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Is the Lean Startup Dead?

Steve Blank

Most entrepreneurs today don’t remember the Dot-Com bubble of 1995 or the Dot-Com crash that followed in 2000. Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. It’s the antithesis of the Lean Startup.

Lean 335
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Pricing determines your business

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. Consider the consequences of these monthly pricing possibilities: $0/mo means your goal is to maximize growth (trust and usage) instead of revenue. Even bootstrapped businesses can make this work (e.g. This is a hard slog.

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The Search For the Fountain of Youth – Innovation and Entrepreneurship in the Enterprise

Steve Blank

The company loses customers, then revenues and profits decline and it eventually gets acquired or goes out of business. If you’ve been reading my book on Customer Development and follow my work on Market Type , this type of innovation is best for adding new products to existing markets. Creative Destruction.

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Can You Trust Any vc's Under 40?

Steve Blank

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

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Why Build, Measure, Learn – isn’t just throwing things against the wall to see if they work

Steve Blank

Version 1 was built without customer feedback, and before version 1 was complete work had already started on version 2 so it took till version 3 before the customer was really heard (e.g. Best practices in software development started to move to agile development in the early 2000’s. Microsoft Windows 3.0).

Lean 120
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Customer Development Manifesto: Market Type (part 4) « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

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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New Rules for the New Internet Bubble

Steve Blank

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. VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter.

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