last 75 years products (both durable goods and software) were built via Waterfall development. Smart companies will figure out how to educate their customers and communicate these changes. The Old Days – Waterfall Product Development. Waterfall – The Customer View.

Continuous Deployment 329

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 329

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

The news from customers was not good. This week, our first team up was PersonalLibraries (the team that had software to help researchers manage, share and reference the thousands of papers in their personal libraries.) Sales process: buyer/ user/ influencer etc.? We offered some examples of what a sales funnel looked like.

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Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 234

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Since the term “cloud computing” was coined in 1996—at least as we have come to understand its meaning—the software as a service industry has exploded. If you use software like LivePlan, you can create this initial “lean plan” in under an hour and then spend your time where it really matters—on validating your idea. The business model.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74