Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

And the wrong message is frankly strewn all over Silicon Valley. And this is fueled by the VC culture in Silicon Valley. So investing $3-5 million in a company and taking a year to 18 months to see how it develops before adding more fuel can often be the right course of action. Or pivoted too quickly.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. However the Customer Development Model and the Lean Startup work equally well for startups on the web.

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 12, 2018

Robust startup economies are popping up in communities all over the country, proving that entrepreneurs can succeed outside of Silicon Valley. stars*, Tech Elevator, Bunker Labs and others in your community which provide access to diverse developers, business leaders, mentors, and board members. Look to organizations like i.c.

Hiring 100

Hiring Technical Review Silicon Valley Due Diligence 100

Austin Startup

JANUARY 20, 2021

The Ferrari Museum in Modena, Italy The defining characteristic of the Silicon Valley startup is speed. In the world of startups, the idea of speed is often mentioned alongside shipping products and executing company-wide sprints but rarely is it discussed explicitly within the function of Sales. 2021 instead of 2022.

Sales 64

Sales Startup Sales Cycle Revenue 64

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Back in 2004 when Eric and his IMVU co-founder Will Harvey approached me about investing in IMVU, I agreed on one condition – they had to take my Customer Development class at UC Berkeley Haas Business School.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

YoungUpstarts

MAY 2, 2018

In this fictional series, a disillusioned software developer Naveen quits his job via a drunken phone call on a night out. On the show the girls are required to develop new products in pairs, and the winning ideas will be funded and supported. Silicon Valley. TVF Pitchers.

Entrepreneur 176

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley New York City Incubator 176

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Entrepreneurs beyond Silicon Valley, including those working abroad, often have to retool Lean Startup methods to apply them in places with very different business cultures. Those conversations can often circle around the difficulties of entrepreneurship outside Silicon Valley. On September 24 in the U.S.

Silicon Valley 168

Silicon Valley Lean Puerto Rico Japan 168

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. CEO – “Well, we’ve missed our sales numbers for the last six months.” VP of Sales – “Sure.”

Burn Rate 248

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 248

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

This is a customer development problem. By the end of this article, you should have a better understanding of how to develop new products or tweak your existing offerings by working with existing or prospective customers to incorporate their feedback to create viable solutions to their problems, and clearly communicate their value.

Customer Development 126

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

PM’s are underrated in Silicon Valley these days. Early-stage companies shouldn’t: outsource core product development, have consulting firms build it for them to speed up time-to-market, shouldn’t hire too many business people until product is complete and early product/market fit tested.

Cofounder 388

Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 388

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

Innovation outposts in Silicon Valley allow big companies to sense and respond to rapid changes in technology. Srivastava leads Verizon’s innovation outpost (their Silicon Valley R&D center) in Palo Alto focusing on building products and services powered by big data and analytics. He was the CEO of two startups.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 120

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 4, 2020

For example, do you fly out to a big indus­try conference to close some sales, or do you stay home to attend your daughter’s high school graduation? Programming a piece of software, for example, is different from taking a sales meeting with the CEO of a credit union. Are you self-funded? Are you planning for growth?

Entrepreneur 205

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Silicon Valley Bandwidth 205

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 25, 2018

Most startups are created by one or two entrepreneurial founders, with a vision and focus on developing an innovative solution, rather than on developing people. It’s easy to see how cultures go astray, for example, when you pay only for sales volume, but expect a high focus on customer satisfaction. Place shapes culture.

Silicon Valley 143

Silicon Valley Retention Metrics Architecture 143

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

The Next Web

FEBRUARY 1, 2014

is a venture capitalist investing in Silicon Valley and Singapore. So you have a great idea for a new mobile app or Web service—but you don’t know anything about coding or developing. What drives sales for online services and mobile apps? Step 3: Outsource a developer. and overseas developers.

Web 160

Web Silicon Valley Salary Demand 160

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

An employee’s curiosity to learn the nuances of his or her job – whether it’s making adjustments in a sales technique or honing the ability to stay calm when problems arise – should be treated with the utmost respect. So how do you create a sense of belonging at work? Here are things to think about: 1. Make them feel valued.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley Employee Community Sales 179

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2014

Much has been written about when it is time to hire a “professional CEO” to run a startup company and of course that has long been a norm in Silicon Valley when founders find that their inexperience may be a limiting factor in company growth ( know as the Peter Principle ). So why did Larry need to return?

Founder 309

Founder CTO Hire Silicon Valley Leadership 309

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

Recently I wrote a post arguing to make the definition of a Startup more inclusive than that to which Silicon Valley, fueled by Venture Capital return profiles, would sometimes like to attach to the word. ” Put simply, if you care about building a successful tech community outside Silicon Valley you should read this book.

Community 378

Community San Diego Silicon Valley Los Angeles 378

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

APRIL 13, 2013

But what made the overwhelming impression for me was finding an entrepreneurial software cluster on par with the Internet software portion of Silicon Valley. Car sales in China went from 1 million in 2001 to 14 million in 2011. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 267

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

In short order they learned how to transition from being customers on the receiving end of a sales pitch to giving one. Back in the 1960’s and 70’s no sane MBA’s would work for a Silicon Valley startup.) To a person they became passionate evangelists and effective marketers.

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. Starting in the 1950’s, Stanford’s engineering department became “outward facing” and developed a culture of spinouts and active faculty support and participation in the first wave of Silicon Valley startups. See the presentation here.). Today the U.C.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

Which means that making insurance coverage accessible to consumers – read, sales – is going to be a key break-in point for anyone up for the challenge. Another great example of innovation comes courtesy of Metromile, a startup right out of Silicon Valley that’s changing the way auto insurance is provided. But there’s more.

Technical Review 183

Technical Review Los Angeles Artificial Inteligence San Francisco 183

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley. 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. They will build the sales team that follows. Corporate elephants can dance. So why this post?

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

YoungUpstarts

JULY 16, 2019

Positions for software development and data science continue to expand throughout the industry. These are software engineers, business analysts, project managers, graphic designers, and web developers. Vancouver has a situated tech market with a direct line to Silicon Valley. developed the Ojibway People and Language App.

Canada 167

Canada Hiring Artificial Inteligence Software Developers 167

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

The press called Rocket Science one of the hottest companies in Silicon Valley and predicted that our games would be great because the storyboards and trailers were spectacular. Stage 1: Shock and Surprise. We raised $35 million and after 18 months made the cover of Wired magazine. It was everyone else who screwed up.

Redemption 330

Redemption Cofounder Silicon Valley Burn Rate 330

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 9, 2013

This is final part of a series that describes a sales methodology for technology companies or frankly many other types of companies, too. We developed this at our first company and called it PUCCKA – the overall methodology is described here. Well think of it this way – you have your sales process. Unique Selling Proposition.

Customer 324

Customer PR Marketing Technical Review 324

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. This time it was serious. As a reminder, this post is not legal advice, it’s not even advice.

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Scalable Startup

AUGUST 18, 2013

But, there is a serious gap in the discipline, number of developers and community around real software development here. from catching up with Silicon Valley and New York as a stronger startup region. Drupal works at all levels of software development. Drupal is prevalent in the Silicon Valley ecosystem?

Software Developers 22

Software Developers Software Development PHP Silicon Valley 22

Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2020

Keep in mind that tech businesses are successful all around the nation, not just in Silicon Valley. Free, downloadable SAAS sales forecast template. GoodRx , a telemedicine platform, for example, developed their business model after recognizing the burden high prescription drug costs place on individuals. billion by 2021.

Technical Review 97

Technical Review Green Silicon Valley Non-Compete 97

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

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? Steve Blank has devoted many years now to trying to answer that question, with a theory he calls Customer Development. You can learn about customer development, and quite a bit more, in Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

As the emeritus Chief Technology Officer of the United States, he still connects government and Silicon Valley. And the whole site was developed in just 9 weeks. Cory Nelson will talk with Eric about how GE has applied the MVP method to its development of very large diesel engines.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Berkonomics

AUGUST 10, 2017

Since this number is budgeted and pre-authorized, managers tend to focus upon other things such as sales, marketing and product development issues. There is an art to efficient management of a process, whether that is the process of bringing a product to market from R&D to production or developing a new product’s launch program.

Silicon Valley 97

Silicon Valley Burn Rate Angel Investor Down Round 97

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money. Order Here. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Version One Ventures

JULY 20, 2017

Living and working in the SF Bay Area, I have been fortunate enough to be surrounded by people who are incredibly generous with their time and knowledge…Volley offers the chance to open this Silicon Valley dynamic to community after community after community.”. We led the Volley pre-Seed round. So, what exactly is Ada Support doing?

Artificial Inteligence 151

Artificial Inteligence Silicon Valley Stealth Term Sheet 151