Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

I think customer feedback comes in a very unstructured manner, hence it is difficult to apply an algorithm on it. to make sense of the unstructured feedback received from customers. luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building. Order Here. Now In Print!

Customer Development 127

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 127

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 214

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 214

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

While the last post was titled “ You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When They Offer You a Job “, this post should probably be titled, “You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When You Offer Them a Job.&# Context here.)

Engineer 218

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 218

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 259

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 259

Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Our first question was, did the total number of customers that had already bought products from our competitors and us represent a saturated market or the tip of the iceberg? Since I was heading a marketing department, not acting as an individual contributor, I needed to teach all of marketing the importance of customer data.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley Customer RSS Philippines 144

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. An interesting phenomena of the 1920s that illustrates the fragility and cost of vacuum tubes is the “Reflex Receiver&# design methodology.

Silicon Valley 294

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 294

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

They sold to a set of customers I knew nothing about. After talking to its resellers and customers I realized that SuperMac was the only company that could be described as “fifth in a group of three.” They had an existing distribution channel and their dealers and customers thought they knew who the company was and what it stood for.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 161

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Cray’s first customers were the U.S. Because of the vagaries of how floating point units in computers were designed, your average IBM mainframe of the day would take forever to run a simulation application. A supercomputer could be a 100x faster. What Markets? The problem was I didn’t have a clue.

Silicon Valley 163

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 163

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any engineering, customer or competitor problem, and you shouldn’t agonize over trying to find one. An example of a reversible decision could be adding a product feature, a new algorithm in the code, targeting a specific set of customers, etc.

Silicon Valley 305

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 305

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 142

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

Rather than a traditional VC pitch I suggested that they do something unconventional and tell the story of their journey in Customer Discovery and Validation. The heart of the Cafepress presentation is the “ Lessons Learned from our Customers ” section. The VC firm delivered a term sheet for an 8-digit second round that afternoon.

Venture Capital 234

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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.

Cofounder 229

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 229

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

But underlying the company’s existence was a fundamental hypothesis we refused to see or test - customers would care if we did. Our potential customers didn’t seem to be calling for Hollywood stories, characters and narrative. That’s OK, because we knew better. I know what’s great and what’s not. They think the games stink.”

Silicon Valley 221

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 221

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

We talked about some simple design rules and I remember him thanking me for coming, saying we were the only chip company who cared enough to call on him (little did he know.) Long gone from Zilog I saw the picture of the original Macintosh design team. I thought nothing about the meeting until years later.

Silicon Valley 140

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 140

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. He continued: “I’d like to convince my boss so our company can be your first customer.”

Silicon Valley 248

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 248

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

I was hired as a training instructor to teach microprocessor system design for the existing Z-80 family and to write a new course for Zilog’s soon to be launched 16-bit processor, the Z-8000. So our people in the field could correct any egregious design advice I gave to customers who mattered. Life was good. Where Am I?

Silicon Valley 195

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 195

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

And I got to experience a type of customer buying behavior I had never seen before – the Novelty Effect. In less than a month they designed a low-cost video-capture board that plugged into the Mac and allowed you to connect a video camera and VCR. If we’re smart we’ll cross-sell them one of our other products.

Video 180

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 180

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Lessons to Learn By the time I joined Ardent I thought I was an experienced marketer, but I’ll never forget my first real lesson in what it meant to understand customers and product/market fit. The conversation that day would become one of my professional watermarks. Silence descended across the conference table.

Silicon Valley 282

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 282

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.

Silicon Valley 200

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 200

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Oh, and since it was not code compatible with anything, we were going to have to port all the key scientific applications our customers needed (as soon as we figured out who they were.) Personal supercomputer s meant yet again learning something completely new; new computer architectures, new applications and customers, new markets.

North Carolina 129

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 129

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. After more customer interviews, we have shifted our market type hypothesis to- entering an existant market. Families gather from across the country to spend time with each other and feast on a traditional turkey dinner.

Silicon Valley 149

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

Silicon Valley 129

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Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that.

Vertical 135

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 135

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Oh, and we had no installed customer base. Entrepreneurs are Relentless Jim’s goal was to get other companies to put their software on an unfinished, buggy computer with no customers. Ernest Hemingway One of an entrepreneur’s greatest strengths is their relentless pursuit of a goal. This was my fault.

Silicon Valley 331

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 331

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Since there was very little documentation my time was split between the design engineers who built the system and the test and deployment team getting the system ready to go overseas. Reply 7thpixel , on June 29, 2009 at 10:23 am Said: My first start up in 1999 I was employee #10 or so and signed up for a Graphic Designer position.

Agile 263

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 263

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 124

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter. It did not mean building a startup into a company to flip or hype on the market with no earnings or revenue, but building a company that had paying customers. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

Silicon Valley 233

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 233

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

The “strategy” of learning who SuperMac’s customers were, what solutions they needed and what our repositioning would be was a three month effort. it was the speed of the applications that customers were using to get their work done. So I was going to give our customers metrics neither they or anyone else had ever seen before.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 126

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Video Games At SuperMac , Peter Barrett was the witty and creative 24-year old Australian engineer who had designed several of our most successful products, culminating with the software for the Video Spigot. I had no idea what I wanted to do next, and would get paid to think about it? How could it go wrong? Little did I know. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

After a year and a half of running training and teaching the new Z-8000 and its peripheral chips, I began to figure out that one of the jobs of marketing was to translate what engineering built into a description that our salesmen could use to talk to potential customers. I also knew our customers.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Or offer some real insights into our customers? It wasn’t a lack of competence or skill in her job; it was just that as far as she was concerned, her job had no connection to the rest of marketing, our customers or our ultimate success as a company. “We Was she going to propose a coherent communications strategy?

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 206

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

The Times Square Strategy discussion I had with Eric Ries , was still top of mind, so instead of my standard Customer Development lecture , I offered my thoughts on: the origin of Customer Development, where we are today, and where does Customer Development go, and how you can help get it there.

Customer Development 226

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 226

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. The design was actually a negative drag on selling anything off a retail shelf. From grumbling skeptics, they all became packaging design converts.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

While we sometimes cut the price of graphics boards, it was only because we offered our customers no compelling reasons to buy one that was priced equivalently to the market share leaders. Our company’s graphics boards were designed to speed up a key part of the Macintosh graphics operating system called QuickDraw.

Silicon Valley 153

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 153

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. By 1961 its customers now included our intelligence agencies. Two years out of the Air Force, serendipity (which would be my lifelong form of career planning) found me in Silicon Valley working for my first company: ESL.

Silicon Valley 190

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners. Strong pre-show promotion will let your customers and prospects know about your exhibit.

Silicon Valley 134

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 134

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. Two paragraphs, Five bullets. It didn’t take more.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 268