Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, May 14, 2009 The Lean Startup Workshop - now an OReilly Master Class My rate of posting has been much lower lately, and this is mostly due to preparations for the upcoming Lean Startup Workshop on May 29. I have a lot of good news to report on this front. You can click here to learn more.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

The Lean LaunchPad course online. I teach potential founders a hands-on, experiential class called the Lean LaunchPad at Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia and Caltech. customer development. Some general customer development slides click here. Online Guide to How to Build a Startup: The Lean LaunchPad.

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Open Source Silicon Valley Lean Customer Development 335

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

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Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. Alex, vice provost for Innovation & Economic Development at Weber State University in Utah and completing his first year of teaching entrepreneurship.

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Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 305

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, October 5, 2010 The Lean Startup Bundle People often ask me if they can buy "Lean Startup in a box" from me. Its a strange thing, to be asked by a potential customer if they can give you copious amounts of money, and then to have to refuse. And theres so much more.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 153

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Founders Pad.

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David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Not surprisingly, the list above also is ranked from least to most equity stake in an investment for the investor, relative to the cash they invest. How would one set up such a startup to eventually raise capital from outside VCs, who will be wary of ‘dead equity’ (i.e., equity that belongs to departed cofounders)? The cliffs?

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

The Equity Kicker

SEPTEMBER 22, 2014

At different times over the last year or so I’ve been writing about combining design thinking with the lean startup and the importance of doing great customer development , and it has just come home to me that the underlying point of it all is to add customer empathy to the lean start up process.

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Lean Startup Customer Development Design 128

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

3) invest in and take equity stakes in exchange for capital. In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. Each VC firm/partner has a different spin on what to weigh more.)

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Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

Our Lean Launchpad® for Life Sciences is one of them. The Lean Launchpad® for Life Sciences (the I-Corps @ NIH ) uses the Lean Startup Model to discover and validate the business model. The Lean Launchpad® for Life Sciences (the I-Corps @ NIH ) uses the Lean Startup Model to discover and validate the business model.

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The Next Web

JANUARY 27, 2013

Four books helped me out a lot over the last few years: Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank, Running Lean by Ash Maurya, The Four Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferris and Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson. So far, they’ve passed the legal department of our customers without any problems. Sean Connery, The Rock.

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Netherlands Technical Review Software Review Cofounder 159

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

There’s been a lot of hand-wringing about gender equity in the high-tech and entrepreneurship worlds lately. I already advocate cross-functional teams as part of the lean startup methodology. Last year, I traveled to dozens of cities talking about lean startups and meeting people interested in entrepreneurship.

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San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 13, 2014

In his new startup Michael is rigorously applying lean principles. They quickly found a small group of passionate users which he says is what kept them going until the market turned, but looking back Michael thinks that if they applied lean principles they might have made some different decisions.

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Lean Portfolio Design Customer Development 122

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2013

The program pays scientists $50,000 to attend the program and takes no equity. universities teaching the Lean LaunchPad curriculum organized as I-Corps “nodes” across the U.S. The nodes are now offering their own regional versions of the Lean LaunchPad class under I-Corps. Currently there are 11 U.S.

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The Equity Kicker

MAY 12, 2015

I just read two articles which beautifully illustrate the brilliance and challenges with the Lean Startup methodology. They were part of Steve Blanks Launchpad class at Stanford and followed lean principles to great effect. Through more customer development they found that thinning lettuces is a bigger problem, and LettuceBot was born.

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Step 1: Start with a lean plan. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Lean Methodology Sources. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Part 3- Lean Cust. Customer service. Google Custom Search Engine. Customer Relationship Management. Steve Blank’s Lean Startup Resources. Lean Startup Circle â?? great web customer acquisition tutorials.

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Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, October 30, 2008 John Doerrs 10 lean startup tips I just saw video of John Doerrs talk yesterday at VentureBeat’s “How to manage your start-up in the downturn&# roundtable event. Offer equity instead of cash. Over-communicate with employees, investors, customers.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

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. It needs the tools and processes pioneered in Lean Startups. What to Do?

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2015

— — — — In this second segment, Takashi Tsutsumi and Masato Iino talk about how they brought the Lean Startup to Japan. Prior to that, he worked for the Industrial Bank of Japan and General Electric specializing in deliberative trading, private equity investment, and post merger integration.

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Channel Japan Bosnia Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. The process they use to guide their search is customer development. They would: Blog their Customer Development progress as a narrative. Weekly blog of the customer development narrative.

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Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

grasshopperherder.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Piercing the Corporate Veil – Sweat Equity Consulting. But much like becoming a co-founder, getting paid sweat equity is essentially becoming an investor in the company. If you did, why would you be consulting for sweat equity instead of investing as a VC or for yourself? GrasshopperHerder.com. • ABOUT. Jan 20 -->.

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The Equity Kicker

OCTOBER 1, 2014

We have been interviewing lots of solo founders recently as we look to deepen our understanding of one of our key customer segments. Interestingly, everyone had read The Lean Startup and professed to follow it’s guidance, although many did things that we would not regard as lean. ‘What do they want?’

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The Equity Kicker

JULY 29, 2013

I just read a great post on Quora which contends that every startup needs a great product picker – i.e. a person with a Steve Jobs like ability to know what customers want and what is going to make a product successful. Enough customers who will pay enough to make this a large market. I couldn’t agree more.

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grasshopperherder.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2011

Q: “What will be your best channel for customer acquisition?&# How many customers have you spoken to? If you’re waiting for a marketing guy to talk to customers, you’ll never understand the target market. If you offer me 1% of the equity, I’ll do 1% of the work. A: “I don’t know.

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Cofounder NDA Founder Sweat Equity 47

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2009

Worries from the garage One of the worries I hear from entrepreneurs (not just my students) is that Customer Development means getting out of the building and sharing what you are working on. In the end, the CEO couldn’t get his board to give us the cash in exchange for the Japanese distribution rights and some equity.

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Silicon Valley RSS Startup California 149

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

Dave : We’re trying to take a lot of the stuff that you’ve done with the Lean LaunchPad methodology and move that out across university into the other schools. . What’s more, as the Lean Startup revolution has gone mainstream, Dave said, it has started to change the trajectory of our economy. I’m seeing it in real time.

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Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Silicon Valley New York 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Listen to this episode if you want to hear about a founder who has a product and users and paying customers … and is trying to figure out how to take his company to the next level and grow faster. Jason: So how many of those 20,000 people are paying customers? Edwin: Okay, I have different types of customers.

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. No Business Plan Survives First Contact With A Customer – The 5.2 It may be that all the doomsayers are right. But I don’t think so. same as the old boss.

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Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 15, 2011

The process they use to guide that search is "Customer Development" ; and to track their progress startups now have a scorecard to document their week-by-week changes – the business model canvas. They would: Blog their Customer Development progress as a narrative. What Does This Change? We Ran the Experiment.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Startup Early Stage Business Model 118

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 5, 2014

It’s a good read for anybody who wants to increase the number of free customers they are getting. Just on Monday I blogged about The Mom Test a book which makes it easy for anyone with discipline and a bit of get up and go to do great customer development. Who wouldn’t want that?

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Viral Lean SEO Software 92

The Equity Kicker

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

This tendency has by now been widely recognised and the customer development work of Steve Blank and lean startup work from Eric Ries are designed in part to overcome this natural human failing. They will stick their head in the sand and build a product for 6 months, come up for air, only to realize no one wants it.

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Product Lean Customer Development Design 126

www.instigatorblog.com

MARCH 2, 2010

I hadn’t really thought of it that way before, but there’s a certain comfort in thinking about having a team of people you can lean on for advice, help, questions, support, etc. This is typically done with a small piece of equity. As such, advisory board members will often become customers or help you find customers.

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The Equity Kicker

MAY 7, 2015

We think the best next step is to find a point of emotional connection with customers. The beauty of this step is that it’s simple to understand and easily actionable via a good customer development process.

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Business Model Search Due Diligence Early Stage 60

The Equity Kicker

JANUARY 10, 2018

Still, for most startups today best practice in product, including customer development and lean development principles, will be critically important. To go back a generation of startups, the success of Oracle and Microsoft came more from being great at sales and partnerships than from being great at product.

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Silicon Valley Framework Lean Founder 68

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

And the same time we were also going to do all the other strategic stuff about pricing, positioning, promotion and customer discovery and validation to help engineering understand customer needs. Later on in this same company’s life, sales will become the pointy end and product development moves to a supporting role.

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