Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

While our teams have mentors, socialize a lot and give great demos, the goal of our class final presentations is “ Lessons Learned ” – about product/market fit, pricing, acquisition/activation costs, pricing, partners, etc. The next customer segment we tried was startup founders. Technology in search of a market.

Lean 316

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 316

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. The cost of attending a Startup Weekend Next is ridiculously inexpensive. The Lean LaunchPad Class.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

While it sounds simple , the Build Measure Learn approach to product development is a radical improvement over the traditional Waterfall model used throughout the 20 th century to build and ship products. Back then, an entrepreneur used a serial product development process that proceeded step-by-step with little if any customer feedback.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Lean 333

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 333

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. He was constantly in front of customers, listening, selling, installing and learning. What I saw reminded me of some of the best and worst things I did as a founder. If not your co-founders, someone outside the company.”.

Founder 317

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 317

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Enter “ The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses “, a New York Times bestseller by founder of IMVU (creator of 3D avatars) Eric Ries. Not doing so would end up in wasteful innovations and features that customers do not want.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

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 246

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 246

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

The classes are built on the Lean Startup methodology: Customer Discovery, Agile Engineering and the Business/Mission Model Canvas. So how do our students get out of the building to talk to customers to do Customer Discovery when they can’t get out of the building? finding product/market fit).

Customer 415

Customer Business Model Restful Video 415

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

To move innovation faster, we now have 21 st century tools — Business Model Canvas , Customer Development , Agile Engineering – all adding up to a Lean Startup. Innovation and improvement occurs in Horizon 1 on process, procedures, costs, etc. Fast forward to today. Do it Again!?

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Boyd emphasized the importance of agility in combat: "the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than ones opponent." Lean startups have the ability to use this commodity stack to lower costs and, more importantly, reduce time to market. Agile software development.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

We wanted an agile approach that would allow us to build our software architecture as we needed it, without downtime, but also without large amounts of up-front cost. After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

We had endless arguments internally about what features it should include, how the avatars should look, and how much it should cost. Finally the day came, we unleashed the landing page, emailed our existing customers, and started advertising online. Just load them all in and choose a low cost-per-click. I used to use $.05,

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

I teach potential founders a hands-on, experiential class called the Lean LaunchPad at Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia and Caltech. customer development. agile engineering. Some general customer development slides click here. The Founder’s Workbook. The Lean LaunchPad course online. Find it here.

Open Source 335

Open Source Silicon Valley Lean Customer Development 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

A business model diagram also shows how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. And it shows your company’s cost structures, how each department interacts with the others and where your company fits with other companies or partners to implement your business.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process. Our cost to acquire a customer on AdWords was only a few cents.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

It costs not just the time of the actual meeting, but the time getting there and back, and the time preparing for it beforehand and thinking about it afterward. Its to everyones advantage to let the world think the founders thought of everything. I say this as a founder: the contribution of founders is always overestimated.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Computer hardware companies were faced with their customers asking for low-cost (relatively) desktop computers they had no experience in building. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? what Market Type is your startup?

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

Well-functioning teams just dont make these kinds of mistakes, right? ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. Hence, cutting corners often paid huge dividends. Are we going too fast?

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2013

Basil Ayish , MBA, Business Development. Clare Pak , Business Development. Allan May founder of Life Science Angels was the Medical Device cohort instructor. The Knox team was a great mix of hands-on device engineers and business development. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Life Sciences , Teaching.

Lean 243

Lean Customer Development IP Agile 243

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? In my mind, theyre racking up costs (one month for that part, two months for that other part, uh oh).

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s went back to basics, to focus on building companies while their founders worked on building customers. Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. That requires building a company using Agile and Customer Development.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

As I evolved my thinking, I started to frame the problem this way: How can we devise a product development process that allows the business leaders to take responsibility for the outcome by making conscious trade-offs? When I first encountered agile software techniques, in the form of extreme programming , I thought I had found the answer.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

The Lean Startup is a practical approach for creating and managing a new breed of company that excels in low-cost experimentation, rapid iteration, and true customer insight. It uses principles of agile software development, open source and web 2.0, February 9, 2009 7:45 PM Joseph Flahiff said. Expo SF (May.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Web Advisory Board 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. I want to talk specifics, and when you come right down to it, most technology startups dont have a very interesting cost structure. Expo SF (May.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

Bob looked wistful, “Our founders built a company known for taking risks and moving fast. More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. The strategy and structure for 21st corporate innovation will come from emulating the speed, urgency, agility and low-cost, rapid experimentation of startups.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I know plenty of people who prefer more advanced source control system, but my belief is that many agile practices diminish the importance of advanced features like branching. Its not that the idea behind them is wrong, but I think agile team-building practices make scheduling per se much less important. Youd better. Expo SF (May.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

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. What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired.

Founder 302

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 302

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 27, 2009

The Lean Startup is a practical approach for creating and managing a new breed of company that excels in low-cost experimentation, rapid iteration, and true customer insight. It uses principles of agile software development, open source and web 2.0, No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Lean 60

Lean Austin San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Sounds very similar to agile development which is the way. If you can start getting ROI on a feature in month one of a twelve month project versus waiting until the end, youve comparatively reduced the cost of development by the revenue generated by that feature over 11 months. February 21, 2009 7:39 AM Rocky1138 said.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

And in hindsight, we seemed a bit more agile and innovative in WWII.) Yet decades later the military lacked the agility to write a spec in two years, let alone get 10′s of thousands of new systems deployed on aircraft as Terman had done. to get acquired to raise money or get their founders and investors liquid.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 185

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 19, 2009 Support the Startup Founders Visa with a tweet Its been an exhilarating first day here in Washington DC for the Geeks on a Plane tour. We can remedy it by creating a special visa for startup founders. I think the benefits are a no-brainer. 2gov.org will take care of the rest.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Founder DC Washington 150

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

It cost us a few hundred thousand dollars to get our app up and running, but none of that was dollars spent on software licenses or professional services. We just had our app support a few tens of thousands of customers, and it did well. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. Communism being a bad science experiment) ESL’s founder Bill Perry was moving the chess pieces. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. A-12 OXCART CIA Spyplane ESL found other ways to stay very close to its customers.

Silicon Valley 176

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 176

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

The same has been true of an unfortunate number of startups, they manage to generate a lot of hype, raise a lot of money, and sometimes make some of their investors, employees, or founders rich. bigs : @ericries says Stealth dev is a (undesirable, failure-presaging) customer-free zone. Use some customer development to find out.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

In practice, how developers respond to this dilemma is determined by their incentives, which are driven by the culture of their team. Who will ultimately bear the cost of their mistakes? One of the distinctions that has helped at the executive level is to stress that you're reducing the COST of failure, rather then its PROBABILITY.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167