Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. Since I began incorporating the Investment Readiness Level framework I’ve made three observations. But the ‘ah-hah!’

Sacramento 308

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 308

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

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. Putting customers first. Legendary customer support. Guide to Evaluating Startup Ideas - Tony Wright dot com , May 27, 2010 A great developer I once worked with was kvetching at lunch one day.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Teams are continuing their relentless interviewing of customers, or beneficiaries as we call them in this class. The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Teams are continuing their relentless interviewing of customers, or beneficiaries as we call them in this class. The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Behind this analysis is a spreadsheet model, complete with detailed metrics for a set of customer behaviors that show just how valuable the new product will be. This whole framework breaks down when teams confront entrepreneurial situations in which theyre trying to build something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

But here’s some examples or frameworks to consider. You’re obviously not showing charts of user growth, number of customers, or revenue. Pre-launch customer development data is another way, sometimes in the form of user surveys for consumer companies or interviews with potential beta customers for B2B businesses.

Seed Stage 149

Seed Stage B2B Seed Capital Revenue 149

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 29, 2010

Tactics were discussed out of context, and there wasnt an overarching framework for figuring out what works for what kinds of companies, industries, and stages of growth. Sure, everyone knows that getting customer feedback is important. And do I still need to get out of the building if Ive got great metrics and surveys?"

San Francisco 120

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 120

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2018

Much of the writing on startups focuses on two elements: finding product-market fit scaling the company once #1 is accomplished For product-market fit, we have a lot of source material to work with from the last decade: Steve Blank’s leadership on Customer Development , and Eric Ries’ on the Lean Startup ?—?along Stanford’s CS183c?—?Blitzscaling

Warrant 48

Warrant Bootstrapping Framework Hiring 48

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

An investor had few hard metrics other than the actual financials, and little technology to make the process scaleable. Over the past few decades, better metrics became available, and investors could take a more analytical, data-driven approach. ” Historically, investing was a manual, artisan process.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

This simple three-part framework underlies almost all discussions about technical design today, and it was clearly on display in the recent debates over technical debt. Of course, its possible that after the product is shipped and customer feedback is solicited, the next product design might be different.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2009

It will probably be the first time Ill be able to take extensive Q&A on some of the new frameworks Ill be debuting at Web 2.0 The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Combining agile development with customer developm. Join the Lean Startup discussion at Web 2.0

Agile 60

Agile Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

OnlyOnce

AUGUST 12, 2013

Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business , by Harley Manning and Kelly Bodine from Forrester Research, was a good read that kept crossing back and forth between good on the subject at hand, and good business advice in general. “Customer Experience is a journey, not a project. .”

Lean 94

Lean Agile B2B Metrics 94

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

You can keep the team focused on customer-centric results, rather than conformance to spec. Usability design is a highly iterative process, and the more customers who are involved (via in-person interview, split-test experiment, etc) the better. There are no customers for that feature, UI issues or no. I strongly disagree.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 1, 2013

2) Vanity Metrics : Especially for those working to increase awareness, social change groups often report member numbers, Facebook likes, and news hits as proxies for impact (which may in turn generate further revenue). How can we come up with impact metrics that go further than vanity and get to the core outcomes we''re working to achieve?

Lean 167

Lean San Francisco Metrics Angel Investor 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Plus, we saw some of the intrinsic limitations of supporting such a large staff: slower cycle times, higher cost basis, and - most importantly - the ability to serve only a limited number of customer segments. So we tried to craft a strategy that would give us the product development leverage we needed to serve all customers.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 16, 2013

Palantir is a deep technical play and we had a lot of code to write just to fill out the product vision that we had already validated with potential customers; it took us two straight years of development to go from early prototypes to software that could be used in production. It wasn’t always this way.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Software Engineering Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. Some startups avoid getting customer feedback for precisely this reason: they are afraid that if early reactions are negative, theyll be "forced" to abandon their vision. One such practice is to pivot from one vision to the next.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. And we can offer investors metrics to play Moneyball – with the Investment Readiness Level. We think we can do better. Here’s how.

Oakland 327

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 327

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

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. However, that cant be the end of the story.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Having had a number of years to try and answer this question at cocktail parties and social gatherings of all kinds, I thought Id try and expand on his framework a little, and then try and use these answers to help make suggestions for those who are trying to get people to buy virtual goods.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 102

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 1, 2009

LIKED: Y startups fail, cont deployment vs waterfall vs agile, small batches & learn fr biz metrics #leanstartup As concise a summary as Ive ever seen. Q: Does the Lean Startup framework work efficiently within a company of 2-3 people (think small)?" farazq : Awesome session @ericries. A: yes, absolutely.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 60

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

The term “Growth Hacking”, invented by Sean Ellis , and made popular by Andrew Chen , a Silicon valley marketer and entrepreneur, is a combination of two disciplines – marketing and coding: Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?”

API 167

API Viral Startup Retention 167

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

The language we use for startup stages (discovery, validation, customer creation, company building) is abstract. You shift from qualitative feedback (customer development) to quantitative feedback (metrics). The lines are blurry. And if jumping ahead of yourself is the #1 cause of startup death[1], that’s a problem.

Startup 55

Startup Business Model Retention Acquisition 55

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. In particular, a marketing launch can help you do three things (courtesy, as is most of my marketing advice, of The Four Steps to the Epiphany ): Drive customers into your sales pipeline. Do your customers really read TechCrunch?

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

When I try to unpack what people mean by the question, heres my best take on what they are asking: "Look, Steve Jobs doesnt go out and ask customers what they want. He tells customers what they want, and he gets it right. When a customer tells you how they feel about your ideas, that doesnt tell you anything about your ideas.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It’s important to invest in good architecture so that your website will scale once customers arrive. If you make that investment, and then customers arrive, and the site stays up, most companies will reward the people who built the architecture and, thus, prevented the scaling problems. How upset will those customers be?

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. Building Metrics / Usage Reports / KPI 3. Product/Metrics (70%/30% time) * Get your product activation (sign-up + meaningful action) to 60% * then, Get your product retention to 20% weekly. Why do I do it?

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

www.rocketwatcher.com

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

Rocket Watcher Product Marketing for Startups Product Marketing for Startups About Speaking Contact Email Posts Startups Product Marketing Messaging Social Media Commentary Uncategorized Marketing Metrics 101 for B2B Startups 13. Rocket watcher b2b marketing metrics View more presentations from April Dunford.

B2B 42

B2B Metrics Marketing Startup 42

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

It also has the nice side-effect of driving down the batch size of work, but thats for another post) This framework for making progress evident applies to more than just scheduling, of course. I used to think a giant flat-panel screen that broadcast our companys key metrics would be what was required to get everyone to pay attention to them.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2014

Just as you would with a customer, you need to understand their needs better. First, you need to find a way to have them experience what their customers are actually going through. Nothing is more impactful than actually seeing what you are putting your customers through. In that case, metrics and analytics are really important.

Lean 167

Lean Design Mobile Engineer 167

ConversionXL

AUGUST 28, 2014

Peep has also said that “conversion” on it’s own is a silly metric, if you have a variation that shows 90% off full price, of course the variation will “win” but if it does not result in extra revenue, than the metric on it’s own is b t. Why do your most loyal customers keep coming back? Why your new customers leave?

Analytics 104

Analytics Conversion Lean Metrics 104

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization. It exists to serve the needs of customers, and it does this by offering its capabilities to other functions in the company, and partnering with them. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

VC Cafe

JUNE 28, 2012

It’s a rant really… LSM is a weekend educational program designed to teach the principles of lean startup and customer development. One of the basic principles of lean startup is that you shouldn’t write a single line of code that your customers aren’t asking you to. But LSM is different.

Lean 96

Lean Startup Framework Business Model 96

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2019

In my experience, I saw that most business plans don’t survive first contact with customers. The class was unique in that it was 1) team-based, 2) experiential, 3) lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering). As a serial entrepreneur turned educator, this didn’t make sense to me.

Lean 251

Lean Business Model Balance Sheet Video 251

market-by-numbers.com

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Market By Numbers on Twitter | Entries RSS | Comments RSS Market By Numbers High-Tech Marketing and Customer Development Home What is Customer Development? Customer Development Help Affordable Customer Development Support! Please Share! Feel free to Contact me.

San Diego 40

San Diego RSS Lean Elevator Pitch 40