Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

She was an academic on leave from Stanford now selling SAAS software to large companies, but was being inundated with marketing communications advice. “My Define the Mission of Marketing Communications. Marketing communications is a subset of the Marketing department’s mission. Here’s how. with a strategy. The saboteur?

Marketing 310

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Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring PR Agencies. That’s smart I thought, a real clear charter for PR. At this moment you know more about your customers than any PR agency will.

PR 206

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

Andy Cunningham is the founder and president of Cunningham Collective , a brand strategy firm dedicated to bringing innovation to market. Andy continued to work with Steve for several years and has developed marketing, branding and communication strategies for game-changing technologies and companies ever since.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 11, 2015

A former tech journalist, Chris has built a career identifying innovative startups that create markets and drive positive and disruptive change. As the executive producer of the DEMO conference from 1996 to 2009, she helped more than 1,500 companies make their market debut. We know about waves of innovation around new markets. ….

Entrepreneur 120

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2010

I was VP of marketing at Ardent , a supercomputer company where a year earlier I had a painful and permanent lesson about Customer Discovery. I was smart, aggressive, young and a very tactical marketer who really hadn’t a clue about what strategy actually meant. I was a great marketer. To Do list. Can You Pull This Off.

Customer Development 307

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

Andy Cunningham is the founder and president of Cunningham Collective , a brand strategy firm dedicated to bringing innovation to market. Andy continued to work with Steve for several years and has developed marketing, branding and communication strategies for game-changing technologies and companies ever since.

Washington 120

Washington Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Maybe It’s Me When I got to the SuperMac, our Marketing Communications group told me about our “award-winning&# retail packaging for our graphics boards. Her packaging class was so good that we sent every new marketer at SuperMac to take it. Yet when I saw our retail package, I was confused. Worry about the sales results.

Sales 120

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

If you’re in markets that still exhibit at them (semiconductors, communications, enterprise software, etc.,) ———— 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. .

Silicon Valley 128

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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. 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

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Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Dot.com Bubble ( 1995-2000): “ Anything goes” as public markets clamor for ideas, vague promises of future growth, and IPOs happen absent regard for history or profitability. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Ironically, the model is a good fit when launching a new product into an existing , well-defined market where the basis of competition is understood, and its customers are known. We had no clue what our market was when we first started. Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure.

Silicon Valley 260

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

While I love TechCrunch, the post and the quote about the PR agency (“one PR firm has discovered a dynamite strategy, throw ethics out the window&# ) left me wondering; how do PR agencies interact with TechCrunch and other blog and review sites? Is this behavior an outlier or is it the norm in the PR industry?

Silicon Valley 184

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Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If you’re in markets that still exhibit at them (semiconductors, communications, enterprise software, medical devices, etc.,) Before you go to a trade show sales and marketing need to agree to measurable goals. you know they’re expensive in time, dollars and resources.

Silicon Valley 178

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. He came up with the concept to simply the search for product/market fit by using an MVP Tree.

Product 436

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Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a smart VP of Marketing who was getting early feedback from customers and screaming that the games didn’t match the hype. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to listen to customers.

Silicon Valley 122

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

However, no markets last forever. However, the CEO as the “Rock Star&# always reminded me of why I fired any PR agency that was getting more press than the company it represented. Clayton Christensen describes this brilliantly in the Innovators Dilemma.) on June 24, 2009 at 4:31 pm Said: [.] carry on reading.

Silicon Valley 164

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

While I was waiting in the lobby to pick up my offer letter, the head of marketing communications (who was to be one of my direct reports) came up to me as I held my just signed employment agreement. OK, let’s start with the basics, who does marketing think our customers are?” The obvious one’s were who were they?

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

about the earliest days of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, it’s worth checking out this post from serial entrepreneur Steve Blank.

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Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

The company was founded to build games with embedded video to bring Hollywood stories, characters, and narratives to a market where “shoot and die” twitch games were in vogue. So I hired a VP of Marketing from Sega, one of the video game platforms on which our games would run. Look, we’re on the cover of Wired magazine.

Silicon Valley 207

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

Extra credit if you can explain the significance of both of these spots and why the HP PR machine won the rewrite of Valley history. Drive an hour up to San Francisco and park next to South Park in the South of Market area. South of Market (SoMa) is the home address and the epicenter of Web 2.0

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

And when marketing went out to the field on red-eye flights to support sales (often), we became heroes as well. For example, when companies say, “We value our employees” but have reserved parking spots, a private cafeteria and over-the-top offices for the executives that tells you more than any PR spin. Bells and gongs would ring.

Startup 120

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Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2009

ESL had no marketing people. It had no PR agency. Bill Perry the founder of ESL, is now acknowledged as one of the founders of the entire field of National Reconnaissance , working the NSA and the CIA in programs to intercept and evaluate Soviet missile telemetry and communications intelligence. It shunned publicity.

Silicon Valley 270

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Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

At some point in my career as I began to formulate thoughts about mission and intent , I started to think about the broader role of marketing in a growing technology company. It became clear to me that the mission of marketing in most companies has to be to support sales.

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