Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Just like catching a bug in development is cheaper than fixing it once it has been released, confirming lack of customer demand prior to ramping up a sales engine is cheaper than finding out once you have a paid sales team.

Venture Capital 239

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 239

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.

North Carolina 131

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 131

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. would look in each of the verticals. For example, How does sales differ from one market to another? Sales – What Channel to reach the customer?

Vertical 125

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

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 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

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.

Silicon Valley 143

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 143

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 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

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 131

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Reid Hoffman

MARCH 2, 2021

He also shared his perspective on M&A (including Uber’s recent acquisitions of Postmates and Drizly), autonomous vehicles, the complexities of working in highly regulated industries, and how his personal and professional background shaped the way he approaches leadership today. EPISODE TRANSCRIPT. He couldn’t come back.

Iran 41

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

However the Customer Development Model and the Lean Startup work equally well for startups on the web. The first question to ask is: “Does your startup have market risk or is it dominated by technical risk?” Lean Startup /Customer Development is used to find answers to the unknowns about customers and markets. Does this help?

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 228

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Little Indians and Big Indians At MIPS Computers , my second semiconductor company, I was the VP of Marketing and defacto head of Sales. Reply My take on Customer Development and the Lean Startup | Recess Mobile Blog , on January 9, 2010 at 5:29 am Said: [.] Reply Yuri Ammosov , on December 15, 2009 at 4:28 pm Said: Hmmm.

Customer Development 284

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 284

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Your goal was to preserve your cash while you turned these guesses into facts and searched for a repeatable and scalable sales model. Your presentation doesn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. They will realize that you have built a startup that’s agile, resilient and customer-centric.

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

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. This is the pivot, a crucial tactical maneuver for the lean startup [.]

Silicon Valley 253

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 253

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Motioning to our VP of Sales, he ordered: “Go with him and get him in front of customers, and both of you don’t come back until you can tell us something we don’t know.” Reply Chui , on October 8, 2009 at 8:05 pm Said: Anyone squirming probably shouldn’t be in sales anyway, and a wise person would have realized it was good advice.

Silicon Valley 283

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 283

Hearpreneur

JUNE 26, 2016

Working at a mighty mid-sized agency provides employees the unique opportunity to grow within their positions and assume leadership roles. We create a culture of leadership through our comfortable environment where everyone from a new intern to the CMO can share ideas and brainstorm with the executive team.

Entrepreneur 92

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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. And inviting to the booth/dinner/private demo.

Silicon Valley 136

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 136

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Since the training department was part of sales no one really paid attention to the four of us. It was a Friday (about ¾’s through my work week) and I was in a sales department meeting. The VP of Sales gave me a funny look and just moved on with the agenda. VP of Sales? Repeat every day, six or seven days a week.

Silicon Valley 200

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 200

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.

Customer 216

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 216

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

billion for a company with less than $50 million in sales. » Dig for Leadership - Stories that try to make the world a better place. , AKPC_IDS += "1128,"; (No Ratings Yet) Loading … Posted in Leadership | Tagged [.] On its first day of trading, Netscape stock closed at $58/share, valuing the company at $2.7

Silicon Valley 235

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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 [.]

Silicon Valley 157

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 157

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

I knew we were selling through a multi-level indirect sales channel. That’s a mouthful to say that our sales people didn’t sell our products directly to a customer. Instead they managed rep firms (independent sales companies that carried multiple, non-competing products) that called on computer resellers that sold to the customers.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 210

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Intelligence As I leafed through the Cray sales material, a glossy magazine with the headline Cray Channels jumped out of the pile. Later I sat down for lunch and began to leaf through the bag of data sheets and brochures I had collected. Hmm… typical booth stuff…key chains, data sheets, pens… Until I got to the material from Cray.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 167

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. We four instructors would grumble and complain to one another about our lack of leadership. Perhaps if you have a union job based on seniority, but not in any startup I’ve ever seen.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

This happened to us at SuperMac when our sales skyrocketed. Stay hungry, stay lean. I don’t want to be hungry and lean (nor do I want to be full and fat). It was an odd feeling at that time, we thought we have made it and fail to stay lean and hungry. That’s when things went south. Don’t let it happen to you.

Silicon Valley 230

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 230

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

The Customer Validation lesson of, “no formal launch until you have early sales validating the product and sales process&# was also born here. I can’t remember if they were in the Wired article or on the web site, but every once in a while I still go over to ebay and see if I can find any for sale. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

I’ve tried different things in India – sales training, software sales, advising entrepreneurs. Reply Shankar Saikia , on June 29, 2009 at 9:02 am Said: THANKS – MAKES ME FEEL BETTER 21 months ago I left an awesome job at Oracle in Silicon Valley and relocated to India to be an entrepreneur.

Agile 265

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 265

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

APRIL 2, 2009

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: [.] The Potrero benchmark strategy was one component of this creating end user demand through PR.)

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 127

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. We knew something our CEO didn’t.

Video 184

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 184

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 228

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 228

Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

If you’ve never seen Eric’s Lean Startup presentation, take a few minutes to at least watch his part. Thanks to Dave McClure and Leonard Speiser for the opportunity to speak. The Customer Development talk can be seen here. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The slides are here.

Customer Development 154

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 154

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. AKPC_IDS += "1115,"; (No Ratings Yet) Loading … Posted in Leadership | Tagged [.] carry on reading.

Customer Development 253

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 253

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

His marketing and sales instincts and skills seemed magical and he built the company into a $400 million OEM supplier, ultimately selling the company to Unisys. I have been swinging for the fences for several years as a young entrepreneur at the executive leadership level for several start-ups and most recently starting my own.

Entrepreneur 291

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 291

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2009

How did your skills in sales and marketing and your ability to discover and validate customers run aground at Rocket Science?

Silicon Valley 137

Silicon Valley San Francisco RSS Vertical 137

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.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 210

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. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

corporation, and by extension Sloan laid the foundation for America’s economic leadership in the 20th century. 2) Provide corporate management with near real-time divisional sales reports and budgets that indicated when they deviated from plan. billion in sales in today’s dollars.) One guy really did all of this.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 179

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 5, 2014

Masterful execution makes up one of the triangle’s two vertical sides. (I And Stoddard notes that at NetApp they use proper governance to facilitate faster learning: “We use an enterprise executive architecture committee, with all the leaders of every NetApp function — marketing, sales, HR, operations, finance, and so on.

Algorithm 174

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