Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

When Sloan arrived at GM in 1920 he realized that the traditional centralized management structures organized by function (sales, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing) were a poor fit for managing GM’s diverse product lines. billion in sales in today’s dollars). Yet, you never hear who built GM to that size.

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

Steve Blank

JULY 24, 2012

The VC’s suggested I should spend a day at Onyx Software, an early pioneer in Sales Automation in Seattle. Their VP of Sales was about 6’ 3” and seemed to be almost as wide. But in that one day I had learned a lot about sales automation that would shape my thinking when we founded Epiphany. I Know A Great Customer.

Seattle 259

Seattle Cofounder Engineer Sales 259

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2012

Over ten long years I wrote corporate brochures (making legal, finance and sales happy), and sales presentations (treading the line between sales, marketing, truth, and competition), and data sheets, web sites and competitive analyses, press releases (getting a degree in creative writing without being an English major,) and flew to hundreds of customer (..)

Thailand 331

Thailand Engineer Customer Development SEO 331

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

I had joined MIPS Computers, my second semiconductor company , as the VP of marketing and also took on the role of the acting VP of Sales. and get the chip designed into companies building engineering workstations – powerful personal computers, all while trying to refine how to find the right markets, customers, and sales process.

Part-Time VPE 333

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 333

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2021

citizen he was now the head of sales and marketing for a company in London selling medical devices to hospitals in the UK National Health Service. health system was very different from the system in the UK, not just the regulatory regime through the FDA, but the reimbursement process and the entire sales process. salesforce.

Lean 435

Lean Agile Conversion Business Model 435

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities. No one wants to sit next to the VP of Sales.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

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 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

Marketing and capital expenses (new factory, high R&D expense) were predicated on consumer-scale sales.

Search 256

Search Marketing Forecast Burn Rate 256

Steve Blank

JUNE 27, 2017

To protect auto dealerships in the 1920s, direct sales by an automobile manufacturer were made illegal in most states in the U.S. The company has more rooms available then any hotel chain. Tesla – current valuation $50 billion – sells cars directly through its own distribution channel.

Startup 275

Startup New York City Valuation Distribution 275

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

Each sale requires us to handhold the customer and takes way too long to close. He took a deep breath, looked around the boardroom table and then proceeded to outline a radical reconfiguration of the product line (repackaging the products rather than reengineering them) and a change in sales strategy, focusing on a different customer segment.

Business Model 332

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 332

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

A Sales Closer – a salesman who can make up the sales process on the fly and bring in deals without a datasheet, price list or roadmap. They will build the sales team that follows. The good news/bad news is that you’ll spend ½ your time on airplanes listening to customers.).

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

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 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

understand the core customers and the sales and marketing process required for initial clinical sales and downstream commercialization. The class provides real world, hands-on learning on how to reduce commercialization risk in early stage therapeutics, diagnostics and device ventures.

Lean 269

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 269

Steve Blank

APRIL 21, 2011

This week they were testing their hypotheses about the sales “Channel” – how a company delivers its value proposition (i.e. Physical channels include Direct Sales, Rep Firms, Systems Integrators, Value-added Resellers, Distributors, Dealers, Mass Merchandisers, and Original Equipment Manufacturers.

Channel 215

Channel Artificial Inteligence San Francisco Business Model 215

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 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

And he proceeded to lay out a fairly complex and innovative sales and marketing strategy for our next 18 months. One day the CEO called me into his office and asked, “Steve I’ve been thinking about this as our strategy going forward. What do you think?” Yeah, that sounds great,” I said. That should be easy.

Business Model 305

Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 305

Steve Blank

AUGUST 23, 2010

We’re Not Here for a Sales Call. Disabusing the audience of the notion that the visit is a sales call is vital to the customer discovery mission. Short-circuiting that process is a major “foul” that often leads to premature business models and suboptimal sales results.). But we are not here for a sales call.&#.

Customer Development 235

Customer Development Developer Customer South America 235

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

All your assumptions about customers, sales cycle and most importantly, revenue, burn rate and runway are no longer true. If you are selling to businesses (a B-to-B market) have your customers’ sales dropped? If so, whatever revenue forecast and sales cycle estimates you had are no longer valid. Or you change sales strategy.

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

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 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

As there was no venture capital, these early startups were funded by early sales to weapon systems prime contractors and subcontractors. But this quarter-century relationship between the military and universities ended with a bang in 1969.

Government 308

Government Artificial Inteligence Silicon Valley North Korea 308

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2009

within one year of sale, offer for sale, public disclosure or public use. Offer for sale in the U.S.:Red Red flags: Start of sales effort, Price list, price quotation, Trade show demonstration, Any demonstration not under NDA. You must be “first” to patent. In the U.S. that means “first to invent” while outside U.S.

Intellectual Property 213

Intellectual Property IP Software Review Non-disclosure Agreement 213

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2017

The belief then was that most founders couldn’t acquire the HR, finance, sales, and board governance skills rapidly enough to steer the company to a liquidity event, so they hired professional managers. These new CEOs would also act as a brake to temper the founder’s excesses.

Part-Time VPE 308

Part-Time VPE Liquidity Event Stock Engineer 308

Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

After awhile, you ought to be able to go to the whiteboard and diagram the acquisition decision process much like a sales process. Do you wait 7 years until you’ve built enough revenue for a billion-dollar sale? Typically, a VC can force a sale, or even block one. You’re going to build one for them. Timing is everything.

Liquidity Event 120

Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

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 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

This was the fault of my cofounder since he was in charge of game development, it was the engineers who bailed on me, it was the sales and marketing people who didn’t tell me how bad the games were, it was the VC’s who refused to put any more money in the company, it was Sega’s fault for making a bad gaming platform….

Redemption 330

Redemption Cofounder Silicon Valley Burn Rate 330

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

Customer Relationships is what we think of as traditional sales and marketing; assembling a SAB, getting the KOL’s, conferences, articles, etc. This lecture talks about specifics – who are they, what deals work with them, how to get them, how to work with them.

Intellectual Property 281

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 281

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2017

In addition to customer discovery, creating end user demand, and product strategy, Marketing also serves as a service organization to sales. It drove me crazy when we failed to deliver a project for sales on time or we missed a media deadline. . — No Excuses as a Core Value.

Bankruptcy 371

Bankruptcy Sales Channel Restful 371

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 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

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 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

This, combined with regulation from the courts, a 2-year sales cycle, and the realization that e-discovery groups are not early adopters, made this an unattractive market. What we learned was that, we would just be an incremental feature to the incumbents and would need to integrate our solution with theirs. Technology in search of a market.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2013

Medical Device Distribution Channels in general are a sales team hired directly by the company. A sales team typically includes a sales person and clinical applications specialists. They assist with the sale and work with marketing to create demand. Some device industries are controlled by distributors (indirect sales.).

Distribution 224

Distribution Channel Lean Intellectual Property 224

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2017

Or they may even put the entire company up for sale. And as Trian’s presentation suggests, they’ll get GE to take on more debt to buy back stock. And often they calculate that selling the sum of parts is greater than keeping the company together as a whole. There is an upside to an activist investor taking a run at a company.

Institutional Investors 233

Institutional Investors Dividend Stock Technical Review 233

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

The number of serial entrepreneurs is very low and until recently most of the talented sales and marketing professionals choose to work for Nokia. I have no doubt they’ll get there by themselves, but in wouldn’t take much imagination to attempt to recruit some seasoned overseas investors to add to the mix.

Finland 324

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 324

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

Traditionally, engineering, sales, and marketing have all focused on the immovable launch date. The term “Sales” at an existing company refers to a team that repeatedly sells a known product to a well-understood group of customers with standard presentations, prices, terms, and conditions. Executing on a sales and marketing plan.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2020

You look the same whether you are playing poker or making a sales call, in a suit or without pants. It’s a productivity killer for sales. With people working from home you can’t tell where the meeting is or how important the location or setting is. In a video conference all the contextual clues are homogenized.

Video 436

Video Bandwidth Conversion Lean 436

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job. He tripled Microsoft’s sales to $78 billion and profits more than doubled from $9 billion to $22 billion. After running Microsoft for 25 years, Bill Gates handed the reins of CEO to Steve Ballmer in January 2000.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job. He tripled Microsoft’s sales to $78 billion and profits more than doubled from $9 billion to $22 billion. After running Microsoft for 25 years, Bill Gates handed the reins of CEO to Steve Ballmer in January 2000.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120