Agile, Business Model, Business Plan and Customer Development

The 47th (-46) International Business Model Competition

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

The most visible step was the first International Business Model Competition , hosted by the BYU Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. We’ve been teaching that the difference between a startup and an existing company is that existing companies execute business models, while startups search for a business model.

Business Model

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile

Raising Money Using Customer Development

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Are there customers for what you are building? How many are there?

Customer Development

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley

No One Wins In Business Plan Competitions

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

Last week one of the schools I teach at invited me to judge a business plan contest. I suggested that they first might want to read my post on why business plans are a poor planning and execution tool for startups. At best I think business plan competitions are a waste of time.

Business Plan

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow

When Hell Froze Over – in the Harvard Business Review

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

For decades this revered business magazine described management techniques that were developed in and were for large corporations – offering more efficient and creative ways to execute existing business models. The Four Steps drew the distinction that “startups are not smaller versions of large companies.”

Technical Review

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development

Blowing up the Business Plan at U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Berkeley Haas Business School is a leader in entrepreneurship education. It has replaced how to write a business plan with hands-on Lean Startup methods. The final deliverable for that class was a 30-page business plan. We had multiple business plan competitions. The Business Plan is Dead.

Business Plan

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean

The Customer Development Manifesto: Reasons for the Revolution.

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

And how thinking of a solution to this commonly used model’s failures led to a new model – the Customer Development Model – that offers a new way to approach startup activities outside the building. Product Development Diagram 1. before you ship.

Customer Development

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley

When Hell Froze Over – in the Harvard Business Review

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

For decades this revered business magazine described management techniques that were developed in and were for large corporations – offering more efficient and creative ways to execute existing business models. The Four Steps drew the distinction that “startups are not smaller versions of large companies.”

Technical Review

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development

The Lean LaunchPad Class: It’s the same, but different

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2019

It’s hard to imagine, but only a decade ago, the capstone entrepreneurship class in most universities was how to write – or pitch- a business plan. In my experience, I saw that most business plans don’t survive first contact with customers. Product/Market Fit Versus The Business Model Canvas.

Lean

Lean Business Model Balance Sheet Video

10,000 Startups – Startup Weekend Next

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 30, 2012

The class teaches founders how to dramatically reduce their failure rate through the combination of business model design, customer development and agile development using the Startup Owners Manual. And you’ll learn about how to build a minimal viable product to get feedback early and often from customers.

Startup

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model

Creating Startup Success – Customer Development + Business Model Design

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

In previous posts I’ve talked about what the combination of Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Methodologies mean to startups and intrapreneurs in large companies; it’s the beginning of entrepreneurship as a science with its own rules and methodologies. Teaching In the Big Apple.

Customer Development

Customer Development Business Model Developer Design

Is the Lean Startup Dead?

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Given the stock market was buying “the story and vision” of anything internet, inflated expectations were more important than traditional metrics like customers, growth, revenue, or heaven forbid, profits. Startups wrote business plans, generated expansive 5-year forecasts and executed (hired, spent and built) to the plan.

Lean

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO

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

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Best practices in software development started to move to agile development in the early 2000’s. This methodology improved on waterfall by building software iteratively and involving the customer. With Agile you could end up satisfying every feature a customer asked for and still go out of business.

Lean

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development

The Business Model Canvas Gets Even Better – Value Proposition Design

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2014

It has three parts: a business model canvas to frame hypotheses, customer development to get out of the building to test those hypotheses and agile engineering to build minimum viable products. Teaches you how to use Customer Development to test it. His new book does three things: 1.

Business Model

Business Model Design Customer Development Lean

I-Corps @ NIH – Pivoting the Curriculum

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. The Lean LaunchPad class uses the three “ Lean Startup ” principles: Alexander Osterwalders “ business model canvas ” to frame hypotheses.

Intellectual Property

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source

A New Way to Teach Entrepreneurship – The Lean LaunchPad at Stanford: Class 1

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. We were positing that 20 years of teaching “how to write a business plan” might be obsolete.

Lean

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea

The Class That Changed the Way Entrepreneurship is Taught

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

By the end of the 20th century, case studies and business plans had reached an evolutionary dead-end for entrepreneurs. The Rise of Business Schools – Management as an Occupation. The business school was invented in the first decade of the 20th century in response to a massive economic transformation in the U.S.

Lean

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan

Nail the Customer Development Manifesto to the Wall

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2012

When Bob Dorf and I wrote the Startup Owners Manual we listed a series of Customer Development principles. for A Repeatable and Scalable Business Model. Pair Customer Development with Agile Development. Failure is an Integral Part of the Search for the Business Model.

Customer Development

Customer Development Developer Customer Cofounder

Qualcomm’s Corporate Entrepreneurship Program – Lessons Learned (Part 2)

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

Entrenched Innovation Model Issues : Qualcomm’s existing innovation model – wireless products were created in the R&D lab and then handed over to existing business units for commercialization – was wildly successful in the existing wireless and mobile space. Venture Fest was not integral to their success.

Programming

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property

Teaching Entrepreneurship in “Chilecon Valley”

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Here’s the course announcement from Professor Vergara (in English): Customer Development Course in Chile – Lean Launchpad. The objective of this course is that groups of students finish with a completed software product that has real customers and an identified market. The syllabus for the Stanford course can be seen here.

Chile

Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile

Who Dares Wins – The 2nd Annual International Business Model Competition

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

Alexander Osterwalder and I spent last week in Salt Lake City, Utah as judges at the 2 nd Annual International Business Model Competition , hosted by Professor Nathan Furr , and his team at the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship. The Business Plan ?- And your revenue plan is something more than a hallucination.

Business Model

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan

Innovation, Change and the Rest of Your Life

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

Continuous innovation requires the imagination and courage to challenge the initial hypotheses of your current business model (channel, cost, customers, products, supply chain, etc.) Not kind of wrong but going out of business wrong. This would continue for months, as customers weren’t behaving as per the business plan.

Restful

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose

No Business Plan Survives First Contact With A Customer – The 5.2 billion dollar mistake.

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

With an out-of-this-world business plan. When it was spun out as a a separate company, Iridium’s 1990 business plan had assumptions about potential customers, their problems and the product needed to solve that problem. A Business Plan Frozen in Time. This business plan was a static document.

Business Plan

Business Plan Customer Business Model Customer Development

Hacking for Defense @ Stanford 2021 Lessons Learned Presentations

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

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

Lean

Lean Security Asia SBIR

Hacking 4 Recovery

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2020

We’re holding a series of 5-day online classes at Stanford where teams will learn how to develop new business models for an economy that’s getting back to work and on the road to recovery. The Covid-19 virus has upended traditional ways of doing business, travel, education, entertainment, healthcare, etc.

Lean

Lean Business Model Affiliate Incubator

Introducing Lean Planning: How to plan less and grow faster

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Today, I want to introduce you to a new concept for starting and growing successful companies: Lean Planning™. It starts with “Plan-As-You-Go” instead of detailed, formal business plans. Build an action plan: How are you going to validate your assumptions and measure progress?

Lean

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review

Search versus Execute

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ?

Search

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile

Learning Through Reflection

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2016

To be honest I built the class out of frustration watching schools teach aspiring entrepreneurs that all they need to know is how to write a business plan or how to sit in an incubator building a product. using the business model canvas as the framework. in order to validate/invalidate their business model hypotheses.

Lean

Lean Incubator Business Model Channel

The Lean LaunchPad Online

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. Experienced entrepreneurs kept finding that no business plan survived first contact with customers. We were putting the plan before the planning. And in 2003 the Haas Business School at U.C.

Lean

Lean Georgia Michigan Business Model

The Mission Model Canvas – An Adapted Business Model Canvas for Mission-Driven Organizations

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

As we prepared for the new Hacking for Defense class at Stanford, we had to stop and ask ourselves: How do we use the Business Model Canvas if the primary goal is not to earn money, but to fulfill a mission? In other words, how can we adapt the Business Model Canvas when the metrics of success for an organization is not revenue?

Business Model

Business Model Revenue Channel Community

Teaching Entrepreneurship – Logistics

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

The key things I want students to take from the class are: Understand that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a profitable business model. Learn how to put together a business model , not a business plan. Class Logistics. As described in the previous post , this is a hands-on class.

Business Model

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer

The Lean LaunchPad Educators Class

Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2013

I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. It dawned on me that the plans were a symptom of a larger problem: we were executing business plans when we should first be searching for business models. We were putting the plan before the planning.

Lean

Lean Agile Customer Development Business Model

Get Out of The Building – And Win $50,000

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2010

A place to start would be by recognizing the fundamental difference between an existing company and a startup: existing companies execute business models, while startups search for a business model. (Or Therefore the very foundations of teaching entrepreneurship should start with how to search for a business model.

Agile

Agile Business Model Customer Development Lean

Hacking for Defense @ Stanford 2020 Lesson Learned Presentations

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

Oakland Asia Lean Video

Why Companies are Not Startups

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. Every large company, whether it can articulate it or not, is executing a proven business model (s).

IRR

IRR Startup Business Model Agile

What’s A Startup? First Principles.

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

In this post we’re going to offer a new definition of why startups exist : a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. A Business Model. Ok, but what is a business model ? A business model describes how your company creates, delivers and captures value.

Agile

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model

The Lean LaunchPad at Stanford – The Final Presentations

Steve Blank

MAY 10, 2011

What really matters are the business model canvas diagrams in the body and appendix of each presentation. By comparing the changes the teams made week-to-week-week in their business model canvas diagrams, you’ll see the dynamics of entrepreneurship, as they iterate and Pivot over time. Team Agora. in one quarter.

Lean

Lean Business Model Agile Customer Development

The Lean LaunchPad Educators Class

Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2013

I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. It dawned on me that the plans were a symptom of a larger problem: we were executing business plans when we should first be searching for business models. We were putting the plan before the planning.

Lean

Lean Agile Customer Development Business Model

NYU Commencement Speech 2016

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

Established businesses execute business models while startups search for them. The Lean LaunchPad class is now taught around the world – and VC’s expect entrepreneurs to talk about not just their technology but their customer development findings. Actually they’re entirely different.

Lean

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer

Crisis Management by Firing Executives – There’s A Better Way

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

The revenue numbers and revenue model came from a startups original Business Plan. A business plan has a set of assumptions (who’s the customer, what’s the price, what’s the channel, what are the product features that matter, etc.) that make up a business model. Ritualized Crises.

Burn Rate

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development

The Lean LaunchPad – Teaching Entrepreneurship as a Management Science

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Business schools teach aspiring executives a variety of courses around the execution of known business models, (accounting, organizational behavior, managerial skills, marketing, operations, etc.). In contrast, startups search for a business model. (Or Their objective is to get users, orders, customers, etc.

Wiki

Wiki Lean Management Business Model

Stanford 2012 Lean LaunchPad Presentations – part 1 of 2

Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

The class is intensely and deliberately experiential to develop the mindset, reflexes, agility and resilience an entrepreneur needs to search for certainty in a chaotic world. The premise of the class is that startups, are not about executing a plan where the product, customers, channel are known.

Lean

Lean Business Model Agile United States

Fear of Failure and Lack of Speed In a Large Corporation

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. I suggested the best place to start the conversation is with the 21 st century definition of a startup: A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. How can we restart our innovation culture?”.

Widget

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics

Startup Tools

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Github - Free public repositories, collaborator management, issue tracking, wikis, downloads, code review, graphs Pivotal Tracker – Agile project management tool that enables real time collaboration. WebSequenceDiagrams - sketch sequence diagrams. Bontq – hosted bug tracking and project management needs. Thus, these pages.

Software Review

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics

Developing a 21st Century Entrepreneurship Curriculum

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 14, 2012

The class was designed to teach educators (and the entrepreneurs that support them) the Lean LaunchPad approach (Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) for teaching entrepreneurship. But on the first day, Steve framed it in a different way: execution of a business plan doesn’t matter.

Developer

Developer Arizona Lean Business Model

The 47th (-46) International Business Model Competition

Raising Money Using Customer Development

Trending Sources

No One Wins In Business Plan Competitions

When Hell Froze Over – in the Harvard Business Review

Blowing up the Business Plan at U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School

The Customer Development Manifesto: Reasons for the Revolution.

When Hell Froze Over – in the Harvard Business Review

The Lean LaunchPad Class: It’s the same, but different

10,000 Startups – Startup Weekend Next

Creating Startup Success – Customer Development + Business Model Design

Is the Lean Startup Dead?

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

The Business Model Canvas Gets Even Better – Value Proposition Design

I-Corps @ NIH – Pivoting the Curriculum

A New Way to Teach Entrepreneurship – The Lean LaunchPad at Stanford: Class 1

The Class That Changed the Way Entrepreneurship is Taught

Nail the Customer Development Manifesto to the Wall

Qualcomm’s Corporate Entrepreneurship Program – Lessons Learned (Part 2)

Teaching Entrepreneurship in “Chilecon Valley”

Who Dares Wins – The 2nd Annual International Business Model Competition

Innovation, Change and the Rest of Your Life

No Business Plan Survives First Contact With A Customer – The 5.2 billion dollar mistake.

Hacking for Defense @ Stanford 2021 Lessons Learned Presentations

Hacking 4 Recovery

Introducing Lean Planning: How to plan less and grow faster

Search versus Execute

Learning Through Reflection

The Lean LaunchPad Online

The Mission Model Canvas – An Adapted Business Model Canvas for Mission-Driven Organizations

Teaching Entrepreneurship – Logistics

The Lean LaunchPad Educators Class

Get Out of The Building – And Win $50,000

Hacking for Defense @ Stanford 2020 Lesson Learned Presentations

Why Companies are Not Startups

What’s A Startup? First Principles.

The Lean LaunchPad at Stanford – The Final Presentations

The Lean LaunchPad Educators Class

NYU Commencement Speech 2016

Crisis Management by Firing Executives – There’s A Better Way

The Lean LaunchPad – Teaching Entrepreneurship as a Management Science

Stanford 2012 Lean LaunchPad Presentations – part 1 of 2

Fear of Failure and Lack of Speed In a Large Corporation

Startup Tools

Developing a 21st Century Entrepreneurship Curriculum

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