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

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 4, 2011

Think of these as the big upfront questions: Who are the customers? Please be able to provide me with a few specific examples of different types of customers, what they need, what the system will do for them. Video (and Audio) - if you have video, are you hosting it or can we use YouTube, Vimeo? How are you funding this?

Developer 396

Developer Founder Viral Oauth 396

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 4, 2011

Think of these as the big upfront questions: Who are the customers? Please be able to provide me with a few specific examples of different types of customers, what they need, what the system will do for them. Video (and Audio) - if you have video, are you hosting it or can we use YouTube, Vimeo? How are you funding this?

Developer 384

Developer Founder Viral Oauth 384

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 134

Silicon Valley Customer RSS Philippines 134

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 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

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 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

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 146

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 146

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 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Up and Running

DECEMBER 19, 2013

It’s the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool we use on our biz dev/sales team and it helps us be more efficient with tracking prospects and partners. While Flipboard can also serve as a solid RSS reader, Feedly excels at skimming through tons of content and surfacing interesting content quickly.” Good Reads.

Small Business 109

Small Business Development Team Review RSS Software Review 109

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 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

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. and “What did customers think of your prototype?”

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

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 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 19, 2020

Traditional marketing says you have to “push” your message out to customers, over and over again, to get you remembered. A more effective approach in today’s Internet and interactive culture is to use “pull” technology to bring customers and clients to your story. Skip the Flash videos. Sprinkle graphics and pictures.

Technical Review 401

Technical Review Customer Flash RSS 401

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 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

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 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

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 137

Silicon Valley Turkey United States RSS 137

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 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

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.

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 212

Duct Tape Marketing

JUNE 16, 2011

SIMPLE, EFFECTIVE AND AFFORDABLE SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING Home About Consulting Products Programs Workshops Blog Resources Contact Subscribe by RSS Subscribe to Duct Tape Marketing by Email Small Business Week 2011 Our winners! Now that’s a happy customer! And, she felt pretty special doing it as well.

Customer 66

Customer Video Social Media Software Review 66

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 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 13, 2011

If you have time check out the video (or download on iTunes – Episode 27 - and listen at the gym or on your commute!). RSS was something that had appeared.” “….I We have a theme we call Protocol, which are technology protocols and markets built around technology protocols like SMTP for email and RSS. Protocol Digital Life.

Technical Review 288

Technical Review Venture Capital Silicon Valley Software Review 288

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 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Up and Running

JANUARY 22, 2020

Doing so will, in turn, help you earn the trust of the public and distinguish your brand as a thought leader while also boosting engagement and customer reach. Video and voice search. You should also go all-in with your SEO and get ahead of the cannabis marketing game by incorporating videos in your posts. PR and media outreach.

SMS 101

SMS Marketing Affiliate Social Media 101

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 5, 2010

I recently spoke at Caltech at the Caltech / MIT Enterprise Forum on “the future of social networking,&# the 30-minute video is here and the PowerPoint presentation is here on DocStoc ). asymmetry, real-time, curated RSS / link-sharing]. MySpace didn’t handle images or video well. Social Networking in Web 1.0.

Social Network 297

Social Network Networking Internet EC2 297

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. Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? And we lost money when we did so.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

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 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 18, 2016

That can be done with content marketing tactics such as: Writing blog posts that share the helpful information your potential customers want to know. Sign up for their newsletter or RSS feed. This allows you to see everything they send to their potential customers. Use review sites to see what their customers have to say.

Memphis 100

Memphis Marketing Social Media Technical Review 100

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

techland.time.com

JANUARY 16, 2013

Politics World Business Tech Health Science Entertainment Style Sports Opinion Photos Magazine Video LIFE.com Lists TIME Home. Video Games. More videos Videos. Politics World Business Tech Health Science Entertainment Photos Videos Lists Magazine. Apps & Web. Reviews & Features. Person of the Year.

Global 68

Global Technical Review Minnesota RSS 68

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

In the next few posts that follow, I’ll describe how thinking of a solution to this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – that offers a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities. The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers.

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

The Customer Development talk can be seen here. It starts at ~40:30 in the video. 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. Now In Print!

Customer Development 139

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 139

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. A few successful ones do all these things.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

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. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. If you’re an entrepreneur, ESL is the most important company you’ve never heard of. There were no venture investors.

Silicon Valley 171

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 171

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

This post makes a lot more sense if you look at the earlier posts as well as the video and slides. In 21 st century terminology we’d say that Terman built the Radio Research lab into a customer-centric organization doing agile development. How was this possible? To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 180

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 180

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. But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

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 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Stanford had a Customer Development loop going on inside their own lab. The Secret History of Silicon Valley Part X: Stanford Crosses the Rubicon « Steve Blank Stanford had a Customer Development loop going on inside their own lab. The close tie between the two labs was a unique aspect of the Stanford Lab. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 142

Silicon Valley RSS California Government 142