Steve Blank

AUGUST 22, 2011

Over the last few weeks I’ve gotten involved in hiring for two startups, a public agency and a non profit. In the last week I had four separate groups through the ranch all wanting to talk either about hiring a senior exec or a senior exec looking for a new job. Are you hiring for search or execution skills? Draw a pie chart.

Hiring 290

Hiring Non-Compete Search Customer Development 290

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

Who can I hire later? And over time every venture capitalist develops their own gut feel for what makes up a great team in their industry. For example, if you’re building a mobile app, then the key activities are: app software development, user interface design and demand creation skills. Filed under: Customer Development.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2020

The policy tailors, as well as streamlines acquisition and requirements, processes, reviews and documents- to adopt a modern development practice, like agile and DevOps, or DevSecOps. And we need to make sure we continually evolve that software, from development, to production to sustainment. They develop the agenda.

Acquisition 284

Acquisition Technical Review Technology Security 284

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Finally, I’ll write about 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.

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

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. With that initial sales “success” they began to hire and staff the sales department per the ”plan.”

Burn Rate 248

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 248

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. I chose to hire engineers from within each of our target markets and set up “Steve’s one month MBA course for engineers.” These hires were definitely not your standard marketing types.

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

Ironically one of the things that’s holding back the Finnish cluster is Tekes , the government organization for financing research, development and innovation in Finland. Finnish private investors don’t yet have enough time-in-grade to have developed good pattern recognition skills, and most lack operating backgrounds.

Finland 324

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 324

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

We hired everyone according to our plan. When my co-founders and I got the company scalable and repeatable, we hired an operating executive as the CEO and returned a billion dollars to each of our two lead investors. In my mind, I had done everything the investors asked me to do. I raised a ton of money and got a ton of press.

Redemption 330

Redemption Cofounder Silicon Valley Burn Rate 330

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. it is an art) and again hired professionals. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

Agile 332

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 332

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

The benefits of customer and agile development and minimum features set are continuous customer feedback, rapid iteration and little wasted code. But over time if developers aren’t careful, code written to find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

They’ve stopped hiring the best talent, and startups are not looking so risky compared to large companies. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. Nokia was blind-sided in a classic disruptive innovation. Nanny-Culture, Lack of Risk Taking, Not Sharing.

Finland 324

Finland Naming Russia Government 324

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. GE’s performance in implementing Customer Development gives lie to the tale that only web startups can be agile. Corporate elephants can dance.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

Fifty years later another Harvard professor, Clayton Christensen, developed his theory of disruptive innovation, which actually described how creative destruction worked. The Amazon Kindle played on Amazon’s strengths as a distributor of content but required developing expertise in electronics and manufacturing.

Private Equity 325

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

We hired everyone according to our plan. When my co-founders and I got the company scalable and repeatable, we hired an operating executive as the CEO and returned a billion dollars to each of our two lead investors. In my mind, I had done everything the investors asked me to do. I raised a ton of money and got a ton of press.

Redemption 222

Redemption Cofounder Silicon Valley Burn Rate 222

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

In the early days of Rocket Science I realized that we needed high-level advice on multiple fronts; technology, game development, video game distribution, etc. One of the first potential advisors I reached out to was someone who 10 years earlier tried to hire me as the VP of Marketing of his new division at Sun Microsystems.

Advisory Board 260

Advisory Board Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Stock 260

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

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. As a result, the standard product development model is not only useless, it is dangerous.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

Corporate business development and strategic partner executives are flocking to Silicon Valley to find these five types of innovation. In response, venture capital firms like Sequoia and Andreessen/Horowitz are hiring new partners just to work with their portfolio companies and match them to corporations.

Acquisition 332

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 332

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Before founding 2U, Jeremy developed Zinch, intended to be a virtual guidance counselor to help low-income students navigate the college application process. We were looking for four students for the program, four developers in training, and we ended up getting 700 applicants in a week. New Targets & Innovative Approaches.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Before founding 2U, Jeremy developed Zinch, intended to be a virtual guidance counselor to help low-income students navigate the college application process. We were looking for four students for the program, four developers in training, and we ended up getting 700 applicants in a week. New Targets & Innovative Approaches.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So They thought about it for a moment and said, “Well we feel like we understand how to build things, but sales is something we thought we’d hire an expert to do.”. Hiring PR Agencies.

PR 314

PR China Channel Lean 314

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. These founders specify, design, and build a fully featured product using classic product development methods without ever leaving their building. Focusing on the launch date.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Prior to founding Keen Home , Nayeem Hussain spent his career focusing on M&A, corporate development/strategy, and financial analysist, first at Prudential Financial and then at Loral Space & Communications. Hire around you to fill those weak spots. …. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' It usually doesn’t end well.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

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. And yet, most of us responsible for trying to develop foreign policy don’t come from that background” of technology and innovation. “We

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

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. And yet, most of us responsible for trying to develop foreign policy don’t come from that background” of technology and innovation. “We

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

We hired union laborers to do that. I hired a Director of Product Marketing who in his last company had ran its marketing and then went out into the field and became its national sales director. What’s your advice about hiring sales/marketing folks? (I The same was true for the Product Marketing group.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

I was glad to see him but it was clear over coffee that he was struggling with his first hiring failure. They helped me hire the best VP of Sales I could find. Even when we went out to dinner before we hired him he said, he said he read the Four Steps and couldn’t wait to try this Customer Development stuff.”. “So

Startup 312

Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 312

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Rita McGrath, a Columbia Business School professor says, “there’s pleasing today’s customers and there’s developing tomorrow’s business.” Large companies have a habit of hiring outside agencies to do market research and customer discovery. This happens because managing the present often takes oxygen away from inventing the future.

Non-Compete 329

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 329

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 11, 2015

Among these was the realization that a formal onboarding process for new hires is critical. Steve : There used to be this culture, it still is in a number of startups, is you throw them in the deep end of the pool, you assume you hired smart people and they’ll figure it out, right? You hire really smart people-.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Cofounder Channel 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

Local crop dusters meant they could hire existing planes and simply attach their Hyper-spectral camera to any crop dusting plane. All of sudden what was an additional engineering and development effort now became a small, variable cost. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Technology.

Customer 316

Customer Algorithm Customer Development California 316

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

Bob had taken to heart the business model canvas and Customer Development lessons. Bob started hiring second rate developers. ” He said, “It was a great prototype, we would have loved to deploy it company-wide, and I hate to let it go, but it looks like Bob company just lost interest in developing it.

Customer Development 330

Customer Development Cofounder Later Stage Software 330

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So They thought about it for a moment and said, “Well we feel like we understand how to build things, but sales is something we thought we’d hire an expert to do.”. Hiring PR Agencies.

PR 206

PR China Channel Lean 206

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Reply steveblank , on March 28, 2009 at 7:27 am Said: Denis, Over time the blogs tagged under the “customer development&# category will build up a narrative of illustrative stories of how customer development evolved in practice. You need to hire the right type of sales people for the type of [.]

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

Steve Blank

JULY 14, 2020

MatchBook – Hiring platform structured similarly to dating apps. Florence Health – Telemedicine app to prevent hospitalization of congestive heart failure patients. HomeDoc – Central hub for connecting telemedicine platforms for nursing homes. Mango Lango – Mobile app that allows small businesses to reopen safely.

Peru 291

Peru Philippines Mobile Global 291

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' It usually doesn’t end well.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

She partnered with Stanford professor Scott Delp to develop and test a relatively inexpensive, noninvasive, and effective treatment. In the entrepreneurship stage, Kate recently launched a company, Cala Health, to develop and deliver new treatments for tremors. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Technology.

Entrepreneur 335

Entrepreneur Framework Lean Customer Development 335