Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

> Uber's " Reality Therapy 4 Startups": What U Need 2 Know NOW > Steve Blank on why NOT to be an Entrepreneur > Airbnb's Globetrotting Lessons: Building 4 a Global Market > Vinod Khosla - The VC Legend: Interview w/ Dave McClure > Eric Ries on Entrepreneurship: What He's Learned Along the Way > GitHub's Secret 2 Success: Rethinking (..)

Lean 165

Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering 165

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ) Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

To promote innovation inside the NGA, they’ve staffed an Enterprise Innovation Office (EIO) to coach, educate and advise the entire agency, from core leadership to the operational edges, with methods and concepts of validated learning through rapid experimentation and customer development.

Lean 177

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 177

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

To promote innovation inside the NGA, they’ve staffed an Enterprise Innovation Office (EIO) to coach, educate and advise the entire agency, from core leadership to the operational edges, with methods and concepts of validated learning through rapid experimentation and customer development.

Lean 177

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 177

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Tech IPOs were a receding memory, and mergers and acquisitions became the only path to liquidity for startups. VC’s went back to basics, to focus on building companies while their founders worked on building customers. Startups could now get a first version of a product out to customers in weeks/months rather than months/years.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?) Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

JANUARY 26, 2016

Today these potential adversaries are able to harness the power of social networks, encryption, GPS, low-cost drones, 3D printers, simpler design and manufacturing processes, agile and lean methodologies, ubiquitous Internet and smartphones. We’re Our Own Worst Enemy. Efficiently Being Inefficient.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley North Korea Agile Lean 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

Capital is returned to these investors through liquidity events (originally public offerings, but today mostly acquisitions). They’re better than large companies at identifying customer needs/problems and finding product/market fit by pivoting rapidly. Its acquisition of Android may have been the biggest bargain in corporate history.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2016

First was to teach students to develop the mindset, reflexes, agility and resilience an entrepreneur needs to make decisions at speed and with urgency in a chaotic and uncertain world. This is a first step to a more agile, responsive and resilient, approach to national security in the 21 st century. What Surprised Us?

Agile 120

Agile Security Audio Video 120

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Its the same with acquisitions. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No one wants to buy you till someone else wants to buy you, and then everyone wants to buy you. The key to closing deals is never to stop pursuing alternatives. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. existing enterprises are establishing corporate innovation groups. This is a big idea.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2019

Followed by an 8-minute slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. All the presentations are worth a watch. Team: Panacea.

Oakland 266

Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 266

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.) We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. to optimize this search. What are hypotheses?

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. It’s because the startups are doing something very new that make them “Lean&# : These startups embrace customer and agile development that Eric Ries has been evangelizing. Here’s why. Electron-based Venture Capital.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Go on an agile diet quickly. With a product development team that is not shipping, any agile methodology will surface major problems quickly. Force anyone who is in customer contact to take the role of the Product Owner and insist that they deliver something new on a short regular interval. (For Perhaps thats a fallacy?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

The size of the red bars (IPO’s) versus blue (mergers and acquisitions) illustrates that while venture-backed startups did get acquired, the IPO market was booming. But unlike an IPO where you sold stock to the public and got to run your company, in an acquisition your company is gone, and the odds are in a year or so you will be too.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And when we do make bets, they’re small bets on incremental products or acquisitions that simply add to the bottom line.”. More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

Fourth , would the same Lean Startup methodology (business model design, customer development and agile engineering) used in the Lean LaunchPad and NSF I-Corps class work here? Multiple teams have been engaged by government, prime contractor and VC firms for follow-on discussions/engagements. Result: Hell yes. Lessons Learned.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 128

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2013

Unfortunately the class operates much like the military acquisition system: the project specification has minimal input from real world users, the product gets built with a waterfall engineering process, and there’s no input on whether the product actually meets real world needs until the product is delivered.

Silicon Valley 255

Silicon Valley Colorado Lean Connecticut 255

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

Fourth , would the same Lean Startup methodology (business model design, customer development and agile engineering) used in the Lean LaunchPad and NSF I-Corps class work here? Multiple teams have been engaged by government, prime contractor and VC firms for follow-on discussions/engagements. Result: Hell yes. Lessons Learned.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

In a subscription business, maybe your attrition starts matching your acquisition, balancing like magic. In an eyeballs business, you just cant seem to acquire or activate that next step-up of customers. Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2010

None of the students were domain experts in their areas, and each team had to figure out how to contact potential customers and channel partners. Yet every team did figure out how to conduct extensive out of building Customer Discovery. (By By design we didn’t give them too much Customer Development theory.

Intellectual Property 226

Intellectual Property Business Model Customer Development Distribution 226

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

As a formal method, the Lean Startup consists of three parts: The Business Model Canvas – to frame hypotheses, Customer Development – to test those hypotheses in front of customers, and Agile Engineering – to build Minimum Viable Products to maximize learning. Change Customer Relationships to Buy-in/Support.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2013

Unfortunately the class operates much like the military acquisition system: the project specification has minimal input from real world users, the product gets built with a waterfall engineering process, and there’s no input on whether the product actually meets real world needs until the product is delivered.

Silicon Valley 151

Silicon Valley Colorado Lean Connecticut 151

andrewchenblog.com

MARCH 10, 2010

Coupled with A/B testing, customer development, and thinking through business problems in a scientific, hypothesis-driven way, you end up with a powerful cocktail of techniques to build a modern startup in the most iterative way possible. We’ll call this general category of debt Type I. You can also find more essays here.

Technical Review 47

Technical Review Design Las Vegas Product 47

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

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

To see proof of this, simply observe the results of the large majorities of corporate acquisitions of startups. Fundamentally, the lean startup is a methodology for coping with uncertainty and unknowns with agility, poise, and ruthless efficiency. A startup is greater than the sum of its parts; it is an acutely human enterprise.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

The App Store is a channel for customer acquisition. I think its helpful to think about two kinds of competition for distribution: acquisition competition and retention competition. Acqusition competition is how new apps get new customers. So what can you do? Then, if your retention is good enough, you can stay there.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Steve Blank

MARCH 28, 2009

He was constantly looking at the multiple lines on the ALR-20 display and could see the Soviet radar order of battle: ground to air communications, what radars were around (search, acquisition, tracking, etc.), Reply Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA « Steve Blank , on June 29, 2009 at 7:02 am Said: [.]

Silicon Valley 195

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Michigan 195

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2010

To get to this Transition stage, the company needed passionate visionaries who can articulate a compelling vision, agile enough to learn and discover in real time, resilient enough to deal with countless failures, and responsive enough to capitalize on what they learned in order to secure early customers.

Agile 120

Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

Lean Start-up Connection: Customer Development. Thousands, then millions of new customers were coming to the site through SEO, just like we’d guessed with our customer acquisition hypothesis. Staying Agile. Lean Start-up Connection: Agile Development. Filed under: Customer Development.

Lean 293

Lean Agile Customer Development SEO 293

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. These three tools allow startups to focus on the parts of an early stage venture that matter the most: the product, product/market fit, customer acquisition, revenue and cost model, channels and partners.

Oakland 326

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

Its goal is to take the original idea and search for a repeatable and scalable business model - first by finding product/market fit, then by testing all the parts of the business model (pricing, channel, acquisition/activation, partners, costs, etc.). Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career/Culture.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

The 11 Harsh Realities Of Being An Entrepreneur - OnStartups , November 1, 2010 There's always talk about the end game in the form of an acquisition, funding announcement, or eventual flame out. Your First Iteration of an Idea Will Be Wrong. think his slides are great (and by far much easier on the eye then mine.). What went wrong?

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Why, we just unified acquisition and engagement! I do think the concept allows us to unify acquisition and engagement, and is important for that reason. helping you balance engagement vs acquisition. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2017

That if we could get teams to rapidly discover the real problems in the field using Lean methods, and only then articulate the requirements to solve them, could defense acquisition programs operate at speed and urgency and deliver timely and needed solutions. Each of their slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey.

Silicon Valley 182

Silicon Valley Southern California Lean San Diego 182

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.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156