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. But the world you lead will be much different from the one your professors knew or your predecessors managed. Efficiency over innovation. Innovation.

Private Equity 325

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

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 a very different skill than science, engineering, or management. Where Did We Go Wrong?

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

APRIL 23, 2014

Most large companies manage three types of innovation: process innovation (making existing products incrementally better), continuous innovation (building on the strength of the company’s current business model but creating new elements) and disruptive innovation (creating products or services that did not exist before.).

Acquisition 332

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 332

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

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

For decades startups were managed by pretending the company would follow a predictable path (revenue plan, scale, etc.) As we described in previous posts , startups fail on the day they’re founded if they are organized and managed like they are a small version of a large company. Business Model Design and Customer Development Stack.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

The Energy Storage division is acting like a startup, and Prescott Logan its General Manager, has lived up to the charter. 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. You couldn’t be more wrong.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

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. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

50% the fault of a Nokia management that didn’t see it coming, while 50% was due to brilliant Apple execution.) 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.

Finland 324

Finland Naming Russia Government 324

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

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. Prior to founding Carely , Michael Eidsaune earned his MBA in finance and spent several years in investment management, eventually earning his level 1 CFA certification.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

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. Management 101. But the differences are worth noting – it’s a young ecosystem, so startup management tools are nearly non-existent. Perhaps it’s the weather.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

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

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

For our students, that can mean anyone from a Syrian refugee trying to make contact with his family back home, to a supply chain manager for a major apparel brand who wants to make sure his contract factory in Bangladesh doesn’t use forced labor. We don’t have that mindset or that expertise,” he admitted to the class. “We

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

For our students, that can mean anyone from a Syrian refugee trying to make contact with his family back home, to a supply chain manager for a major apparel brand who wants to make sure his contract factory in Bangladesh doesn’t use forced labor. We don’t have that mindset or that expertise,” he admitted to the class. “We

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

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. Prior to founding Carely , Michael Eidsaune earned his MBA in finance and spent several years in investment management, eventually earning his level 1 CFA certification.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Big companies have great execution habits to manage and improve successful business models and value propositions. This happens because managing the present often takes oxygen away from inventing the future. Large companies have a habit of hiring outside agencies to do market research and customer discovery.

Non-Compete 329

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 329

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

When I asked our trade show manager she looked at me like I was the house idiot and said, “Steve, don’t you know that my job is to set up our trade show booth?” But my favorite was when the public relations manager said, “we’re here to write press releases and answer the phone in case the press calls.” This is a big idea.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

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 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. Management 101. But the differences are worth noting – it’s a young ecosystem, so startup management tools are nearly non-existent. Perhaps it’s the weather.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

This week, our first team up was PersonalLibraries (the team that had software to help researchers manage, share and reference the thousands of papers in their personal libraries.) Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching. The news from customers was not good.

Customer 234

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 234

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

Our small training department had been without a manager for months and finding a replacement didn’t seem to be high on the VP of Sales list. Then it hit me – no one else wanted to be manager – what was the worst that could happen? It is a skill you need to either have or develop. All I had to do was ask.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? And when do business planning and execution come into play?

Search 320

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 11, 2015

He got his start at Kozmo , a now-defunct startup that offered free one-hour delivery of DVDs, food and other goods, then went on to manage American Express’ $50 million Innovation Fund. Among these was the realization that a formal onboarding process for new hires is critical. You hire really smart people-. I left Amex Jan.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Cofounder Channel 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2020

Customer Development became one of the three parts of the Lean Startup as Eric Ries and Alexander Osterwalder provided the other two components (Agile Engineering and the business model canvas.) He had introduced the idea that customers don’t buy a product, rather than they hire it for a “job to be done.”

Lean 428

Lean Business Model Government Agile 428

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Since no benchmarks existed, we enlisted our engineering department in a serious software development effort and wrote our own. Theoretically, that’s why I hired them. Then we were going to buy our competitors’ boards (think “secret shopper”) and compare them to ours. You don’t delegate life and death.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

They used Customer and Agile development to search for a scalable and repeatable business model to become a large company. They hired a world-class team with co-founders and early employees who shared their vision. After that, there was no doubt to existing employees and new hires what the company was aiming for.

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Big companies have great execution habits to manage and improve successful business models and value propositions. This happens because managing the present often takes oxygen away from inventing the future. Large companies have a habit of hiring outside agencies to do market research and customer discovery.

Non-Compete 120

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Supercomputers get Personal Back in Sunnyvale my friend had not only been hired but had convinced the team that we should be building hardware – making a new class of computers not a software application. We’re building a supercomputer.” We told Andy we’d talk further when he got back from Europe.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

Larry didn’t practice any kind of textbook management, but he was an intense communicator and inspiring leader. It wasn’t always perfect, but it was way more right than wrong, It informed our product development to a great degree and kept us working on more or less the right stuff. Hired the Smartest People. This was cool!

Technical Review 333

Technical Review Venture Capital Software Review Database 333

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject. It was a management problem. We had been outsourcing an important part of our demand creation strategy – packaging – to an outside agency without having the expertise to judge or manage the results.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

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 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 11, 2014

Rather than just have me drone on as a talking head, I hired an animator to help make the lectures interesting, and the Udacity team had the insight to suggest I break up my lecture material into small, 2-4 minute segments that matched students’ attention spans. If you can’t see the video above click here.

Lean 319

Lean Incubator Video Open Source 319

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

If your don’t have enough employees on the payroll, hire relatives, friends, or part-timers and train them. And that most of the post on trade shows was describing how to prepare and manage a physical presence in a trade show booth. You’ll never have to do it again.) Trade Show Post Mortem Evaluate the experience.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. Market Type But most startups aren’t in existing markets. I cover this in the Four Steps to the Epiphany.)

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

— I just watched a very smart company try to manage innovation by hiring a global consulting firm to offload engineering from “distractions.” This was a very large and established tech company; its engineering organization developed the core day-to-day capabilities of the organization. There’s a much better way.

Incubator 312

Incubator Curation Engineer Government 312

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

What went wrong was that the founder had built a product for a New Market and the VC’s allowed him to execute, hire and burn cash like he was in an Existing Market. The company I observed had in fact hired a VP of Sales from a competitor and staffed their sales and marketing team with people from an existing market. What went wrong?

Revenue 230

Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 230