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

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 30, 2013

At dinner last week, my long time friend Dave Jilk (we just celebrated our 30th friendship anniversary) tossed a hypothesis at me that as people age, they resist adopting new technologies. People working in information technology tend to take a producer perspective. The essay follows. I think he totally nails it. What do you think?

Technology 168

Technology Coder Semantic Social Media 168

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

We think teaching teams a formal methodology around the Lean Framework (Business Model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) is a natural evolution of how successful incubators/accelerators will build startups. Given something tangible, customers were able to start gauging their willingness to use and pay.

Lean 319

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 319

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 22, 2020

This change has presented a challenge for the news and media companies to adopt digital technologies for their business operations. However, these technological developments have also presented a special opportunity for companies to understand what their customers need and how they interact with their businesses.

API 149

API Media Agile Technical Review 149

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. 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.

Technical Review 221

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 221

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This class is built on conducting in-person of interviews with customers/ beneficiaries and stakeholders, but due to the pandemic, teams now had to do all their customer discovery via a computer screen. How would customer interviews work via video? See here for an extended discussion of remote customer discovery.).

Lean 406

Lean Security Asia SBIR 406

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Disruption today is more than just changes in technology, or channel, or competitors – it’s all of them, all at once. Once upon a time every great organization was a scrappy startup willing to take risks – new ideas, new methods, new customers, targets, and mission. This article previously appeared in the Harvard Business Review.

Government 319

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 319

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

In previous posts I’ve talked about what the combination of Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Methodologies mean to startups and intrapreneurs in large companies; it’s the beginning of entrepreneurship as a science with its own rules and methodologies. She posted her notes from the talk here.)

Customer Development 274

Customer Development Business Model Developer Design 274

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

As organizations we have become more open and I believe this is great for businesses and their customers. We spent time out in the marketplace talking with customers, looking at their solutions, comparing ourselves with our competition and then squirreling ourselves away in our offices designing our next set of features.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

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 234

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 234

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 141

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 141

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 322

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 322

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. valued by their existing customers – fairly well. outpace an existing company’s business model. Lessons Learned.

Search 248

Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 248

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 281

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 281

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 239

Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 239

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 306

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 306

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 29, 2018

Either way, custom software development is an effective way to build brand awareness and give your business a competitive edge. In order to bring the most value to your business, it’s important you explore ways to enhance your customer experience. The Rise of App Development in the Business World. Source: Pexels.

Developer 107

Developer Offshore Software Developers Software Development 107

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 251

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 251

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

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 225

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 225

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 303

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 303

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 305

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 305

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Traction and evidence from customers were what investors were looking for – even in “slow” sectors like healthcare and energy. 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. And there it was. Berkeley-wide.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

With hindsight we should have had “proof of concepts” tested in a corporate center (think ‘pop-up incubator’) where they would do extensive Customer Discovery. Doing so meant they would have to take risks for IP acquisition and customer/market risks outside their experience or comfort zone. Lessons Learned.

Programming 269

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 269

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Are there customers for what you are building? How many are there? Can it scale?”

Customer Development 266

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 266

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 212

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 212

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

Second, this class – which is built on the idea of interviewing customers/beneficiaries and stakeholders in person – now had to do all their customer discovery via a computer screen. How on earth would customer interviews work via video? At first this seemed to be a fatal stake through the heart of the class.

Oakland 311

Oakland Asia Lean Video 311

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. Here the company executes a known business model (known customers, product features, competitors, pricing, distribution channel, supply chain, etc.)

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

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. Get customers first. How quickly will you recover? But it won’t be happening daily.

Cofounder 227

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 227

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. Such direct experiences allows one to test critical “leap-of-faith” assumptions about what customers like and dislike.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

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

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

SVPG

OCTOBER 14, 2014

Hopefully everyone understands that in technology companies, continuous innovation is not an option. ” I first witnessed this many years ago when I was an engineer for HP, building platform and tool technology products for “the enterprise.” Or they continue to turn out more features that don’t make a difference.

Product 91

Product Technical Review Engineer CTO Hire 91

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 14, 2008 How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people Frequency is more important than talking to the "right" customers, especially early on. Youll know when the person youre talking to is not a potential customer - they just wont understand what youre saying.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

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. Expo SF (May.

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

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. While Ben taught me how to think, Gordon Bell taught me what to think about.

Lean 223

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 223