Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

A year goes by, you miss your revenue plan, and you’ve burned through your first VP of Sales. If that’s you, by all means hire a VP of Sales with a great rolodex and call on established mainstream companies – and ignore the rest of this post. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. For example, some startup sales execs believe hiring the core sales team is a key objective. Here’s what the product development diagram looks like from a sales perspective.

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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.

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Austin Startup

AUGUST 20, 2017

Hiring is a chapter unto itself, but it deserves to lead off any discussion of context. Compensation decisions obviously affect hiring and retention. You can’t be too careful in determining comp packages for your new hires. That will keep the Silicon Valley wags buzzing for some time to come.

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www.lanceglasser.com

MAY 13, 2012

Product development. Queuing theory and product development. The Essential Product Investigation Phase Gate. So you want to ship the product early? The minimum viable product. Silicon Valley melting pot. Metrics for cyclical businesses. Let the Games Begin! Stock buybacks. Bah, humbug.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. After twelve months Handspring’s revenue was $170 million. They never understood Market Type. End result?

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infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

For instance, if a consultant proposes to help you with public relations, pay them a commission equivalent to the greater of a flat fee per story placed or a percentage of revenue generated from the PR coverage. Such positions include: PR, Sales, Product Development, Lead Generation, Strategic Planning, Fund Raising, etc.

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

In hindsight it appeared clear that startups that survive the first few tough years do not follow the traditional product-centric launch model espoused by product managers or the venture capital community. Through trial and error, hiring and firing, successful startups all invented a parallel process to product development.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

The key contributors to an out-of-control burn rate is 1) hiring a sales force too early, 2) turning on the demand creation activities too early, 3) developing something other than the minimum feature set for first customer ship. And I can even imagine cases where it might burn more cash than a traditional startup. Lets see why.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Customer development is a parallel process to product development, which means that you dont have to give up on your dream. Our goal in product development is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers. What is customer development? This is a common mistake.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. Most publishers are still caught up in an outdated “vision vs. metrics&# argument, which is already obsolete here in Silicon Valley. What is the right revenue model? Is that a lot? Is that good?

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SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Call it facts for hire. It would be a bit like the hired gun in the old west, but more suited for today’s times. Today, brands are hiring social media specialists for customer support, crowdsourced product development, promotions and even leads generation. The Proof Is In The Revenue. You got it.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Page views drive his ad revenue, which is probably CPM based. 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. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Mike Arrington is a capitalist.

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. The business model.

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www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

These are areas that may be gaps in the portfolio of large companies, and are perfect for M&A deals in three to five years after building enough validation and $10-$20 million in revenue. Raymond has built a nice business through efficient distribution deals and will do about $250,000 in revenue this year.

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www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

These are areas that may be gaps in the portfolio of large companies, and are perfect for M&A deals in three to five years after building enough validation and $10-$20 million in revenue. Raymond has built a nice business through efficient distribution deals and will do about $250,000 in revenue this year.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

You are here: Home » Hiring » Crazy! Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. Or should I launch products and a startup for each of them, focusing on only 1 product at a time? Ability to hire top talent (A+ talent).

Technical Review 44

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. And then, at my first Silicon Valley startup , I watched friends get laid off in successive waves as it started to fail. Maybe, but the thought never even entered our minds.

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techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

But six months in, you’re gonna cry when you see someone else put out that same product you’re pitching me right now. Like I said, forget everything else and just get your product out the door. Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. I don’t know any developers. No phone system.

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Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

Every marketing communication hire couldn’t wait to produce the next great ad or PR program. Every product marketer thought they should help define the product feature set, etc. But without sales there is no revenue, and without revenue there is no company. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Silicon Valley 126

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www.paulgraham.com

APRIL 28, 2010

What they like most is the freedom: Im surprised by how much better it feels to be working on something that is challenging and creative, something I believe in, as opposed to the hired-gun stuff I was doing before. Engage Users Product development is a conversation with the user that doesntreally start till you launch.

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Technical Cofounder Startup Cofounder Founder 110

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Sure, it garners the "winning " reply above, but in reality I find the answers below by Cody Riddar that directs the asker to go hire an inexpensive prototype development team much more helpful than the "leading answer" that gives the "Quora rockstar engineer" point of view. In my opinion, yes.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

The whole episode cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. In fact, it was the revenue trends that eventually alerted us to the magnitude of the problem. Unfortunately, revenue a trailing indicator. Its a great time to increase revenues without spending money on acquiring new customers.

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Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I’ve seen the Valley grow from Sunnyvale to Santa Clara to today where it stretches from San Jose to South of Market in San Francisco. I’ve watched the Valley go from Microwave Valley – to Defense Valley – to Silicon Valley to Internet Valley. So how did this happen? Where is it going?

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mashable.com

JUNE 11, 2013

Hiring Poorly. Make sure that new hires understand your rate of innovation. If you dont manage this expectation upon hiring, you will be managing employee issues six months down the line. Someone told me recently, Any time Im talking to someone who doesnt work for me already, Im evaluating if I should try and hire them.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

This single decision wound up costing the company significant revenue and over the course of several months sent its customer growth into decline. It was really the community who built that product.&# Same goes for the AP products that the General Audience consumers (whicn includes teens) get their hands on.

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