Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any engineering, customer or competitor problem, and you shouldn’t agonize over trying to find one. An example of a reversible decision could be adding a product feature, a new algorithm in the code, targeting a specific set of customers, etc.

Silicon Valley 307

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 307

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I lived through the time when working in my first job in Ann Arbor Michigan we had to get out a map to find out that San Jose was not only in Puerto Rico but there was a city with that same name in California. Yet time after time, after the product shipped, startups would find that customers didn’t use or want most of the features.

Restful 243

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 243

Steve Blank

APRIL 21, 2011

All the teams were showing us what agile looked like, but this week several would remind us what focused and relentless really meant. Last week the teams tested their hypotheses about Customer Relationships (how do they get, keep and grow customers.) its product or service) to its customers. Week 6 of the class.

Channel 233

Channel Artificial Inteligence San Francisco Business Model 233

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. The most extreme case (and my personal favorite) was by Armstrong who managed to create a full single conversion superheterodyne receiver all using a single vacuum tube! Who would have known? Armstrong was a god!

Silicon Valley 297

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 297

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. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2016

Kelly McAdoo is the City Manager & CEO of the City of Hayward in Alameda County, California. series that also includes the Future of Work , the Future of Corporate Agility, Skill-Sharing, and more in the weeks leading up to Lean Startup Week. This interview is part of a “Future of….” What were the biggest stumbling blocks?

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Government Lean Startup San Francisco 165

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

A partner allows me the flexibility to miss a session or two (my job as a California Coastal Commissioner meets three days every month up and down the coast of California.) TA’s make managing 60 students working on cases and team projects manageable. Finally our TA’s managed the mentors we had supporting the students.

Business Model 235

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 235

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers.

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

And there are more to come: your first job, getting married, buying a house, having a child, becoming a manager, starting a company, retirement – and eventually commencement speaker. When I retired after 21 years working in 8 startups, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the business school at the University of California Berkeley.

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Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 223

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Cray’s first customers were the U.S. At Ardent our hypothesis was that if we could build a desktop supercomputer powerful enough to run and display these numerical simulations there were enough customers to make this a big business. I concluded that my first job was to understand what Cray’s markets, customers and applications.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 167

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Big companies have great execution habits to manage and improve successful business models and value propositions. This happens because managing the present often takes oxygen away from inventing the future. The latter requires speed and agility. A good idea might still be a bad idea because customers don’t care about it.

Non-Compete 331

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 331

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

We can’t bring customers to this rundown building. We hired an interior designer and a great facilities person to manage the process. If the management team is thinking they’ve made it, the new building is just symptomatic of a company heading for a crash. Now every engineer can have their own office.

Silicon Valley 230

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 230

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 25, 2020

As a veteran of many disasters in which improvising in the moment to meet an immediate need led to innovative solutions, Carl has been impressed by how many businesses, small and large, have reinvented the way they serve their customers during the pandemic. Then they've gotten to work. It's member-owned.

Technical Review 148

Technical Review Balance Sheet Texas Austin 148

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

When I asked our trade show manager she looked at me like I was the house idiot and said, “Steve, don’t you know that my job is to set up our trade show booth?” But my favorite was when the public relations manager said, “we’re here to write press releases and answer the phone in case the press calls.” This is a big idea.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 10, 2020

While chatbots promise to augment customer service and optimize the sales pipeline, they come with several potential drawbacks, including low-quality customer service and ambiguity around KPIs (key performance indicators) — both critical considerations for leaders who care about achieving long-term success.

San Diego 200

San Diego Algorithm B2C Artificial Inteligence 200

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. A few successful ones do all these things.

Customer Development 253

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 253

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. When Terman said no, Sylvania, a tube company which built proximity fuse tubes in WWII, won the contract and set up its Electronic Defense Lab (EDL) in Mountain View California in the middle of an orchard. There were no venture investors.

Silicon Valley 194

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 194

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Home Books for Startups Guide Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Tools Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Email Subscription Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Categories Air Force (12) Ardent (10) Audubon (1) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (39) Business Model versus Business Plan (..)

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

We agreed that all her founding CEOs seemed to have the same set of personality traits – tenacious, passionate, relentless, resilient, agile, and comfortable operating in chaos. It’s our hood alignment station,” the plant manager said proudly. the manager followed us still yelling. And that’s just to get started.

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Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 310

Austin Startup

AUGUST 30, 2019

MANAGING DIRECTOR OF TECHSTARS AUSTIN AMOS SCHWARTZFARB REVEALS DETAILS ON SEPT. Austin-based author, tech investor and Managing Director of Techstars Austin Amos Schwartzfarb reveals details for the launch event for his new book “Sell More Faster: The Ultimate Sales Playbook for Start-Ups,” published by Wiley. Austin, TX Nov.

Austin 48

Austin Management Los Angeles New York City 48

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject. It was a management problem.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Big companies have great execution habits to manage and improve successful business models and value propositions. This happens because managing the present often takes oxygen away from inventing the future. The latter requires speed and agility. A good idea might still be a bad idea because customers don’t care about it.

Non-Compete 120

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. Handspring’s customers understood what a Personal Digital Assistant was.

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

So let’s be very specific: let’s assume your dream job is product manager at Google, working on the Analytics product. How to Enchant Your Customer - How to Change the World , November 23, 2010 I love to do business with small businesses—in-store, online, for myself, for others, for pleasure, for work—it doesn’t matter to me.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners. Strong pre-show promotion will let your customers and prospects know about your exhibit.

Silicon Valley 136

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 136

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2015

My guests this past week on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Pete Newell , managing partner of BMNT Partners. Matt Weingart, program development manager in the Strategic Development Office at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Listen to my entire chat with John.

Channel 120

Channel Japan Bosnia Silicon Valley 120

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Task Management. Project Management Tools. Customer service. Google Custom Search Engine. Subscription Payments / Management. Managing APIs. Customer Relationship Management. Contractor Management. SW Courses. Part 1- Intro. Rand Fishkin.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2017

Eight teams spoke to over 800 beneficiaries, requirements writers, program managers, warfighters, legal, security, customers, etc. Each of their slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey. of Management Science and Engineering. Filed under: Customer Development , Hacking For Defense , Lean LaunchPad.

Silicon Valley 197

Silicon Valley Southern California Lean San Diego 197

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2018

Six teams spoke to over 600 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, warfighters, legal, security, customers, etc. Each of their slide presentations follow their customer discovery journey. Watching them I was left with wonder and awe about what they accomplished in 10 weeks.

Southern California 185

Southern California San Diego Mississippi SBIR 185

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

On September 7 th – 9 th we are holding our first Hacking for Defense & Diplomacy – class for Educators and Sponsors , training educators how to teach these classes in their universities and sponsors how to select problem sets and manage their teams. Sign up here. An Idea Whose Time Has Come. Result: Hell yes. Lessons Learned.

Silicon Valley 130

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 130

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

On September 7 th – 9 th we are holding our first Hacking for Defense & Diplomacy – class for Educators and Sponsors , training educators how to teach these classes in their universities and sponsors how to select problem sets and manage their teams. Sign up here. An Idea Whose Time Has Come. Result: Hell yes. Lessons Learned.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 120

usersknow.blogspot.com

APRIL 30, 2010

I have contacted my customer service/community management team and prepped them with information about the new feature and asked them to get back to me if we start to see any significant new support requests. I have embedded a short survey or feedback link into the page and will gather qualitative data from my users that way.

Software Review 40

Software Review Agile San Francisco Advisory Board 40

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

College Dropouts - Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison These guys realized that customers don’t ask for your transcript. You don’t get grades for having resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition and tenacity. From the king of customer development, Steve Blank: [.] You just get successful.

Silicon Valley 332

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 332

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

The original Hewlett Packard which made test and measurement products was spun-out and renamed Agilent. Agilent is a $5.8 Technology changes, culture changes, customer needs change, more agile competitors emerge, etc. General managers of divisons are compensated on division P&L not long term innovation.

Silicon Valley 186

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 186

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 30, 2008 Assessing fit with the Wisdom of Crowds When I wrote earlier about how to conduct a good technical interview , I had only a few things to say about how to assess if the candidate fits in with the team, including this: This responsibility falls squarely to the hiring manager.

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

Policy makers need to know: regulations designed to manage big-companies actually protect those companies by stifling innovation (and competition) from startups. Truth be told, we've got defense contractors here just like California does too. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

And the same time we were also going to do all the other strategic stuff about pricing, positioning, promotion and customer discovery and validation to help engineering understand customer needs. Sometimes it was the legal department crafting contracts so onerous I wouldn’t even sign it, let alone expect a customer to do so.

Silicon Valley 132

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 132