Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

To fill this gap I wrote The Four Steps to the Epiphany , a book about the Customer Development process and how it changes the way startups are built. In the last decade it’s become clear that companies are facing continuous disruption from globalization, technology shifts, rapidly changing consumer tastes, etc.

Technical Review 330

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 330

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

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. Given something tangible, customers were able to start gauging their willingness to use and pay.

Lean 320

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 320

SVPG

OCTOBER 14, 2014

The role of the product organization is to consistently deliver significant new value to the business through continuous product innovation. At a startup, the product team either innovates and provides real value or the startup dies. They just make minor optimizations to existing products.

Product 91

Product Technical Review Engineer CTO Hire 91

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. Stay tuned.

Lean 413

Lean Security Asia SBIR 413

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

To fill this gap I wrote The Four Steps to the Epiphany , a book about the Customer Development process and how it changes the way startups are built. In the last decade it’s become clear that companies are facing continuous disruption from globalization, technology shifts, rapidly changing consumer tastes, etc.

Technical Review 222

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 222

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

corporation – starting a new technology division bringing disruptive technology to market at General Electric. One of GE’s new divisions – GE’s Energy Storage – has been given the charter to bring an entirely new battery technology to market. Corporate elephants can dance. So why this post?

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 237

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. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products.

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

student of our MS&E department at Stanford ,) where they are set on being a leader in developing the management science of entrepreneurship. The most visible step was the first International Business Model Competition , hosted by the BYU Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. What’s A Startup?

Business Model 283

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 283

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 323

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 323

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2010

Over time, innovations outside the company (demographic, cultural, new technologies, etc.) The company loses customers, then revenues and profits decline and it eventually gets acquired or goes out of business. He believed that large companies handle sustaining innovation – evolutionary changes in their markets, products, etc.

Search 249

Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 249

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

I’ve spent the last week in Santiago, a guest of Professor Cristóbal García at the Catholic University of Chile as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program. Here’s the course announcement from Professor Vergara (in English): Customer Development Course in Chile – Lean Launchpad. Teaching in Chile.

Chile 240

Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 240

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2020

While there’s agreement that companies need to adapt to changing markets, rapidly find new markets, new customers and new revenue models, the question is how ? Companies in cosmetics and perfume production pivoted their production lines as well. What tools and methods can a C-suite team use to do so? Here’s how.

Customer 436

Customer Marketing Customer Development Lean 436

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks , turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. 19 of the 21 teams are moving forward in commercializing their technology. We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack.

Incubator 307

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 307

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 29, 2018

If you want to take your business to the next level, you should consider app development. Are you are a startup that needs to market your products and services ? Either way, custom software development is an effective way to build brand awareness and give your business a competitive edge. Source: Pexels.

Developer 93

Developer Offshore Software Developers Software Development 93

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 334

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 334

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. Even if they did, what if the assumption – that we had developed a better approach to teaching entrepreneurship – was simply mistaken?

Lean 304

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 304

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

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. An irreversible decision is firing an employee, launching your product, a five-year lease for an expensive new building, etc. That’s why startups are agile.

Silicon Valley 307

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 307

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

The disadvantage is that its methodology was based on the old waterfall model of product development and not the agile and lean methods that startups use today. It taught lean theory ( business model design , customer development and agile engineering) and practice. The Business Plan is Dead.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

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 253

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 253

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

Entrenched Innovation Model Issues : Qualcomm’s existing innovation model – wireless products were created in the R&D lab and then handed over to existing business units for commercialization – was wildly successful in the existing wireless and mobile space. Part 1 outlining the program is here. Read it first. Lessons Learned.

Programming 270

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 270

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Creators of new products in environments of extreme uncertainty, startups face enormous risks. Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. As a startup owner, what can you do to improve your chances?

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. Here’s what the product development diagram looks like from a sales perspective.

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 228

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

In the last five years “ Lean Startup ” methodologies have enabled entrepreneurs to efficiently build a startup by searching for product/market fit rather than blindly trying to execute. Gore , I’ve found two corporate strategy tools developed by other smart people helpful in bridging Lean Startups with Corporate Innovation.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

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 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. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter? End result?

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. Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile. How quickly will you recover? Can you recognize and capitalize on them?

Cofounder 229

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 229

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 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

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 313

Oakland Asia Lean Video 313

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2020

Do you have a startup idea or new technology that you’d like to learn how to bring to market in the post-pandemic economy? 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.

Lean 436

Lean Business Model Affiliate Incubator 436

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

They communicated this to product management who looked at all of the internal requirements we had generated (e.g. some came from our customer service, some were to improve performance / scalability from tech ops, some were bug fixes, etc.) and product management worked with me to decide what to build & when.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 8, 2008 Waves of technology platforms I still remember the first time I switched to LAMP. That startup didnt turn out so well, but not for lack of technology. We just had our app support a few tens of thousands of customers, and it did well. 1 comments: flixsterwidgettest said.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

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." As Ive written previously , lean startups are built upon three main trends: Technology commoditization. Agile software development.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2020

Christensen, writing for a corporate audience, explained that there were two classes of products – sustaining and disruptive. His message was that existing companies are great at sustaining technologies and products but were ignoring the threat of disruption. At that tipping point the legacy industry collapses.

Lean 431

Lean Business Model Government Agile 431

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. Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

Yet everyone – investors, entrepreneurs, academics — expected new startups to follow the same practices that worked for large companies – write a business plan, forecast 5-year sales projections and build the product without ever talking to customers. I had no idea I was being mentored and never asked for it.

Lean 223

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 223

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

What does your Chief Technology Officer do all day? When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. Heres my take.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168