Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

The benefits of customer and agile development and minimum features set are continuous customer feedback, rapid iteration and little wasted code. But over time if developers aren’t careful, code written to find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling.

Part-Time VPE 319

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 319

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. This methodology forces rapid hypothesis testing and Customer Development by getting out of the building while building the product. And since the rest of the slides were about Customer Development, I taught those.

Incubator 303

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 303

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

A business plan is the execution document that large companies write when planning product-line extensions where customer, market and product features are known. Business models allow agile and opportunistic founders to keep score of the Pivots in their search for a repeatable business model.

Business Plan 314

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 314

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Eric Ries , entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Lean Startup. Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Taking My Class.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. That’s why startups are agile. Startups that are agile have mastered one other trick – and that’s Tempo – the ability to make quick decisions consistently over extended periods of time.

Silicon Valley 302

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 302

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

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Finally, I’ll write about 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.

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Agile – you may find the real opportunities for your company was somewhere else. Can you recognize and capitalize on them? This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile. How quickly will you recover? Creative / Pattern Recognition – can you think “out of the box?

Cofounder 223

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 223

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

Customer Development 264

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

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. While that’s not true, it is a fact that entrepreneurs only have one word for “startup.” .

Customer Development 203

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 203

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. Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.)

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Over time, open source software the rise of the next wave of web startups and the embrace of Agile Engineering meant that startups no longer needed millions of dollars to buy specialized computers and license expensive software – they could start a company on their credit cards. Filed under: Technology , Venture Capital.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

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. After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner. Learn how to put together a business model , not a business plan.

Business Model 230

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 230

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

ARM, a competitor, not only had a better, much lower power processor, but a better business model – they licensed their architecture to other companies that designed their own products. For the first 75 years of the 20 th century, when capital for new ventures was scarce, the smartest engineering talent went to corporate R&D labs.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2011

This site aggregates and filters content from thought leaders who talk about topics such as Marketing , Sales , Design , Revenue , Hiring , Social Media , Business Models , Metrics , PR , Venture Capital , Angel Investors , Bootstrapping , Incubators , Agile and many others.

Intellectual Property 175

Intellectual Property Aggregator Startup IP 175

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

While this signaled that investments in technology companies could be very lucrative, both Shockley and Fairchild could only be funded through corporate partners – there was no venture capital industry. government backed venture firms and limited partnerships. A wave of innovation was about to meet a pile of risk capital.

Engineer 307

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 307

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

The design was actually a negative drag on selling anything off a retail shelf. From grumbling skeptics, they all became packaging design converts. And for sure they were never going to win any design awards. So we not only sent everyone through packaging school, we also brought the packaging design in-house.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

After these slides, these VC’s recognized that this company had dramatically reduced risk and built a startup that was agile, resilient and customer-centric. The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Your “Customer Development Process&# has really resonated for me.

Venture Capital 216

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 216

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms. my startup is Blank Label (www.blank-label.com), which is a provider of custom dress shirts that empowers consumers to become the designer of their own product.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. They’ll explore the best way to deliver the product to customers, the resources required, as well as competing technologies. Filed under: Lean LaunchPad , Teaching , Venture Capital.

Engineer 280

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 280

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

So they systematically designed electronic devices called “jammers&# to shut down each part of the German air defense system. And in hindsight, we seemed a bit more agile and innovative in WWII.) Chaff used 3/4′s of all the aluminum foil in the U.S. How was this possible?

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 185

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. The first reaction from my CEO was, “that’s why you’re running the department.” And yes, we could have built a top-down, command-and-control hierarchy. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. A-12 OXCART CIA Spyplane ESL found other ways to stay very close to its customers. could design and produce, and a good part of it was coming from Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley 176

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 176

Steve Blank

MAY 12, 2015

The SBIR/STTR program made ~6,200 seed stage investments in 2014, dwarfing the seed investments made by venture capital. startups that don’t fit whatever’s hot in venture capital. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , NSF (National Science Foundation) , Teaching. The SBIR/STTR program.

SBIR 120

SBIR Maryland Lean Seed Stage 120

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Someone from your company has to be designated the official competitive intelligence officer for this show. Everyone should have a chance to walk the floor looking for deals, technology, distribution, customers, etc. Everyone should be articulate and agile in describing and demoing the products.) One of them is a loser.

Silicon Valley 129

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 129

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.) There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.) to optimize this search. What are hypotheses?

Wiki 312

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 312

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Since there was very little documentation my time was split between the design engineers who built the system and the test and deployment team getting the system ready to go overseas. Reply 7thpixel , on June 29, 2009 at 10:23 am Said: My first start up in 1999 I was employee #10 or so and signed up for a Graphic Designer position.

Agile 251

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 251

VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

“After the crash, venture capital was scarce to non-existent. Ditch the business plan and when assumptions are proven wrong, pivot Customer Development: Build a product your customers want (vs. Agile Development: launch an MVP early and iterate quickly.

Lean 214

Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. Seed-stage investors are learning the metrics of traction, and are getting better at identifying those companies that are really achieving validated learning about customers. Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and what.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2009

Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley « Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA Rocket Science 2: Drinking the Kool-Aid » 2 Responses Ben , on July 1, 2009 at 2:31 pm Said: Great post Steve. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. I can’t get this one out of my head. during World War II.

Silicon Valley 136

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 136

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2010

Truth: There’s nothing wrong with raising venture capital. Many lean startups are ambitious and are able to deploy large amounts of capital. Myth: Lean Startups replace vision with data or customer feedback. But they do not blindly do what customers tell them , nor do they mechanically attempt to optimize numbers.

Lean 167

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 167

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. And venture capital and entrepreneurship has made life even tougher for the modern corporation.

Silicon Valley 169

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 169

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 123

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 123

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 250

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 1, 2011

The combination of venture capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology detailed in his book, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany."

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Balance Sheet Lean 118

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

While the story about the Potereo benchmarks was about relentless execution, its glib description of designing the benchmarks could be read as we cheated. These were applications we had never seen or ran before when the boards were designed. Given we consciously worked hard not to, here’s what we were thinking.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley RSS Startup California 124

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. Competing To Win Deals - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 7, 2010 The venture capital business is highly competitive.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175