Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

Yet everyone – investors, entrepreneurs, academics — expected new startups to follow the same practices that worked for large companies – write a business plan, forecast 5-year sales projections and build the product without ever talking to customers.

Lean 221

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 221

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

Traditionally, engineering, sales, and marketing have all focused on the immovable launch date. The term “Sales” at an existing company refers to a team that repeatedly sells a known product to a well-understood group of customers with standard presentations, prices, terms, and conditions. Executing on a sales and marketing plan.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2010

The good news is this team found a business model, product/market fit and a repeatable sales model. What lies ahead, however, is a different set of challenges: finding the new set of mainstream customers on the other side of the chasm and managing the sales growth curve.

Agile 120

Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2022

Helpful for predicting numerical values based on different data points, such as sales revenue projections for a given business. Applications : Supervised learning models are ideal for spam detection, sentiment analysis, weather forecasting and pricing predictions, among other things.

Artificial Inteligence 417

Artificial Inteligence Software Review Algorithm Technical Review 417

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

It’s at this point the business needs an operating plan, financial forecasts and other well-understood management tools. In contrast, execution, (which follows search) requires the company to be organized by function (product management, sales, marketing, business development, etc.). Then it moves into execution mode.

Search 320

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

While he had designed a good part of the product, he now found himself the titular head of sales and marketing. We’re trying to solve a puzzle in sales. We’re suddenly getting our butts kicked in our sales to the government.”. Last year they had done over $50 million in sales. A Killer Sales Culture. “My

Washington 272

Washington Los Angeles Startup Cofounder 272

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

They made other assumptions about the type of sales channel, partnerships and revenue model they would need. And they rolled all of this up into a set of financial forecasts with a “size of market” forecast from brand name management consulting firms that said they’d have 42 million customers by 2002.

Business Plan 335

Business Plan Customer Business Model Customer Development 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 8, 2010

They collected information that justified their assumptions about the problem, opportunity, market size, their solution and competitors and the their team, They rolled up a 5-year sales forecast with assumptions about their revenue model, pricing, sales, marketing, customer acquisition cost, etc.

Business Model 328

Business Model Business Plan Customer Cap Table 328

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. And the organization to implement all this was not through traditional sales, marketing and business development groups on day one. Sign up here. ——– Why This Class? I asked, “Is execution all there is to starting a company?”.

Lean 317

Lean Georgia Michigan Business Model 317

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

In turn, these new strategies drove the need for companies to be structured around functions (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, etc.). In the 1920’s companies restructured from monolithic functional organizations (sales, marketing, manufacturing, purchasing, etc.) Forecasts can be based on a series of known conditions.

Business Model 333

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 333

Steve Blank

JANUARY 10, 2011

The revenue plan had the new product baked into the numbers and it was clear that this division General Manager was going to crater his forecast (happens all the time, nothing new here.) The VP of an operating division had run into trouble in product development; the product was late and getting later.

Forecast 264

Forecast Agile Revenue Founder 264

Steve Blank

JUNE 10, 2010

With venture capital came accountability to board members, forecasts, and other people’s agendas. Three years later the division had sold 1 million PC’s, had 9500 people and a billion dollars in sales. Once they found a profitable business model they realized that scale required external venture capital to fuel rapid expansion.

Silicon Valley 328

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur United States New York City 328

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Market Type affects your spending and sales ramp after you reach product/market fit. In the past you have focused on revenue because (a) getting real orders at any price over 0 proves whether people value the offering at all, and (b) setting a real price via real orders is much more realistic than market research forecasts.

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

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 1, 2009

Top management was trying to coordinate all of the operating details (sales, manufacturing, distribution and marketing,) across all the divisions and the company almost went bankrupt that year when poor planning led to excess inventory (with unsold cars piling up at dealers and the company running out of cash.)

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

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. If it’s a new division inside a larger company, forecasts talk about return on investment. We had no clue what our market was when we first started.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

General Marketing, Sales Funnel, etc. If non-web, build demand creation budget and forecast. B-to-B versus B-to-C channels and sales (business to business versus business to consumer). Class Lecture/Out of the Building Assignment: How do you create end user demand? How does it differ on the web versus other channels?

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311