Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

The Founder’s New Insight Smart founders are never satisfied with simply executing their current business model, they are constantly observing, orienting and deciding whether their current business model can be made better. But the purpose of this post is what happens when a founder (or large company CEO) finds a better business model.

Customer 214

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 214

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" Platform selection and technical design - if your business strategy is to create a low-burn, highly iterative lean startup, youd better be using foundational tools that make that easy rather than hard. I always assumed I wouldnt manage anybody.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Software By Rob

AUGUST 5, 2010

Join nearly 6,000 startup entrepreneurs by subscribing to my RSS feed. You’re a startup founder, whether actual or aspiring. Business books are a founder’s learning tool. The problem is that the premise of all of them – whether true or false – is irrelevant to you as a startup founder.

Founder 78

Founder Startup Software Review Software 78

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.

Silicon Valley 129

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 129

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Market Risk vs. Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention.

Vertical 159

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 159

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products. Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery.

Technology 142

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

He spoke at the Founder Institute last week, and his advice was to not hire a PR agency until there were so many inbound requests that you can’t handle them yourself. He prefers to interact directly with the founders of a startup. He knows how to publish articles that drive page views, and this is a good one.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 206

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

AgileZen – project management visually see and interact with your work Kanbanery – Simple online team or personal kanban board LeanKit Kanban – Great for visualizing work of product development Kanban Pad – “Nice and lean” and free online Kanban tool Banana Scrum – A tool simple as Scrum itself.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Reply Alan Urech , on May 13, 2009 at 7:03 am Said: As a Moot Bowl Judge who just returned from that competition (May 7-10, 2009), I think that Business Plans provide a framework for the judges and founders to understand the entire business. I hate business plan competitions. Your investors may require something quite different.)

Business Plan 152

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 152

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.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 268

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. The difference is that the ones that succeed invent a Customer Development model. These steps mesh seamlessly and support a startup’s ongoing product development activities.

Customer Development 252

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 252

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. So What is Customer Development? Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, developed a methodology for creating businesses that runs in parallel with the traditional product development process. Finding Product/Market Fit.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 20, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, August 20, 2009 The Promise of the Lean Startup Im honored to have a guest post on GigaOm to introduce the concept of the lean startup to their audience. The ultimate goal of a lean startup is to identify where its vision intersects with what reality can accommodate.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 68

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

I firmly believe that in this age where the product development life-cycle is so short and user feedback comes so quickly, you will know within a year whether you are focusing on a worthwhile one thing. Have amazing co-founders who are better at what they do than you could ever be. Fab.com Fab Feed Bradfords Blog.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Execution by Vertical Market As the class progressed, students asked how the activities/functions of a startup; (Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Product Development, etc.) How does product development differ in communications hardware versus enterprise software, etc. Waterfall, Agile, Lean?

Vertical 124

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

The founder of what became General Motors was William (Billy) Durant. Billy Durant - Founder General Motors More in the next posts. Ford family did a pretty good job of managing founder-to-manager transition in car business and are still playing a big role in their enterprise 100 years since. What happened to him? Who was he?

Silicon Valley 175

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 175

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Through trial and error, hiring and firing, successful startups all invented a parallel process to product development. I call this process “Customer Development,” a sibling to “Product Development,” and each and every startup that succeeds recapitulates it, knowingly or not.

Silicon Valley 132

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 132

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

.” Hackernews list of “Tools of the Trade” for startups - includes over 150 SaaS tools used by startups, and over 150 comments with interesting insights from founders. Lean Methodology Sources. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Part 3- Lean Cust. Steve Blank’s Lean Startup Resources.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Paul quotes one of his founders like this: “Thats the actual beauty in the off-the-record-ness: you hear just how screwed up most of these successful startups were on the way up.&# It makes successful founders famous. This is also why I get so outraged when people treat Lean Startup like a religion.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Metrics PR 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

Lessons Learned is the best RSS source in my overflowing Newsgator Online account. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. . The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

On the iPhone, it seems that two are driving most of the installs: the "newest apps" RSS feed (which may be combined with PR) and a primitive form of SEO, when people search the App Store for a specific kind of app. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Acqusition competition is how new apps get new customers.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

How to stay lean and iterate quickly while you’re building a two sided marketplace, especially when “network effect” and “critical mass” are the two main focuses? Near shoring development with your team (ex: your team is based in Canada / India) is cool, but not outsourcing. Non of this academic stuff.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

He should then bootstrap his product development by using the consulting fees. David should use his credibility in capacity planning and convince a dozen customers to pay him consulting fees to solve their capacity planning problems.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

He should then bootstrap his product development by using the consulting fees. David should use his credibility in capacity planning and convince a dozen customers to pay him consulting fees to solve their capacity planning problems.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52