A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

Freshman Salesman writes: I’ve read somewhere in your blog about how you had a very large organisation as the first customer for your software. I’m putting myself in the same boat now with the solution I’m developing so could you tell me: 1. How did you reach out to your first customer? I think you meant this

Customer 231

Customer Software Review IP Technical Review 231

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

If you don’t value your product neither will your customers. Values – who and what founders and customers hold dear – were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Ryan Smith co-founded Qualtrics in 2002 with his father in the family basement. Ironically, though, academics are horrible customers.

Cofounder 146

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 146

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

If you don’t value your product neither will your customers. Values – who and what founders and customers hold dear – were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Ryan Smith co-founded Qualtrics in 2002 with his father in the family basement. Ironically, though, academics are horrible customers.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

When I first started teaching customer development (searching, validating and executing a business model), one of my students pointed out that customer development was similar to the theory of a military strategist, John Boyd. In Afghanistan in 2002 U.S. The Gulf Wars. war fighting strategy in both Gulf Wars.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Kuwait 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

I thought Id share a little bit of that, too: I’ve been interested in different approaches to software development going back to 1987 when – in my first company Feld Technologies – my partner Dave Jilk and I started talking about “semi-custom software development&# (way ahead of its time).

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 13, 2014

in 2002, so they built what they thought the industry needed and people would want. As regular readers of this blog will know I’m a big fan of methodologies like lean, design thinking, and customer development. In his new startup Michael is rigorously applying lean principles.

Lean 122

Lean Portfolio Design Customer Development 122

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Take a look: This full-day Master Class focuses on how to build a startup from the ground up to focus on customers, markets, and speed of iteration. Im working on a future post where Ill share the details of how I used customer development to shape both the content and packaging of this event, so look for that soon.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60