Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 245

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 245

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 26, 2024

In this post, I aim to take stock of the AI Agent ecosystem, compare incumbents versus startups, explore areas of opportunity for founders building in this space, and look ahead at the future of AI Agents. A few areas of opportunity (not exhaustive) Agent-specific developer tools – agentic adoption could start with developers.

Generative AI 78

Generative AI Cofounder Stealth Security 78

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 10, 2012

I did a presentation recently for a graduate class from The Founder Institute around getting online/mobile products out the door. I LOVED it because, the presenting part was over quickly and we got into specific issues that the founders had in terms of getting things built. Do you really have control of the development?

Technical Review 332

Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO Software Review 332

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 6, 2008 Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile I thought Id share an interesting post from someone with a decidedly anti-agile point of view. Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 4, 2010 Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Kent Beck will give the opening keynote at the Startup Lessons Learned conference on April 23. Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development.

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 6, 2014

Isaac Cambron is co-founder and CTO of Zensight.co , whose pre-launch product enables sales reps to find and use their best content to close more deals. Below, he answers questions about developing products from scratch, as well as the difficult technology choices and tradeoffs CTOs must make. On a high level, where do you even begin?

Technology 334

Technology Ruby Startup Engineer 334

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. This engineering manager is a smart guy, and very experienced.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

VC Cafe

AUGUST 2, 2022

As an early stage investor in the world of gaming and metaverse technology at Remagine Ventures, I find these companies have the potential to set the agenda, become the potential platforms for developers building in this space and future acquirers/consolidators of startups building the next generation of the Internet. Here we go! Epic Games.

IP 206

IP Cofounder Valuation Acquisition 206

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Waterfall Development. 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. Waterfall Development was all about execution of the requirements document. Microsoft Windows 3.0).

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ), Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique. This all-star team of 4 undergraduates and a JD/MBA developed new ways to provide logistical support to maritime forces in the Indo-Pacific region.

Lean 417

Lean Security Asia SBIR 417

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. Founders fit the definition of a creator: they see something no one else does. George Bernard Shaw.

Agile 334

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 334

www.bothsidesofthetable.com

MAY 13, 2012

Want to Know Difference Between a CTO and a VP of Engineering? This time I thought I’d try and address engineering talent. Often I’m asked by startup CEO’s about how to best build an engineering team. This post is designed mostly for non-technical founders. Raising Venture Capital. Angel Topics.

Fractional VPE 89

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Fractional CTO CTO Hire 89

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. It Seems Logical.

Part-Time VPE 325

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 325

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. The next customer segment we tried was startup founders. Technology in search of a market.

Lean 322

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 322

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink. Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter? The short answer is no.

Incubator 419

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 419

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 20, 2019

Startups tend to put a premium on being “agile,” but that doesn’t always work – and certainly won’t replace the effective collaboration a business needs to grow. For example, we worked with a company and observed that each release required eleven engineers. Series B: Hiring and Developing Managers. At Women 2.0

Technical Cofounder 113

Technical Cofounder Burn Rate Seed Stage Cofounder 113

YoungUpstarts

JULY 21, 2019

While large corporations are struggling with the digital transformation, small agile firms emerge every day and challenge traditional retailers. Even if you already have sufficient funding, the founders still recommend launching a campaign before investing your own hard-earned savings in a project.

Cofounder 113

Cofounder Technical Review Technology Netherlands 113

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? Steve Blank has devoted many years now to trying to answer that question, with a theory he calls Customer Development. You can learn about customer development, and quite a bit more, in Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

femgineer.com

JULY 18, 2010

HOME About the Femgineer Speaking Engagements Reading List Recruiting Startup Engineers With the startup market taking off, there is always a clamor to find good engineers, developers, and designers. Engineers love to build, solve tough problems, and make progress. When to start recruiting? Sweat equity or salary?

Engineer 41

Engineer Software Review Startup Technical Review 41

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

. + 1,000 startup founders, investors, and press! Vinod Khosla Founder Dave McClure Founding Partner Eric Ries Author Steve Blank Serial Entrepreneur & Professor Todd Park CTO Travis Kalanick CEO & Co-Founder Joe Zadeh Director of Product Sam Shank Co-Founder & CEO NEW!

Lean 165

Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering 165

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

Timecodes: 00:00 Welcome, our guest is Eric Ries, founder of the Lean Startup Movement. 42:20 Did agile development influence you? 46:50 Engines of Growth. 46:50 Engines of Growth. 1:05:35 Middle class job of the next generation: software development! There are many in this episode. Check it out.

Silicon Valley 301

Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. I have personally sold many copies of his book, and continue to recommend it as one of the most important books a startup founder can read.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

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. There are principally three engines of growth in any startup. This reduces guesswork, time, money and effort.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, March 25, 2009 The Lean Startup at Agile Vancouver April 21st A surprising number of respondents in the latest Lessons Learned survey hail from one of the flourishing startup hubs in Canada. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

Agile 60

Agile Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Jon Sebastiani , founder and CEO of KRAVE Jerky , a company that got its start in my class at Berkeley back in 2011 and was recently acquired by Hershey. Taking My Class. Hear Eric explain what they learned.

Lean 120

Lean Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder Channel 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. What I saw reminded me of some of the best and worst things I did as a founder. Some of the engineers figuring if the founder was declaring they were toast in 90 days were updating their resumes. And that’s where the problem was.

Founder 323

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 323

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. It consists of a highly intelligent and opinionated founder – Nick Halstead. You may know how much to pay in cash or equity for your new VP Engineering.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board Fractional CTO CTO Hire Los Angeles 365

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ) Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. Hacking for Conservation and Development at Duke followed. Tom Bedecarré the founder and CEO of AKQA, the leading digital advertising agency.

Oakland 315

Oakland Asia Lean Video 315

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

Cases and plans are useful for teaching managers of process, not founders. Founders of startups (and new ventures inside existing companies) are searching for product/market fit and a repeatable and scalable business model. Lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering).

Lean 436

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 436

SoCal CTO

APRIL 28, 2014

There was a lot of passion in the room last week when I presented Working with Developers at the Stubbs Precellerator. I guess it should not be a surprise that Founders have lots of challenges working with developers. But my developers want to go into way too much detail. Let me come back to these at the end of this post.

Technical Cofounder 280

Technical Cofounder Developer Fractional CTO CTO Hire 280

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

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley , was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. It might be its most important. ———-. Cold War Spin Outs.

Engineer 313

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 313

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

JULY 25, 2023

Now at Imperial College Business School and Co-Founder of the Wicked Acceleration Labs , Cristobal and I wondered if we could combine the tenets of Lean (get out of the building, build MVPs, run experiments, move with speed and urgency) with the expanded toolset developed by researchers who work on Wicked problems and Systems’ Thinking.

Lean 295

Lean Chile Ukraine Spain 295

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 9, 2010 Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# theory of management At any given time, something like four percent of the US population is engaged in some form of new-company-creation. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

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. Teaching In the Big Apple.

Customer Development 278

Customer Development Business Model Developer Design 278

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 1, 2008 Test-Driven Development as andon cord You cannot control what you cannot see, and the hardest part of managing software projects is that the final product is so intangible. In almost all Agile Development systems, thousands of automated tests are run against every change to the software.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68