Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

The moment I saw the product I knew every one of my professional graphics customers (ad agencies, freelancers, photo studios, etc.) But every graphics professional did own a CDROM drive but most didn’t own a high-resolution film scanner – and PhotoCD would have been perfect for them – and the perfect launch customer.

Search 291

Search Marketing Forecast Burn Rate 291

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Finally, I’ll write about 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.

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 228

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

This isn’t just about having a eureka moment; it’s about understanding the problem you’re solving and why it matters to your potential customers. Then, consider how you’ll reach your customers and what kind of relationship you want to build with them.

Intellectual Property 158

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 158

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? And when do business planning and execution come into play?

Search 324

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 324

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

Yet everyone – investors, entrepreneurs, academics — expected new startups to follow the same practices that worked for large companies – write a business plan, forecast 5-year sales projections and build the product without ever talking to customers. The National Science Foundation adopted it.

Lean 223

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 223

Steve Blank

JULY 22, 2013

Knowing this means farms can make better forecasts of how much their fields will produce, whether they should treat specific areas for pests, and put fertilizer and water only where it was needed. Customer Discovery on Farms. They concluded that the only way to get a delighted early customer was to build a minimum viable product (MVP).

Product 335

Product Customer Development Forecast Engineer 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2013

I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. I read a ton of existing literature and came up with a formal methodology for search I called Customer Development. Berkeley asked me to teach a class in Customer Development at Haas business school. In 2003 U.C.

Lean 291

Lean Agile Customer Development Business Model 291

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. Assuming you know what the customer wants. Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2013

I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. I read a ton of existing literature and came up with a formal methodology for search I called Customer Development. Berkeley asked me to teach a class in Customer Development at Haas business school. In 2003 U.C.

Lean 183

Lean Agile Customer Development Business Model 183

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

Forecasts can be based on a series of known conditions. It only emerges after an intense business model design and search activity based on the customer development process. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development.

Business Model 334

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 334

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.) If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know I believe that: 1) a product is just a part of a startup, but understanding customers, channel, pricing, etc. to optimize this search.

Wiki 315

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 315

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

Our LivePlan customers are entrepreneurs, our founder and staff have run and sold companies, the Bplans readers are aspiring entrepreneurs (or actual entrepreneurs), and as I sell my own handmade jewelry, I like to think I have a very small claim to the title. Your customer. At Palo Alto Software, I am surrounded by entrepreneurs.

Curation 60

Curation Lean Software Review Finder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. Thats an important job, for sure, and Ive been called upon to do it from time to time.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

From the point of view of scientists and engineers in a university lab, too often entrepreneurship in all its VC-driven glory – income statements, balance sheets, business plans, revenue models, 5-year forecasts, etc. They’ll explore the best way to deliver the product to customers, the resources required, as well as competing technologies.

Engineer 283

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 283

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan put in place GM’s management accounting system (borrowed from DuPont) that for the first time allowed the company to: 1) produce an annual operating forecast that compared each division’s forecast (revenue, costs, capital requirements and return on investment) with the company’s financial goals.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 179

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

The Embrace infant warmer was developed - by getting out of the country -- and how Rob Emrich learned and scaled his non-profit, Road of Life. BetaBrand building apparel MVPs and testing them quickly with targeted customer communities. Brant and Patrick spend considerable time helping you think through your customer segments.

Lean 167

Lean Entrepreneur Agile San Francisco 167

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2016

Here’s how she discovered what her customers actually wanted: I worked backwards from the optimal solution: What would people pay hundreds of dollars a month for, thousands of dollars a year for, that isn’t too far off from what we’re doing today? I went to a customer’s office and I watched him use my software.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Cofounder Customer Development 120

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

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

That’s because the model is based on assumptions about customers that are totally unproven. If we already knew who the customer was, how they would behave, how much they would pay, and how to reach them, this wouldn’t be a disruptive innovation. The solution is to change our focus from outputs to inputs. If it costs $0.10

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2012

Customer Validation. We had closed four $100,000 deals for our customer relationship management software. It took weeks or months for Sales to get financial, sales results and customer reports from IT. Autodesk became our third paying customer. Filed under: Customer Development , E.piphany , Marketing.

Forecast 295

Forecast Sales Matching Customer Development 295

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

A number of analysts have particular focus on serving the customers of technology companies, e.g., Gartner and 451 Research. Custom CRM solutions for PE/VC funds are offered by Altvia , Backstop Solutions , DealCloud , EquityTouch , SalesLogistix , Satuit , Sevanta Dealflow , Navatar , Salesforce , SalesforceIQ , and Touchstone.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 2, 2020

It wasn’t until we began creating custom dashboards to visualize our data that everything started to click. . In this article, I’ll share how to bring together data from different sources and visualize it at custom marketing and sales funnels that help you make better decisions. Defining your funnel. The Activation stage.

Churn Rate 78

Churn Rate Analytics Retention SQL 78

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Instead of encouraging entrepreneurs to focus on developing long and in-depth, static business plans, Tim advocated for a simpler approach: Define your business identity: What’s your value proposition to your customers? Determine your target market: You need to know and understand your customers.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

When it was spun out as a a separate company, Iridium’s 1990 business plan had assumptions about potential customers, their problems and the product needed to solve that problem. No Business Plan Survives First Contact With A Customer. Second, since it knew the solution, it went into a 8 -year Waterfall engineering development process.

Business Plan 335

Business Plan Customer Business Model Customer Development 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

The beginner’s forecasting method is to simply extrapolate current growth rates forward. Forecasting. If applicable, understand the personnel flow for each segment. Do people move just between their segments or up and down through the entire industry? Where do they get trained? AI, Quantum, High performance computing,…?).

Forecast 382

Forecast China Demand Web 382

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Get 18 months or more of cash (runway) in the business against a conservative forecast. Over-communicate with employees, investors, customers. Theres no better way to learn what customers want (or hate!). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Use Google Apps.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

In the real world, most business plans don’t survive the first few months of customer contact. And even if they did – customers don’t ask to see your business plan. Preparing for a year is not the best way to spend time, rather getting customers is the better way to an Investor’s heart.

Business Plan 155

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 155

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

After all, when upper management has been told a project will succeed for 4 years, it is very hard for anyone in middle management to stand up and reverse this forecast. In a truly new market, we face no meaningful competition, there are no tradeshows to present at, and customers are not clamoring for our product.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2010

To get to this Transition stage, the company needed passionate visionaries who can articulate a compelling vision, agile enough to learn and discover in real time, resilient enough to deal with countless failures, and responsive enough to capitalize on what they learned in order to secure early customers. All of this is often true.

Agile 120

Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

Instead, lets focus on building companies that matter , on creating real value for customers, and learning. Talking about trends is more about trying to forecast the future, like a guru, sometimes it works, sometimes not. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Because five whys kept turning up a few key metrics that were hard to set static thresholds for, we even had a dynamic prediction algorithm that would make forecasts based on past data, and fire alerts if the metric ever went out of its normal bounds. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Up and Running

DECEMBER 5, 2016

Instead of encouraging entrepreneurs to focus on developing long, in-depth, static business plans, Berry advocated for a simpler approach: Define your business identity: What’s your value proposition to your customers? Determine your target market: You need to know and understand your customers.

Lean 60

Lean Silicon Valley Business Model Forecast 60

Up and Running

JULY 14, 2015

The customer validation phase is critical for that kind of thing. Caroline: Number five is not talking to customers. ” And I say, “Oh, what do your customers think?” ” And they say, “We don’t have any customers yet.” You need to go out and do some customer development.

Incubator 60

Incubator Email Startup Oregon 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. Experienced entrepreneurs kept finding that no business plan survived first contact with customers. I read a ton of existing literature and came up with a formal methodology for search I called Customer Development.

Lean 321

Lean Georgia Michigan Business Model 321

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

Listening to first-time entrepreneurs talk about their competitive advantages is as predictably invalid as the local weatherman's 10-day forecast. 0160; If I need $250,000 to get to 100 customers, or $1 million to get to X, and I can raise both amounts from either Angels or VCs, where do we turn? Customer Care Today.

Software Review 217

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Technical Review 217