Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

To do this they have to accomplish five things; 1) get deal flow – via networking and legwork, they identify likely industries, companies and teams with the potential for rapid growth (less than 10 years), 2) evaluate those companies and teams on the basis of technology, market opportunity, and team.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

By now you have many smart people around your board but probably people who don’t totally understand the nuances of your employees, customers, sales reps, marketing messages, technology challenges, competitors and strategic choices. how to market our products and company. So our board meetings consisted of discussion about.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

The Equity Kicker

MAY 9, 2016

The bit I liked the most described the role of Stanford in getting Silicon Valley going in the late 1950s. Silicon Valley started in the small district of Palo Alto and the emergence of Tech City here in East London has been similarly important. We focus on ecommerce and marketplaces.

Silicon Valley 60

Silicon Valley Venture Capital eCommerce Startup 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 241

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 241

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 3, 2011

In How To Defend Your Dream Against All Odds , Alex and I explore the company's journey to $200 Million in revenue, while their VCs wrote them off. Zoho is already over $100 million in revenue and is seeing tremendous traction. In that case, the verticals of choice could be manufacturing, wholesale and retail.

North Carolina 116

North Carolina San Diego Entrepreneur Balance Sheet 116

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

At the same time we were educating the press , we began to educate our own marketing department about what exactly we were supposed to be doing inside the company. During the first few weeks I asked each of my department heads what they did for marketing and the company. Titles are not the same as what your job is. This is a big idea.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. 4) You don’t see any revenue gain past three years. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Customer 201

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 201

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. Order Here. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 126

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. Ultimately you want to see if you can find customers and a market for the product as specified – as early as possible. Technology?

Vertical 123

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 123

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 1, 2023

By Daniel Sokolovksy, Co-Founder and CEO, WARP and Troy Lester, Co-Founder and CRO, WARP The dissolution of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was more than just a bank collapse, it was a reality check for both startups and the VCs that fund them. We’re hitting record revenue months, weeks, and margins. That includes us.

Early Stage 110

Early Stage Los Angeles Silicon Valley Cofounder 110

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. A year goes by, you miss your revenue plan, and you’ve burned through your first VP of Sales. What happened?

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 133

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 23, 2011

My advice was to keep doing the SharePoint solution development and consulting work the company does today and develop the store project as a side effort until the market is ready. He is heading straight into an intensely competitive market without adequate differentiation or competitive positioning.

Spain 115

Spain Entrepreneur India San Francisco 115

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

Scalable startups are on a trajectory for a billion dollar market cap. But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. has a large enough market that most U.S. ———-.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Transformify

APRIL 21, 2017

We really wanted to build a network of top tier talent, similar to the caliber of talent that’s working in-house at top Silicon Valley tech companies. What do you see in the future of the jobs market? And we’ll be expanding into more business verticals soon. All of that sets us apart.

Technical Review 40

Technical Review Silicon Valley Software Review Cofounder 40

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 27, 2011

During today's roundtable, we had some excellent discussions of product marketing for a couple of different concepts. The first of these discussions was about a new social media marketing platform called Stanzr, from San Francisco-based Voluble, that we are using at 1M/1M. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant.

Entrepreneur 116

Entrepreneur San Francisco Technical Review New Jersey 116

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.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Growthink Blog

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

billion dollar business this year to $5 billion by 2012, taking market share away from DVD retailers and intensifying the carriers' ambition to bid for the best (and first run) titles. revenues from internet video services spanning user-generated content to television shows and movies will exceed $7 billion this year. Annual U.S.

Los Angeles 85

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Technical Review Distribution 85

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

This curriculum is based on the various questions entrepreneurs have asked me over these 64 sessions, spanning financing, positioning, customer acquisition, marketing, sales, channel, and various other early stage, startup-related issues. John already has a couple of customers, and needs about 50 customers to get to $1M in annual revenue.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

No changes were made to the customer journey, and it had nothing to do with revenue lift. Yet, this was a successful growth marketing campaign. In this article, you will learn how growth marketing compares to traditional marketing and its key components. What is growth marketing? And what it isn’t).

Framework 102

Framework Marketing Acquisition Retention 102

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

The product development model treats all startups like they are in an Existing Market – an established market with known customers. Most startups following the Product Development Model never achieve their revenue plan and burn through a ton of cash not knowing what hit them. They never understood Market Type.

Customer Development 203

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 203

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 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

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 263

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 263

Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

As we were plotting marketing strategy, I mentioned that the phrase “Speaking to the Big Dogs” might end up as his corporate brand. We were happily brainstorming when one of his managers spoke up and said, “Well, the phrase ‘Big Dogs’ might not work because it might not translate well in our Mexican and Spanish markets.”

Silicon Valley 182

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 182

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Now, helping potential customers discover new things they might like is the job of the discipline of marketing. But that job is changing dramatically, and this brings us to the next major problem facing traditional media organizations: Media companies are failing at marketing. What is the right revenue model?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Sales people cost money, and when they’re not bringing in revenue, their wandering in the woods is time consuming, cash-draining and demoralizing. Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.) Lets see why.

Lean 250

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

It didn’t make my marketing skills any worse or better, but moved me to play forever on a different field. If it was a very big mistake, I blamed the VP of Sales. “This marketing campaign didn’t work? But a series of Zen-like moments helped me move to a different level that changed how I operated. Reply Michael F.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

ReadWriteStart

MAY 6, 2011

First up, Sumit Jha from New Delhi, India, presented EduMark , a real estate education program for the nascent Indian market that Sumit is already selling successfully, and wondering how to take to the next level of scale. As for investment, one of the key elements missing for me is a concrete market sizing. IndiaCollegeSearch.

India 115

India Vertical Entrepreneur Connecticut 115

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.) car market.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 161

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

It’s a process that doesn’t exist in large companies with existing customers and markets. Reply Beth Carls , on March 22, 2009 at 5:03 pm Said: Agreed… how does the entrepreneur who ptiches investors – whether angels or VCs – get the money needed in order to build the beta to test market with their customer?

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 128

ReadWriteStart

MAY 12, 2011

Next, Dan Stewart from Safety Harbor, Florida, pitched Happy Grasshopper , an email-based referral marketing service. Today, he has over a thousand, and he has chosen to focus on the realtor vertical. and a systematic affiliate marketing program. He is seeing excellent results. In February, he had about 200 customers.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Entrepreneur Silicon Valley India 125

Hippoland

JULY 24, 2016

Your startup’s valuation is not based on a proforma of your revenue. And therefore, it’s also not quite analogous to the market cap of a publicly traded company. This is really key to understand, because so many founders wonder, “Why was that company over there who has 0 revenue able to raise their round at a $10m cap convertible note?

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Valuation Vertical Demand 48

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 20, 2011

Mike's customer acquisition strategy is weak at this point, and he also has a rather broad strategy in approaching this market. Kelly's business has already done about $150,000 in revenue in 2010, which tells me that she has successfully validated at least some of her assumptions. Remote Stylist.

Entrepreneur 114

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Vertical Massachusetts 114

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 10, 2011

I also advised him to avoid consumer marketing and market his service through the HR departments of the corporations as an employee benefit. Edward Varghese from New Delhi, India, pitched i-Globify , an outsourcing service catering to the niche travel vertical, focusing on building Web 3.0

India 116

India Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Vertical 116

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Do they believe you have a big enough vision and market. Tons of advice is available on how to pitch , present and market your company. If you’re following Customer Development you are now raising money because even with this first rev of the product you think you’ve found product/market fit and you want to scale.

Customer Development 264

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 16, 2010

The trends include Cloud computing, outsourcing, social Web, vertical and local Web, smartphones and tablets, online advertising, online video, online gaming, e-books, and bootstrapped entrepreneurship. Jimmy already has about 65 customers and about a million dollars in annual revenue. You can find details in the blog post on [link].

Senegal 117

Senegal Nevada Bootstrapping Silicon Valley 117

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Different market opportunities present radically different startup risks and costs. The time to product and scale of investment is radically different than other startup markets.&# Verticals Are Different I began to realize that entrepreneurs (and their professors) act like every vertical market and industry has the same set of rules.

Vertical 151

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 151

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

We Changed Our Mind In 1966, 10 years after Hewlett’s memo, Hewlett Packard’s revenue and headcount had grown ten fold; $200 million and 11,000 employees – all from test and measurement equipment. However, no markets last forever. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 169

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