Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

If they were a commercial company, they figured out product/market fit; or if a government organization, it focused on solution/mission fit. HR processes, legal processes, financial processes, acquisition and contracting processes, security processes, product development and management processes, and types of organizational forms etc.

Government 315

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 315

YoungUpstarts

MAY 30, 2019

In 2013, I left a CTO job overseeing a 50-person product engineering team for the same job at a four-person startup. This learning experience left me with one seemingly obvious takeaway: The two trickiest variables of early product management are the “product” and the “management.”

Management 138

Management Product SCRUM Early Stage 138

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 Thoughts on scientific product development I enjoyed reading a post today from Laserlike (Mike Speiser), on Scientific product development. The goal of iterative development is to give us guard rails so we dont veer off to either extreme.

Product Development 68

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 28, 2020

Building a minimum viable product, with customer validation. Minimum viable products (MVPs) are recommended for validating the market, with iterative enhancement to quickly meet market feedback. Minimum viable products (MVPs) are recommended for validating the market, with iterative enhancement to quickly meet market feedback.

Intellectual Property 404

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 404

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 19, 2020

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year. Martin Zwilling.

Burn Rate 310

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Salary Angel Investor 310

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

It outlines four major growth strategies: market penetration , market development , product development , and diversification. The goal of market penetration is to leverage new tactics to increase product sales , including existing customers and new customers within existing markets. Market development.

Marketing 115

Marketing Framework Metrics Channel 115

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

This post describes how companies using the Customer Development model can increase their credibility, valuation and probability of getting a first round of funding by presenting their results in a “Lesson Learned&# venture pitch. Knowing this venture firms have come up with a canonical checklist of what they would like to see.

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why vanity metrics are dangerous In a previous post, I defined two kinds of metrics: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. In this post, Id like to talk about the perils of vanity metrics. My personal favorite vanity metrics is "hits."

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? The core idea behind customer development is that the assumptions you make about a target market are only guesses. Most startups fail.

Customer Development 126

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

YoungUpstarts

JULY 16, 2019

Without producing physical goods, every entrepreneur now can succeed in selling other manufacturers’ products online. Have you developed any vision of a product development strategy? And keep in mind that the best option is to develop at least 5 domain names connected to your brand’s name to find an unoccupied domain.

eCommerce 113

eCommerce Software Developers Software Development Hosting 113

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year. Martin Zwilling.

Burn Rate 223

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 223

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. In most agile development systems, there is a notion of the "product backlog" a prioritized list of what software is most valuable to be developed next.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 3, 2009 Minimum Viable Product: a guide One of the most important lean startup techniques is called the minimum viable product. MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products. We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 20, 2015

If you don’t understand your key financial metrics, you have no way of monitoring your business’s health—and you risk mingling assets, incurring penalties for filing taxes late, overlooking expenses, and running into difficulties paying bills and employees, just to mention a few! Each article will give you: A brief definition of the metric.

Metrics 60

Metrics Burn Rate .Net Churn Rate 60

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 19, 2020

Most industries have touched their peak, matured, and there is little room to improve in the world of homogenous products, similar marketing, and standardized, efficient processes. Capturing and analyzing data enables companies to get insights that benefit their companies in cost-saving, relevant marketing, product development, etc.

Technical Review 152

Technical Review Forecast Analytics Social Media 152

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Creators of new products in environments of extreme uncertainty, startups face enormous risks. Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. As a startup owner, what can you do to improve your chances?

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Unfortunately, positioning our product as an "IM add-on" was a complete mistake. Talk about waste.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

At NextView Ventures we have written many pieces about venture capital — how to raise it, build your business, engage with investors, iterate your product, navigate expanding industries, etc. Rethinking the Standard Fundraising Deck “I’d make it crystal clear what your product actually does. VCs sure do love writing.

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Cashflow is a basic survival metric for every startup. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? When we build products, we use a methodology. We know some products succeed and others fail, but the reasons are complex and the unpredictable. a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit." Whats wrong with this picture?

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. The product manager was clearly struggling to get results from the rest of the team. Lets start with what the product manager does.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Women Entrepreneurs Can

FEBRUARY 27, 2024

Among these, sales, marketing, customer service, and product development take center stage. Additionally, relying on subpar accounts receivable services can severely hamper operational efficiency, adversely impacting overall productivity. To thrive, a business must excel in a multitude of functions.

Software Review 40

Software Review Metrics Analytics Software 40

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2012

Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or Customer Development there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. Frank Robinson of SyncDev has been helping companies figure out their minimum viable product and pivots since 1984, long before I even knew what it meant. Massacre at IBM.

San Jose 256

San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 256

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 20, 2019

If you can check these boxes and convince venture capitalists that you’ve achieved product fit in a market with plenty of room for growth, you have a real shot at securing funding. When I started my last company, we were focused on developing technology to lower the cost of detecting and diagnosing Type 2 diabetes.

Technical Review 140

Technical Review Due Diligence Early Stage Differentiation 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. I have personally sold many copies of his book, and continue to recommend it as one of the most important books a startup founder can read.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2022

There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Manual processes and people are always the most expensive to scale, so every process needs metrics to determine when automation is appropriate. Introduce new products and enhancements every month.

Startup 335

Startup Social Media Metrics Viral 335

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

Business owners invest a lot into building a good product, marketing it properly , and onboarding a solid team. Often, the expenses on development and maintenance of the business are higher than the potential of the product — and that’s, unfortunately, completely normal. Optimize product development and marketing process.

San Francisco 106

San Francisco Audience SMS Demand 106

Women Entrepreneurs Can

OCTOBER 19, 2021

Software development comes with several challenges, huge risks, and a lot of responsibility, which is why there is still a high failure rate amongst many modern software startups. The experience of your users is crucial, or you risk it being too complicated and not a product people want to invest in. Test, Test, Test.

Software 59

Software Software Developers Software Development Hiring 59

Version One Ventures

APRIL 11, 2019

To help us perform functional testing without mock objects, we maintain a seed database that reflects the database schema and contains the data definitions that we would expect in production. Besides unit testing, engineers also perform manual developer end-to-end testing. An independent tester will test cases that are unexpected.

Part-Time VPE 100

Part-Time VPE Software Review Engineer Technical Review 100

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? Change who your product is for. Most startups fail.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2022

Early-stage entrepreneurs rightly keep their focus on creating an innovative product or service. Growth is more than simply repackaging existing products, and adding bells and whistles or slick incentives. Switch your attention from product development to sales. Managing business growth is more than metrics.

Mezzanine 368

Mezzanine Private Equity Bandwidth Metrics 368

Gust

APRIL 27, 2014

Software Development Process via Wikipedia. Develop your business plan. This will include the first version of many critical processes that can be split out later, including market opportunity, requirements, product definition, business model, sales process, and organization. Product development process.

Startup 187

Startup Institutional Investors Angel Investor Bootstrapping 187

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. This could equate to two technical founders (with a minimal salary), funding two developers for a year. Martin Zwilling.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 11, 2015

Once upon a time, your company may have been able to shake it off if you threw a marketing idea against the wall and found it didn’t stick, or developed a line of products customers didn’t seem to like. Develop products customers want. Conduct product usability tests. That’s not true anymore.

Analytics 100

Analytics Customer Acquisition Metrics 100

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 31, 2021

Usually the real culprit is procrastination, lack of focus, or low productivity and lack of metrics. Smart entrepreneurs know they must deliver a quality product, develop a winning business model, and attract real customers. Wait and hope for a miracle. All that’s left is to commit and deliver.

Leadership 410

Leadership Employee Metrics Restful 410

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 5, 2010

In the quest for optimization, A/B tests, metrics, and funnels, we're in danger of losing the fun and value of creative work. When we demand overwhelming customer outcry before committing to the slightest product change, we're in danger of losing the value of creating a cool feature that takes too much effort but people just love.

Software Review 226

Software Review Metrics Lean Algorithm 226