Up and Running

JANUARY 25, 2018

What exactly needs to be included in a business plan, and in how much detail? You may have been told that the more detail you can include in your business plan, the better, but this is not necessarily the best strategy for everyone. Digital businesses need to be agile and reactive too.

eCommerce 96

eCommerce Business Plan Audience Lean 96

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

In my 21 years as an entrepreneur, I would come up for air once a month to religiously read the Harvard Business Review. It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. I learned about Michael Porter s’s five forces.

Technical Review 327

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 327

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. When founders discover their assumptions are wrong, as they inevitably will, the result isn’t a crisis , it’s a learning event called a pivot — and an opportunity to update the business model.

Business Model 275

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 275

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.”. Repeat, learning whether to iterate, pivot or restart until you have something that customers love. Build, Measure, Learn sounds pretty simple.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

In my 21 years as an entrepreneur, I would come up for air once a month to religiously read the Harvard Business Review. It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. I learned about Michael Porter s’s five forces.

Technical Review 219

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 219

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 281

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 281

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

– while simultaneously building a series of minimal viable products. Unlike traditional demo days or Shark Tanks which are, “Here’s how smart I am, and isn’t this a great product, please give me money,” a Lessons Learned presentation tells the story of a team’s 10-week journey and hard-won learning and discovery.

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

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 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

Up and Running

MAY 3, 2021

It’s crucial for helping brands get seen by the right customers at the right time. Consequently, starting an SEO business can be a lucrative venture. In this piece, we look at how you can start growing your SEO business, from business plans to lead generation. Outline your financial plan and forecast.

SEO 147

SEO Vertical Metadata Forecast 147

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. More importantly, it makes no demands of you to stand and deliver your weekly customer development progress in front of your peers.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 7, 2022

Several decades ago, the world’s best marketers and advertisers we’re trying to come up with catchy taglines and persuasive advertisements that blatantly tried to sell a new product to a target audience. Today’s customers have different preferences. They want to see storytelling , more than cheap attempts at persuasion.

Marketing 198

Marketing Advertising Metrics Technical Review 198

YoungUpstarts

MAY 9, 2017

Lean is a methodology that can be applied to all disciplines of knowledge work to increase business efficiency, agility, and visibility. Lean is more about aligning your organization’s skills, talents, resources, processes, and strategy with the needs of your customers. 2 More Efficient Business Processes.

Lean 124

Lean Agile Technical Review Dilution 124

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? When we build products, we use a methodology. But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit."

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

The Equity Kicker

MAY 7, 2013

The creative economy – a real economy that generates real products and services. It’s companies are different to traditional economy companies because they are focused on delighting customers and rapid innovation. The traditional economy is much larger than the creative economy but it is in decline and faces a grim future.

Development Team Review 94

Development Team Review Business Plan Agile Operations 94

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.

Chile 235

Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 235

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. This post is part one.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 14, 2024

The Strategist In the startup world, a strategist is the master of maneuvering through the complexities of business planning and market analysis. The Marketeer A marketer is the heart of any startup’s communications, helping convey its vision and products to its target audiences through creative narratives that resonate.

Startup 112

Startup Retention Agile Hiring 112

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

With hindsight we should have had “proof of concepts” tested in a corporate center (think ‘pop-up incubator’) where they would do extensive Customer Discovery. We should had done this before assigning the teams to a particular business unit (or had the ability to create a new business unit, or spin the team out of the company).

Programming 265

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 265

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

32 students were scattered across the globe and given a seemingly impossible assignment- they had 10 weeks to understand and then solve a real Dept of Defense problem – by interviewing 100 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, et al while simultaneously building a series of minimal viable products – all while never leaving their room.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 16, 2018

A home-based business should still function in some ways like a bigger firm. They of course need to be agile and adaptable, but home businesses should still have some formalized planning and structure. One area of planning that’s sorely lacking for these types of companies is a plan on protecting data.

Software Review 100

Software Review Technical Review Security Cloud 100

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 120

Lean Incubator Business Model Channel 120

Women Entrepreneurs Can

APRIL 3, 2024

Optimizing production processes is essential for meeting growing demands, improving efficiency, and staying competitive as a manufacturing plant. This will certainly enable you to stay ahead of the competition and deliver superior products to customers. Make sure you source your machinery from a reputable manufacturer.

Product 40

Product Artificial Inteligence Lean Reputation 40

OnlyOnce

MARCH 2, 2016

I’ve written a bunch on this blog and in Startup CEO , about Agile Development and the Lean Canvas and Lean Startups in general (see a really old post on Agile Development from 10 years ago when we first adopted it here , and one on Agile Marketing here ). check in frequently on progress. tune practices based on feedback.

Agile 48

Agile Lean Software Operations 48

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 14, 2017

by Amanda Setili, author of “ Fearless Growth: The New Rules to Stay Competitive, Foster Innovation, and Dominate Your Markets “ Polarization is a common problem for companies trying to make smart and agile strategic decisions. They know how to reach the consumers who are in the market for their products.

Agile 113

Agile Malaysia Technical Review Metrics 113

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2020

The first 5-day class will be aimed at “Finding New Business Models” for businesses to adapt and pivot to find new customers, new markets, new products and new services to win in the recovery. This class is not about how to write a business plan. This class combines theory with a ton of hands-on practice.

Lean 436

Lean Business Model Affiliate Incubator 436

The Startup Magazine

JULY 7, 2023

Conduct market research to understand your target audience, competition, and potential demand for your product or service. Seek feedback from potential customers, industry experts, and mentors to refine your idea and ensure its viability. Step 3: Create A Solid Business Plan A well-crafted business plan is a roadmap for success.

Entrepreneur 113

Entrepreneur Angel Investor Audience Business Plan 113

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Rita McGrath, a Columbia Business School professor says, “there’s pleasing today’s customers and there’s developing tomorrow’s business.” Remedy: Create a protected space in your org chart where you invent and test new business models and value propositions. The latter requires speed and agility.

Non-Compete 329

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 329

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2014

Product/Market fit now has its own book. 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.

Business Model 335

Business Model Design Customer Development Lean 335

Small Business Force

SEPTEMBER 18, 2016

Over the years, I’ve written a lot about business plans, especially for early-stage companies trying to raise capital. In actuality, for small business owners, a business plan is essential for any long-term success. But there is a lot of just plain wrong ideas out there about business plans.

Business Plan 20

Business Plan Early Stage Operations Software Review 20

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 12, 2019

Most entrepreneurs are quick to assert to potential investors that their product or solution will kill the competition, but unfortunately your opinion alone is not enough to convince most experienced investors. We want to see a documented business plan that clearly addresses this challenge.

Intellectual Property 215

Intellectual Property Agile Differentiation Government 215

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 ? Here’s an attempt to put this all in context.

Search 320

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

Hearpreneur

FEBRUARY 18, 2024

10- By directly engaging with customers Photo Credit: Jordan Adair Firstly, setting precise, attainable goals is paramount. Moreover, I stay motivated by directly engaging with our customers. Mastin In the world of entrepreneurship, I took an unconventional route by not writing a traditional business plan.

Entrepreneur 113

Entrepreneur Jordan Networking AJAX 113

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 226

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

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 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

SVPG

DECEMBER 15, 2012

The past several articles have discussed the nature of Continuous Discovery and Dual-Track Agile. In this article I'd like to discuss another dimension of working effectively in an Agile environment, which is how we manage commitments. Good product companies minimize these commitments.

Agile 63

Agile Management Engineer Software 63