Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Everyone should be articulate and agile in describing and demoing the products.) And that most of the post on trade shows was describing how to prepare and manage a physical presence in a trade show booth. For bigger booths a good rule of thumb is to have two to four staffers for every 100 square feet of exhibit space.

Silicon Valley 136

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 136

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. In 1964, Bill Perry, the head of the lab, frustrated with GTE’s management, quit (GTE, a phone company had bought Sylvania in 1959.) And in the tradition of great startups, on the way out Perry took 6 of his best managers with him.

Silicon Valley 194

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 194

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject. It was a management problem. We had been outsourcing an important part of our demand creation strategy – packaging – to an outside agency without having the expertise to judge or manage the results.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

I was met by a very apologetic manager who said, “We’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the last week. The manager of the training department who hired you wasn’t authorized to do so – and he’s been fired. You’re Hired, You’re Fired. I am sorry there really isn’t a job for you.&#

Agile 265

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 265

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

In the old days, the brand manager of a consumer packaged goods product had to spend energy inferring the effectiveness of their television ads through a combination of trailing indicators (like market share) or time-consuming market research. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

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

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 260

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

I teach teams various Agile techniques, and occasionally get told some particular trick is cheating. E.g., we take a big spec, cut the 80% that, for some core group of customers, is nice rather than necessary, and ship the 20% ASAP. Just remember ethics and values are about what you practice when the going gets tough.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley RSS Startup California 127

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

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. I didn’t need to look much further than the “new building&# debacle I had a hand in.

Silicon Valley 230

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 230

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

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.

Founder 310

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 310

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Managing these situations is hard for any company, but potentially lethal for a startup. The theory is that there is some truth in both camps, and the right way to manage the disagreement is to sprinkle a little bit of both into our plans. To the people being managed that way, it feels like the boss is being capricious or arbitrary.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

You don’t get grades for having resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition and tenacity. From the king of customer development, Steve Blank: [.] When recruiting was hard the functional managers started looking at 2.8-9s. You just get successful. No one has to tell them to do that.

Silicon Valley 332

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 332

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

For example, Friendster was famously vertically partitioned at one time in its growth curve. I normally recommend you just store this directory on your master database, but you could use a standalone vertical shard (or even a key-based partition!) This type of vertical partitioning sharding scheme wont work in most cases.

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

In an early stage startup, instead of sales being up front, the point departments are likely to be product development and customer development. Later on in this same company’s life, sales will become the pointy end and product development moves to a supporting role. No one was confused after that.

Silicon Valley 132

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 132

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

His reaction reminded me one more time why entrepreneurship is an art, why VC’s manage portfolios of companies and why new ideas come from those who don’t respect the status quo. A healthy disrespect for the status quo coupled with passion, persistence and agility trumps everything else. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching.

Vertical 334

Vertical Agile Customer Development Lean 334

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

His reaction reminded me one more time why entrepreneurship is an art, why VC’s manage portfolios of companies and why new ideas come from those who don’t respect the status quo. A healthy disrespect for the status quo coupled with passion, persistence and agility trumps everything else. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching.

Customer Development 225

Customer Development Vertical Agile Lean 225

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Ardent 3: Supercomputer Porn « Steve Blank steveblank.com/2009/10/12/ardent-3-supercomputer-porn – view page – cached + Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) + Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40? Reply links for 2009-10-13 « Blarney Fellow , on October 13, 2009 at 6:10 pm Said: [.]

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2009

The reality is that independent electric vehicle startups will win over time (closer to the customer, more agile, etc.) I think the Volt open source platform could be managed through a Web 2.0-like was somewhat incomprehensible at first to the Energy and EPA team. But they’re smart, let’s see what happens.)

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Open Source RSS California 120

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110