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.

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

For example, he sees great potential ‘for co-pilots are “branded” sales people, like wealth managers, insurance brokers, and mortgage brokers’ and re-defining the product surface area, for example: how would AI change customer service or productivity?

Generative AI 78

Generative AI ChatGPT Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 78

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. For example, some startup sales execs believe hiring the core sales team is a key objective.

Customer Development 227

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 227

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. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

Silicon Valley 129

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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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 252

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Customers will get to consume the content they want, and support the producers of that content directly, rather than having to rely exclusively on intermediaries. Now, helping potential customers discover new things they might like is the job of the discipline of marketing. There are too many products clamoring for attention.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story. That is until I saw that in startup after startup customers come from places you don’t plan on. Your board nods sagely at your target customer list.

Silicon Valley 140

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 140

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. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 217

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 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. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup.

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Lightspeed Venture Partners

JANUARY 6, 2011

Improve the product. Lisa Marino of RockYou , a leading developer of social games and advertising solutions for social media, is focused on building a great team with more gaming DNA to improve the quality of the games it publishes: Make RockYou the place talent wants to be. Internalize culture and values. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

Stealth 60

Stealth Startup Lean Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Are there customers for what you are building? How many are there? Can it scale?”

Customer Development 266

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 266

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

JULY 26, 2016

The chicken-egg issue of getting customers to your platform while you don’t have any money to spare is a puzzle that many companies are unable to figure out at all. 1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth. Lean marketing. Apr-15: Head of Marketing (growth team).

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Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

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 424

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 424

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Eighty some pages later I realized that a) I had some great war stories as a good marketeer and failed CEO, b) I’d have to pay my wife and kids to read them, c) the three of them were probably the entire total available market, and d) when I looked at what I had done and what other entrepreneurs had done at their startups, that there was a pattern.

Redemption 130

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

Filed under: Family/Career « Let’s Fire Our Customers Durant Versus Sloan – Part 1 » 3 Responses Twitter Trackbacks for Unintended Lessons « Steve Blank [steveblank.com] on Topsy.com , on September 28, 2009 at 10:04 am Said: [.]

North Carolina 157

North Carolina Silicon Valley RSS Connecticut 157

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Through trial and error, hiring and firing, successful startups all invented a parallel process to product development. In particular, the winners invent and live by a process of customer learning and discovery. It’s a process that doesn’t exist in large companies with existing customers and markets.

Silicon Valley 132

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Modern Corporation Marketing At the same time General Motors also revolutionized automotive marketing by creating multiple brands of cars, each with its own identity targeted at a specific economic bracket of American customers. Within each brand there were several models at different price points.

Silicon Valley 175

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 175

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

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Founding a company is a sheer act of will and tenacity in the face of immense skepticism from everyone – investors, customers, friends, etc. Next, you have to deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers. And that’s just to get started. Let me know what you think.

Founder 308

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Dinner in a Strange Land When I was in my mid 20′s working at ESL, I was sent overseas to a customer site where the customers were our three-letter intelligence agencies. I think it is because in the end, customers count. No amount of paid publicity can achieve much if the product fails to make the customer happy.

Silicon Valley 206

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

Imagine you want to store data about customers, each of whom has "last name" field in your database. In this scheme, all of the data related to a specific feature of a product are stored on the same machines. For example, Friendster was famously vertically partitioned at one time in its growth curve. Key-based partitioning.

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

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 152

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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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steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

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