ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

The most common mistake startups make is assuming they can operate the same way big companies do, and expect success with little to no feedback from potential customers. A corporation like Starbucks could pick locations by throwing a dart at a map and know they’ll at least break even with a new location and mediocre customer service.

Customer Development 126

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 17, 2010

After all: Tech support deals with insane customers. Tech support keeps angry customers at bay while having no power to effect change. If this is your attitude, your conception of tech support is completely backwards and you're missing out on important channels for marketing, product development, and sales. That's sales.

Technical Review 245

Technical Review Sales Turkey Software Review 245

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

I’m going to take that thought out into the field and validate it with my customers." I’ve spoken to dozens of customers, I have a validated customer persona, built an MVP to test key behavioral hypotheses, and the data doesn’t back what you’re saying." Customer Validation 101. Either: "That’s interesting.

Customer 227

Customer Fractional CTO Viral Lean 227

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. The most common mistake startups make is assuming they can operate the same way big companies do, and expect success with little to no feedback from potential customers. This is a customer development problem. Website Analysis.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2014

In today’s hypercompetitive, customer-driven business world, you need to look at new ways to make your business stand out. By exploring customer service initiatives, new sales channels, and private label financing, to name a few, you can attract and keep new customers. Improve the Customer Experience.

Customer 158

Customer PPC Software Review Finance 158

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

I was driving home from the BIO conference in San Diego last month and had lots of time for a phone call with Dave, an ex student and now a founder who wanted to update me on his Customer Discovery progress. Customer Discovery. He worked hard to deeply understand the customer problems of these two customer segments.

Cofounder 336

Cofounder Founder Technical Cofounder Coder 336

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2010

It’s the combination of Business Model Design and Customer Development. Business Model Design Gets Dynamic, Customer Development Gets Strategic. One of the key tenets of Customer Development is that your business model is nothing more than a set of untested hypotheses. Business Model Design.

Customer Development 329

Customer Development Business Model Developer Customer 329

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 10, 2024

In today’s fast-paced digital landscape, effective communication is the key to successful customer engagement. In this blog, we’ll explore the significance of Salesforce SMS integration and how it can revolutionize your customer communication strategies. Why does Salesforce SMS integration matter?

SMS 123

SMS Customer Campaign Social Media 123

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 think you meant this

Customer 231

Customer Software Review IP Technical Review 231

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

I was having coffee with the CEO of a new startup, listening to her puzzle through how to communicate to potential customers. I reminded her that all the Lean tools she learned in class–Customer Discovery, business model and value proposition canvases– contained her answer. Painful and invaluable” was her reply. Here’s how.

Marketing 310

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 310

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

As organizations we have become more open and I believe this is great for businesses and their customers. 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.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

We think teaching teams a formal methodology around the Lean Framework (Business Model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) is a natural evolution of how successful incubators/accelerators will build startups. Given something tangible, customers were able to start gauging their willingness to use and pay.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

This week they were testing who the customer, user, payer for the product will be (and discovering if they have a multi-sided business model , one with both buyers and sellers.) The news from customers was not good. talk to more customers? Which value added services do public clouds want to attract customers for?

Customer 234

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 234

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

by Bill Lee, author of “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of Your Most Important Asset “. Talented product developers. No one can truly understand your customers or genuinely share their interests unless she is a customer herself. Your most powerful growth engine is your existing customer.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

110 researchers and clinicians, and Principal Investigators got out of the lab and hospital, and talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them. clinical utility, customer, quality of data, reimbursement, what parts of the product are valuable, roles of CRO’s , and partners, etc.,)

Lean 269

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 269

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. What kind of objectives would a startup want or need for sales and marketing?

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

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.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

by Bill Lee, author of “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of Your Most Important Asset “ The old paradigm works like this: Your company produces goods and services that help customers get a job done. In return, the customers pay you money. The new approach makes so much more sense.

Customer 158

Customer Social Media Retention Canada 158

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

Each sale requires us to handhold the customer and takes way too long to close. A few investors suggested he add new product features, others suggested firing the VP of Sales. The Customer Development model that I write and teach about is the entrepreneur’s version of Boyds’ OODA loop.).

Business Model 332

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 332

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. Let’s Fire Our Customers Part of the DNA of great entrepreneurs is a bias towards decisive and immediate action. Get it done, now.

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

The Customer Development process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model , reducing customer and market risk. The first step of Customer Development is called Customer Discovery. outside the building and test them in front of customers. Me – “I’m confused.

Burn Rate 248

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 248

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Customer 420

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 420

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 22, 2012

by Bill Lee, author of “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of Your Most Important Asset “ Harnessing the power of references and referrals seems like an obvious win. What could make more sense than to leverage the enthusiasm of happy customers to convince buyers that they need your products and services?

Programming 145

Programming Customer Social Media Advisory Board 145

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2024

One of the most exciting things a startup CEO in a business-to-business market can hear from a potential customer is, “We’re excited. This can be the beginning of a profitable customer relationship or a disappointing sinkhole of wasted time, money, resources, and a demoralized engineering team. And it went great. What did I do wrong?

Founder 325

Founder Engineer Sales Conversion 325

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. Even more serious, startups can have radically different cash needs.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

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. He went through his product feature by feature and matched them to the customer problems.

Forecast 270

Forecast Sales Customer Customer Development 270

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 248

Lean Business Model Balance Sheet Video 248

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. A Five-sided Market. It’s Much Simpler.

Customer 323

Customer Churn Rate Customer Development Lean 323

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2010

One of the principles of Customer Development is to get out of the building and understand the smallest feature-set customers will pay for in the first release.). I can’t get more than one of ten potential customers to think that this is something they’d buy.” Or worse, that every potential customer should want it.

Customer Development 304

Customer Development Business Model Developer Search 304

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2012

Wrote technical manuals and taught microprocessor design (to customers who knew more than I did.) Worked weeks non-stop responding to customer Requests For Proposals (RFP’s.) In the sprint to first customer ship, slept under the desk in my office the same nights my engineering team was doing the same.

Thailand 331

Thailand Engineer Customer Development SEO 331

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 13, 2013

Like most startup entrepreneurs, when I began my first company in 1999 I had no formal sales experience. I did have the wherewithal to visit potential customers and try to understand the pain points that I thought could be solved with our solution. question in sales. This is a very important to do when you first start a company.

Sales 393

Sales Startup Framework Search 393

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

When it comes to making money online, business and personal branding are huge drivers of sales and influence. Company branding builds trust and an emotional connection between businesses and potential customers. And according to Forbes, brand loyalty is a big driver in closing sales and selling online. Custom development.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

The Customer Development talk can be seen here. That said I will be giving a Customer Development talk at TIECON , Saturday May 16th, 1:30 thanks for asking. steve Customer Development is Hard. Thanks to Dave McClure and Leonard Speiser for the opportunity to speak. It starts at ~40:30 in the video.

Customer Development 139

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 139

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Customer/Market Risk Versus Invention Risk One day I was having lunch with a VC sharing what I learned from my students. Our firm has a portfolio of companies across a broad range of markets and the way we look at it is pretty simple – the deals fall into two types: those with customer/market risk and those with invention risk.”

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development. I was an aggressive, young and a very tactical VP of marketing at Ardent , a supercomputer company – who really hadn’t a clue about the relationship between profound beliefs, customer discovery and strategy. What do you think?”

Business Model 305

Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 305