Steve Blank

MARCH 15, 2017

But he was getting uneasy that as his headcount was growing the productivity of his marketing department seemed to be rapidly declining. The other departments gave the same type of logistical answers; the product-marketing department, for example, said their job was to get the product specs from engineering and write data sheets.

Startup 310

Startup PR Public Relations Channel 310

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. It wasn’t pure research, but rather a culture of taking sufficient risks to get products to market through learning, discovery, iteration and execution. The NSF will fund 100 science and engineering research projects every year.

Engineer 278

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 278

Steve Blank

APRIL 3, 2018

Until we start giving grades for resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition, tenacity and having a passion for products and customers, great grades and successful entrepreneurs have at best a zero correlation (and anecdotal evidence suggests that the correlation may actually be negative.).

Technical Review 334

Technical Review Entrepreneur Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 334

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

When Sloan arrived at GM in 1920 he realized that the traditional centralized management structures organized by function (sales, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing) were a poor fit for managing GM’s diverse product lines. Think of the iPhone and its yearly new models.). Days of Futures Past for Tesla.

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley , was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. It might be its most important. ———-. Cold War Spin Outs.

Engineer 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

The product is an amazing technical tour de force. But the product/market fit of this first iteration is a swing and a miss. launched a product in 1990 called PhotoCD. The moment I saw the product I knew every one of my professional graphics customers (ad agencies, freelancers, photo studios, etc.) would want to use it.

Search 256

Search Marketing Forecast Burn Rate 256

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

– while simultaneously building a series of minimal viable products. Unlike traditional demo days or Shark Tanks which are, “Here’s how smart I am, and isn’t this a great product, please give me money,” a Lessons Learned presentation tells the story of a team’s 10-week journey and hard-won learning and discovery.

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

I worked with engineering to try to find product/market fit ( big endian or little endian ?) and get the chip designed into companies building engineering workstations – powerful personal computers, all while trying to refine how to find the right markets, customers, and sales process. What should I have done?

Part-Time VPE 333

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 333

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

While our teams have mentors, socialize a lot and give great demos, the goal of our class final presentations is “ Lessons Learned ” – about product/market fit, pricing, acquisition/activation costs, pricing, partners, etc. We heard consistently that the product looked good and solved a problem, but it was not an important problem.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2020

Google, at the time, was overhauling the back end of their search engine. They built their search engine 20 years ago. Bigger jets, bigger engines, bigger ships, as opposed to the small changes that can make an enormous difference. The second is a preference for product over strategy. In one day for $100.

Technical Review 322

Technical Review Taiwan Technology Design 322

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

Re-architect and re-write” the product. At the last board meeting our VP of engineering explained that the root of our problems was ‘our code has accumulated a ton of “technical debt,’ it’s really ugly code, and it’s not the way we would have done it today. Ironically it becomes the antithesis of agile. The logical solution? “Re-architect

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Steve Blank

JULY 22, 2013

A minimum viable product (MVP) is not always a smaller/cheaper version of your final product. And now they were out raising money to build a prototype minimum viable product (MVP.) Lean is Not an Engineering Process. A minimum viable product is not always a smaller/cheaper version of your final product.

Product 335

Product Customer Development Forecast Engineer 335

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2014

Two methods, Design Thinking and Customer Development (the core of the Lean Startup) provide the tactical day-to-day process of how to turn ideas into products. . In large companies, the employees are no less smart, but the organization is optimized to deliver repeatable products, revenue and profits.

Customer Development 335

Customer Development Design Developer Customer 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Todd Branchflower took my Lean LaunchPad class having been entrepreneurial enough to convince the Air Force send him to Stanford to get his graduate engineering degree. True to his word, fast-forward three years and Todd is now Captain Todd Branchflower , teaching computer engineering at the Air Force Academy. ——-.

Lean 262

Lean Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 262

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

Rather than focus the university inward on research, Terman took the radical step of encouraging Stanford professors and graduate students to start companies applying engineering to pressing military problems. While these activities shape and build culture, they don’t win wars, and rarely deliver shippable or deployable products.

Government 308

Government Artificial Inteligence Silicon Valley North Korea 308

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

They launched an incubator for the top scientists and engineers in the U.S. 63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks , turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. government agency that supports research in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. billion U.S.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

While most of the early attention in a startup is paid to finding product market fit ( the match between value proposition and customer segment on the right-side of the canvas) it’s the left side of the canvas that will tell you what your founding team should look like. So What Does this Have to Do With A Founding Team?

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

Steve Blank

JULY 24, 2012

I thought, “If they already selling to the sales department Epiphany’s products could easily be cross-sold to the marketing department.”. I outlined how our two products could be technically integrated together, how they could make much more money selling both and why it was a great deal for both companies. It’s Only a Month of Work.

Seattle 259

Seattle Cofounder Engineer Sales 259

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

You don’t have a clue about what the purpose of marketing is because all you are doing is giving engineering a list of feature requests and executing a series of tasks like they’re like a big To Do list. Start with those around product/market fit – who are your customers and what features do they want? I was a great marketer.

Business Model 305

Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 305

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2021

75 years ago, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) helped kickstart innovation in Silicon Valley with a series of grants to Fred Terman , Dean of Stanford’s Engineering school. The technology insights and expertise of Stanford Engineering. The technology insights and expertise of Stanford Engineering.

Security 364

Security Silicon Valley Russia China 364

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

None of that can compare with being the CEO of a startup facing a rapidly diminishing bank account, your best engineer quitting, working until 10pm and rushing to the airport and catching a redeye for a “ Hail Mary ” close of a customer, with your board demanding you do it faster. we have a partner-track associates program. Does it Matter?

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Early Stage Technical Review Startup 332

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Understanding the left-side of the mission model canvas ( activities, resources , partners , and costs) forces all teams to ask, “Are we building a product for a DOD/IC customer only or do we have a “dual-use” product that could be sold commercially and get funded by venture capital?”. This post is a continuation of the series.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 2, 2010

I gave a talk last night to the Silicon Valley Product Management Association. It’s a San Francisco Bay Area forum for networking, jobs and education for over 500 Product Management professionals. product managers in a startup can either be an asset or an albatross. Except they won’t be called Product Managers.

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Management San Francisco Product 261

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

NYU Engineering Commencement Speech. Thank you for the opportunity to address you on your graduation from this esteemed engineering school. I saw something that they didn’t and to their credit…Berkeley’s Business School and then Stanford’s Engineering School let me write and teach a new course based on my ideas.

Lean 221

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 221

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2013

One of the great innovations of the 21 st century are products that are cloud-connected and update and improve automatically. For hardware it’s the magical ability to have a product get better over time as new features are automatically added. Products can just as easily be downgraded as upgraded. Apple’s explanation?

Product 335

Product Cloud Software Engineer 335

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.”. Back then, an entrepreneur used a serial product development process that proceeded step-by-step with little if any customer feedback.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2012

My startup career started on the bottom, installing process control equipment inside auto assembly plants and steel mills (in awe of the complexity of the systems that delivered finished products.) In the sprint to first customer ship, slept under the desk in my office the same nights my engineering team was doing the same.

Thailand 331

Thailand Engineer Customer Development SEO 331

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?

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? This radical idea of companies continuing to execute and exploit their existing business model while simultaneously exploring and creating new products, businesses, and business models is what O’Reilly and Tushman call ambidexterity. Are their people smarter?

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2021

product, but I’m running into a pushback from my CEO. If we don’t test our assumptions about the market and any changes needed to our products, we’ll build something I can’t sell. “If He says, “We’re disruptors! Discovery is going to slow us down. We need to move quickly!”

Lean 435

Lean Agile Conversion Business Model 435

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

32 students were scattered across the globe and given a seemingly impossible assignment- they had 10 weeks to understand and then solve a real Dept of Defense problem – by interviewing 100 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, et al while simultaneously building a series of minimal viable products – all while never leaving their room.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

Startups, are not about executing a plan where the product, customers, channel are known. We were going to toss teaching the business plan aside and try to teach engineering students a completely new approach to start companies – one which combines customer development, agile development, business models and pivots.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

AUGUST 23, 2010

Followers of the Customer Development process know that you can’t start selling until you have transformed product, customer and other hypotheses into a validated business model and sales roadmap. When you’re doing disruptive innovation in a multi-billion dollar company, a $10Million dollar/year new product line doesn’t even move the needle.

Customer Development 235

Customer Development Developer Customer South America 235

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

Agile Engineering” to have teams prototype, test, and iterate their idea while discovering if they have a profitable business model. Value Propositions and Customer Segments are covered in weeks 1 and 2, emphasizing the search for problem/solution and then product/market fit.

Intellectual Property 281

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 281

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

JANUARY 21, 2015

Just before the holidays I had coffee with Anne, an ex MBA student running a fairly large product group at a search engine company, now out trying to raise money for her own startup. Michael Bloomberg has yet to get his due for engineering the New York entrepreneurial ecosystem. I had a better one when I came back from New York.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley New York City New York Venture Capital 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. Is it possible to build?

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260