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.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# Reply Why Startups are Agile and Opportunistic -- Pivoting the Business Model , on April 14, 2010 at 6:32 am Said: [.]

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Yet for every founder there are 10-20 other employees who take the near-equivalent risks in joining an early-stage company. If you’re not a founder (by choice, timing or temperament,) you may be an early employee or a later stage startup employee. This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile.

Cofounder 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

My boss, the CEO, had just come from a string of successes at Convergent Technologies, Intel and Digital Equipment, names that at that time carried a lot of weight. Customer development isn’t just for [.] understands and groks Customer Development. Customer development isn’t just for [.]

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 271

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

They had no model of who their own customers were and what it would take to make those customers bang down their doors to buy their products. Nothing I couldn’t fix. I took the job.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 146

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Reply Dan Hodgins , on November 13, 2009 at 1:12 am Said: Hi Steve, Just listened to your “Retooling Early Stage Development&# for about the 10th time tonight as I was cleaning my room. Your results may vary.

Venture Capital 209

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Meanwhile our company was pouring an enormous amount of dollars into building tools and video compression technology, while also hiring a lot of high-priced Hollywood talent like art directors, and script and story editors. Customer Development says having a vision, faith and a set of hypotheses are a normal part of the startup experience.

Silicon Valley 207

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 207

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Our firm has a portfolio of companies across a broad range of markets and the way we look at it is pretty simple – the deals fall into two types: those with customer/market risk and those with invention risk.” Markets with Customer/Market Risk are those where the unknown is whether customers will adopt the product.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Ardent would be my third technology company as a VP of Marketing (Convergent Technologies and MIPS Computers were the other two.) It was my ex boss from Convergent Technologies, “Steve we’ve all just resigned from Convergent and we’re starting a new company.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. Zilog produced one of the first 8-bit microprocessors , the Z-80 (competing at the time with Intel’s 8080 , Motorola 6800, and MOS Technology 6502.) Burnout can turn productive employees into emotional zombies and destroy careers.

Silicon Valley 175

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 175

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Berkeley in 2010 to run the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship in the Haas School of Business we were teaching entrepreneurship the same way as when I was a student back in 1995. Over my career as a serial entrepreneur I observed that since the late 1990s, no early-stage Silicon Valley investor had used business plans to screen investments.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

As Peter began to speak extemporaneously our mouths slowly fell open as he described the video game market, its size, its demographics, the state of the technology, and the state of games. He took us through a day (and a night) of a hardcore gamer and told us about the new class of CD-ROM based game machines about to hit the market.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Moore’s technology adoption lifecycle tells us to find a client. That client is inherently in a vertical, so stage gate the vertical for seats and dollars. Build the client’s visualization with your technology, but your technology is not the product. No, linearity in business is a tragic myth.

Vertical 149

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 149

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I Hate Business Plan Competitions Yet this same conversation reminded me why every time students at Berkeley or Stanford tell me they’ve entered a technology business plan competition, I question whether they are wasting their time. You’ll learn a lot. Jon Reply Latest business plans news - That’s version ?

Business Plan 140

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Every generation of new technology seems to find a willing audience in naïve journalists and eager readers. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Everyone should have a chance to walk the floor looking for deals, technology, distribution, customers, etc. Partnership Opportunities At any show you are attending there has to be tons of opportunity for business to business relationships you hadn’t thought about. Go to trade shows like it matters.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Startups , Early Stage Startup , Tips for Startups « The Curse of a New Building Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters – Part 1 » 33 Responses William , on May 18, 2009 at 5:44 am Said: Heh.

Founder 297

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 297

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

A lot of my time is spent helping early-stage companies get to proof points so that they can raise capital. They might have some seed money and are thinking or raising a Series A based on success of an early release (MVP). Bill Payne is an expert on how early-stage investors should look at valuation. Not sure why.

Valuation 198

Valuation Revenue Pre-Money Valuation Early Stage 198

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

August was a slow month in terms of traffic and I was away for a lot of the month, but there were some really great posts at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. August 20, 2010 They say people won't pay for content. m the f%*kin’ boss.”. clearly didn’t cause this.” How it happens.

Startup 191

Startup CTO Hire Cofounder Venture Capital 191

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. Playing with new technologies. What is customer development?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

A discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students. In 2002 I became exposed to the idea of “agile software development&# and subsequently was a first round investor in Rally Software which is now the market leader in Agile application lifecycle management software.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

The people who are the lifeblood of an early-stage startup are earlyvangelists. 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, They just dont need another authority figure in their life.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

But what I remind them is that great grades and successful founders/technology entrepreneurs have at best a zero correlation (and anecdotal evidence suggests that the correlation may actually be negative.) There’s a big difference between being an employee at a great technology company and having the guts to start one. I love Google.

Silicon Valley 327

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 327

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

In 2010, Alex Osterwalder published his book, Business Model Generation , where he created a framework for what Tim called “business identity.” ” Blank’s main innovation here is what he calls Customer Development, which is a methodology for learning and validating market needs through detailed customer communication and follow up.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

This product development diagram had become part of the DNA of Silicon Valley. And even more importantly, was there any way to reduce risk in early stage ventures? familiar with Customer Development you should be. It’s very different than the traditional product development model.

Product Development 143

Product Development Developer Silicon Valley Product 143

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

My son is planning a software product that will take the mystery out of wikis and make the technology easier for consumers to use. Here in Tampa, our biggest challenge is convincing the regions technology "leadership" that grassroots economic development is a good thing. January 2, 2009 11:54 AM Daniel Davie said.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

You can argue that the DNA created by Microsoft's over emphasis on distribution (Steve) and development (Bill), has ultimately cost it $50bn or more in lost revenue, market share and market capitalization. Developers have worn the crown for the last 30 or more years in the technology industry - rightly.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

Customer Development This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process. Employ customer development. Because at times facts may create cognitive dissonance with the beliefs that got you started and funded.

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 212

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. Do you know the archetype of their customers? Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

Silicon Valley 181

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

It’s not something I’ve heard often from those in the technology sphere. Every potential startup founder should think about their level of comfort operating in chaos and uncertainty. It may not be for you. If you can do that you may find a clearer playing field. I’m interested in why you think this is a good idea?

Silicon Valley 170

Silicon Valley Iraq RSS Vietnam 170

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that. However, for the Web 2.0

Vertical 128

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 128

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Reply steveblank , on March 8, 2010 at 4:29 pm Said: Thanks! steve Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Redemption 126

Redemption Silicon Valley RSS California 126

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.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Yet the processes that early-stage companies were using were identical to that of large corporations. It’s a process that doesn’t exist in large companies with existing customers and markets. The “Customer Development” model is a paradox because it is followed by successful startups, yet articulated by no one.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 127