Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. What is customer development?

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Mass blasts of information are ineffective, because the broadcast channels are suffering from information overload (even in social media). There are too many products clamoring for attention. Test-marketing is now easier than ever before, thanks to leveraged distribution channels like AdWords and Facebook. Is that a lot?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 18, 2010 Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases non-events The following is a case study of one entrepreneurs transition from a traditional development cycle to continuous deployment. Managing weekly releases got a lot harder once I started doing customer development.

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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. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Given that most recruiting channels are pay-for-performance, its usually cheaper, too, because it has a lower conversion rate. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, April 23, 2010 in San Francisco.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

She has a separate team, with its own culture and office, and a mandate straight from top management to innovate without regard to the company’s historic products, channels, or supply chain. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? April 23, 2010 in San Francisco.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

, it seemed time to return to the subject of investigating who my customers are. Today, Id like to spend some time on two techniques: the problem presentation and learning what channels of information reach customers. But beyond the obvious, its also important to know where customers go to get answers to pressing questions.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 16, 2010 Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium (Normally, I do not write about companies that are doing a marketing launch. First, SlideShare is a fantastic product (that I use on a regular basis) and an impressive company example of Lean Startup practices in action.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

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Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Next, you have to deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers. And here’s where life gets really interesting, as the reality of product development and customer input collide, the facts change so rapidly that the original well-thought-out business plan becomes irrelevant.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 19, 2009

In other words, the service transforms tweets into professional reports that are sent by snail mail, fax, and email - the channels that actually have attention paid to them. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

g2s The very abbreviated version of Customer Development (channeling Steve Blank ). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, April 23, 2010 in San Francisco. once it launches.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 31, 2009

My overwhelming takeaway from the most recent Lessons Learned survey is that there is tremendous hunger out there for in-depth opportunities for entrepreneurs of all stripes to develop their lean startup skills. As you can tell from recent posts, Ive been experimenting with different formats and channels to try and find the best way to help.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

The App Store is a channel for customer acquisition. As the channel gets more and more crowded, just launching an app in the store is getting worse and worse as a strategy for each new entrant. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral.

San Francisco 68

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Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

My two cents is that a business plan is the single place to collect your thinking about about your: business model, distribution channel, demand creation plan, financial assumptions, and customer and product development plan. I was simply confused about what a plan was for.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

Those who have tried to build apps that exist just as glorified landing pages or marketing channels have generally failed. And, most importantly, you have several reliable communciation channels to talk to them including including email, profile notifications, feed items and status messages.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 31, 2009

Maybe location-specific "channels"? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, I'm really just trying to figure out how to explain what this thing does. July 31, 2009 11:16 AM BillSeitz said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

There are other models, in other distribution channels. As the AppStore becomes increasingly saturated one of the goals of the socialDeck platform is to create an alternative distribution channel -- a way to drive installs of casual games outside of the AppStore oligopoly. On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Again, its critical to focus your marketing launch on those publications, venues, and channels that your potential partners are paying attention to. Do some Customer Development instead. So dont combine your product launch with a marketing launch. Instead, do your product launch first. Help you raise money.

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door. Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP. Do it yourself. Start as soon as possible.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them.

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ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

2010 – Sean Ellis, who currently runs Qualaroo , coins the term “growth hacking” in his article, Find a Growth Hacker for Your Startup. The key differentiator being the product-level focus vs. the channel-level focus of traditional marketing effort. Conducted Customer Development. Absolutely not.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

This starts a downward spiral: as more and more apps become indistinguishable, they send out more and more notifications, which leads to increasing fatigue on the part of customers. As notification channels get stuffed full of these messages, customers tune them out (or platforms have to put in place dramatic limits on access).

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Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

We were going to do that by turning marketing into a machine to generate end user demand, drive the that demand into our sales channels, and educate our sales channels. In an early stage startup, instead of sales being up front, the point departments are likely to be product development and customer development.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

Because the book is chock-full of examples of how to do this in older industries, I will focus on my experience integrating NPS into an online service, although it should be noted that it works equally well if your primary contact with customers is through a different channel, such as the telephone. What is customer development?

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techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Twitter is an excellent distribution channel for us. (B) Everything Seth said is absolutely spot on, except I’d encourage founders to make sure they do some customer development (even in the consumer space) in parallel to cranking out the first product. Will be looking forward to seeing the next piece that you do.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

In fact, you cant go through traditional channels at all. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, April 23, 2010 in San Francisco. One can see how it ripples through the entire business plan.

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www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

14 Comments • Nov 15, 2010 +1 for use of Platonic. D Craig Montuori • Nov 15, 2010 My original comment (asked as an answer): Well written, good points. Anon User • Nov 15, 2010 Ryan another thing you can do if you like is to vote up this answer, which will also show your endorsement of it.

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www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Great for visualizing work of product development. Customer Development. Roku Channel Store. Read post Why Learning should be your top 2013 new year’s resolution  for a full list. Codeacademy. Lean Methodology Sources. Steve Blank. SW Courses.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

Most normal customers – even among early adopters - do not pay attention to the trolls. They are largely invisible in the normal channels where customer service and community management pays attention. I agree that listening and communicating is a key to success, but customer development can only do so much.

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