Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities. No one wants to sit next to the VP of Sales.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

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 looked at their watches, gave our sales guy a quizzical look and left.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

. ———— T o: Marketing Department From: Steve Subject: Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters Generating Leads Ownership If your company is going to a show to generate leads, then sales owns the show. This is worthy of an open and honest discussion with sales up front. Did you create a Facebook page for the show?

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

Over the next week we exchanged emails over advisory board stock. Opportunities are not just about sales, marketing or product. Chatting with him just reinforced my earlier opinion that he was an extraordinary combination of sheer technical talent, great business and common sense and a level-headed decision maker.

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Advisory Board Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Stock 260

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

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. Now In Print!

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

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

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. Some sales guy who was too busy to take the meeting was probably retired in Maui on the commissions. Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

We were charging a really high up-front annual fee to these providers and the end result of that was a pretty long sales cycle. We tested the new strategy with several customers in the pipeline and it took our sales cycle from about 60 days to 1 week. Send an email to terri@kandsranch.com describing your entrepreneurial journey.

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

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. I walked into the VP of Sales’ office and with my knees trembling, I politely asked for the job. For entrepreneurs good things come to those who ask. What’s Marketing?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

We were charging a really high up-front annual fee to these providers and the end result of that was a pretty long sales cycle. We tested the new strategy with several customers in the pipeline and it took our sales cycle from about 60 days to 1 week. Send an email to terri@kandsranch.com describing your entrepreneurial journey.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

We knew from back-of-the-envelope calculations that I would need 3 times the combined marketing and sales budgets of the incumbents for a head-on assault. (I The 3:1 Lanchester Laws said I would need $60M in marketing and sales spending to win. You need to hire the right type of sales people for the type of [.] Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

By 1992 Research in Motion (RIM) had been in business for eight years, had 16 employees, sales of about $500,000 a year, and three or four business lines. The new device could hold names, email addresses, phone and fax numbers and incoming and outgoing messages. RIM and TiVo are two examples of getting it right and wrong.

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Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 271

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2020

When I put out that War on the Rocks article, I got emails from very impressive people, with an entrepreneurial bent, who had left the military, but clearly wanted to contribute. Mid-term, Limited Use of Force: The year is 2025, Taiwan has yet to budge on the sale of microchips. They said, “If that division was there, sign me up.”

Technical Review 322

Technical Review Taiwan Technology Design 322

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Certain big brands and large companies that would never return my phone calls were all of a sudden emailing us saying, “Hi. But it’s sales that really drive your progress with those three groups of people. Send an email to terri@kandsranch.com describing your entrepreneurial journey. We saw you were on it.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

Prior to his investing and advisory career, Evangelos spent 20+ years in high-technology industries, in executive roles spanning operations, marketing, sales and engineering. Send an email to terri@kandsranch.com describing your entrepreneurial journey. He was the CEO of two startups. Want to be a guest on the show?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2016

After talking to teams in office hours (the teaching team meets every team for 20 minutes every week,) and watching teams present, and then seeing a team send a sponsor an email that read like a bad business school sales pitch, we realized some students had skipped their homework/and or still hadn’t grasped the basics of Customer Discovery.

Social Media 132

Social Media Customer Programming Video 132

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. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2016

After talking to teams in office hours (the teaching team meets every team for 20 minutes every week,) and watching teams present, and then seeing a team send a sponsor an email that read like a bad business school sales pitch, we realized some students had skipped their homework/and or still hadn’t grasped the basics of Customer Discovery.

Social Media 120

Social Media Customer Programming Video 120

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

The implications for entrepreneurs is that each of these (market risk versus invention risk,) require radically different financing models, a different type of venture investor, different timing for hiring sales and marketing, etc. Am I in a company with “invention risk? To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

I’ll email a brief review of it. press and use it to generate end user demand and then drive that demand into our sales channel. Reply SuperMac War Story 9: Sales, Not Awards « Steve Blank , on April 30, 2009 at 5:02 am Said: [.] I bought one for Linn and she has never forgotten that. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

During the 1990’s large corporations had bought different software applications to automate each part of their enterprise – finance, customer support, manufacturing, sales, etc. The finance system didn’t talk to the sales system which didn’t know the manufacturing system even existed. An Epiphany. Founder Too.

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San Francisco Database Advisory Board Silicon Valley 228

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

We had seen the reactions of people playing with the prototypes in our lab and when we demo’d it to our sales force. Since we had gotten out of the software business when we came out of Chapter 11 , and our sales channel didn’t know what to do with software, we licensed ReelTime to Adobe. Please contact me with your email address.

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Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

The initial hypothesis for Epiphany (from my much smarter partner Ben ) was that as departments in the enterprise (manufacturing, finance, customer support sales) became automated, the marketing department would eventually get its turn. John Reply Terence Lee , on December 7, 2009 at 10:51 am Said: Agreed on not handing over slides.

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. 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.

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

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. They knew the technology trendsetters in their fields and got us in front of them. To a person they became passionate evangelists and effective marketers. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

JANUARY 10, 2023

I personally sold the first big deals and hired the VP of sales who’s building the sales team in our New York office. My VP of Sales and I are running as fast as we can, but I’ve been around long enough to know I might be the ex-CEO if we can’t scale.”. ” Erin continued, “My investors are starting to get impatient.

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New York Miami Silicon Valley Sales 333

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2016

” They said, “It’s OK, I’m going to buy it once it’s for sale so I’ll be your first customer.” But it just made sense to us that partners could be like an extended sales team before we could afford to have one. So we use a partner channel, we do telesales and we do a lot of email.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Morocco Arkansas 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 16, 2016

Taking money from investors meant that there was pressure to scale, and pressure to hire, and that hire included a high-powered sales executive, but we did this without understanding our own value proposition. Go hire a sales exec to scale? We weren’t ready to layer a sales team on. David : Yeah.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Ohio 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Market Type affects your spending and sales ramp after you reach product/market fit. You say, “Market Type affects your spending and sales ramp after you reach product/market fit.&# Use the Lean Startup - When There's Market Risk The second question is : “What’s the “ Market Type ” of your startup? Does this help?

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2009

Yesterday I got an email from an ex-student lamenting that only 2% of their selected early testers responded to their on-line survey. You assemble this view by gathering information from a variety of sources: web sites, social media (Facebook, Twitter, blogs, et al) sales data, win/loss information, market research data (i.e.

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Metrics Customer Customer Development Lean 239

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan. Marketing starts to build a sales demo, writes sales materials (presentations, data sheets), and hires a PR agency. Marketing is at its peak.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

My engineers say our website is old school, and we need to be on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, my VP of Sales says we’re wasting our marketing dollars not targeting the right people and my board keeps giving me their opinions of how we should describe our product and company. How do I sort out what to do?”. with a strategy.

Marketing 310

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 310

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

As the company gets larger and a large professional sales organization kicks in, its second priority is to generate qualified leads. Before you go to a trade show sales and marketing need to agree to measurable goals. Then offer those budget dollars to the VP of Sales.

Silicon Valley 178

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 178

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

When a startup finds a repeatable sales process and steadily increasing revenue, its investors wants to harvest the rewards and build a culture of “execution.” However, if the founder is still running the company, the last thing he wants is a company complacent with day-to-day execution. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

With that implicit assumption, startups hire a VP of Sales with a great rolodex and call on established mainstream companies while marketing creates a brand and buzz to create demand and drive it into the sales channel (web, direct salesforce, etc.) If they had done this, there would have been zero dollars in sales.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

However, in catching up with the VP of Sales of Ardent last night, I was reminded one of the few times I did return for closure. In my career I’ve been involved with lots of sales deals, and for some reason losing this was the one deal I never forgot. It was for sale on Ebay. I liked to fail fast, move on, and not look back.

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Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 185