Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? When we build products, we use a methodology. Steve Blank has devoted many years now to trying to answer that question, with a theory he calls Customer Development. a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit." Theory of market types.

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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?

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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.

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YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Creators of new products in environments of extreme uncertainty, startups face enormous risks. Insufficient capital, over investment, and low sales are just some of the reasons leading to this sobering statistic. In the US, about 50% of small businesses fail in the first five years. This reduces guesswork, time, money and effort.

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Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. Starting in the 1950’s, Stanford’s engineering department became “outward facing” and developed a culture of spinouts and active faculty support and participation in the first wave of Silicon Valley startups. Seeing Is Believing. The Business Plan is Dead. Berkeley-wide.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

Explore sales figures to customer interactions with various web pages and so much more. Agility, Adaptiveness, and Responsiveness. You might find your audience is a little off from whom you were targeting or that your audience thinks your product is overpriced. To Round It Up.

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Software Review Management Early Stage Startup 101

Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 22, 2021

Tesla has always put a huge emphasis on product development and technological advancement. Shopify swiftly came in with solutions that allowed these firms to turn their point-of-sale terminals into e-commerce storefronts and begin online operations the same day. For me, it's a live example of agile and sustainable business.

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Technical Review Entrepreneur Software Review SEO 139

YoungUpstarts

JULY 22, 2020

by Andrea Fryrear, author of “ Mastering Marketing Agility “ The profound transformations in the world over the past 3 months have led to a radical and rapid fire transformation of consumers’ preferences and needs. That’s the power of the MVP, and of lean and agile approaches in general. An Exercise to Generate Your MVP.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. They communicated this to product management who looked at all of the internal requirements we had generated (e.g. and product management worked with me to decide what to build & when. The Outside In organization had a one-way flow.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2020

Initially, you may be able to do everything in your startup, including product development, marketing, and shipping orders. As you move from development to rollout, a team effort is required, including marketing, sales, funding, and customers. Focus on communication and responsibility assignment.

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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.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

For the last 75 years products (both durable goods and software) were built via Waterfall development. This process forced companies to release and launch products by model years, and market new and “improved” versions. The Old Days – Waterfall Product Development.

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Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 332

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. In contrast, sales and marketing activities before first customer ship are adhoc, fuzzy, and don’t have measurable, concrete objectives. Freemium models have their own scorekeeping.)

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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. And this was a huge product, which took years to develop.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

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YoungUpstarts

APRIL 8, 2019

This allows you to determine upcoming customer behavior and sales trends , restructure your inventory as needed, and develop appropriate marketing campaigns. Stay Agile. Agility is a watchword of the modern economy, associated with software and security, but also with product development and marketing strategy.

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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. The Agile Board. Growth like this, this early in a company’s lifecycle rarely happens. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million.

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Advisory Board Fractional CTO CTO Hire Los Angeles 365

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.

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Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 146

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?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 223

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage.

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Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

ConversionXL

MAY 1, 2017

Reporting in the Harvard Business Review on a major study of growth stalls they conducted, Olson and his colleagues cite the case of the iconic brand Levi Strauss, which hit a historic high mark of sales in 1995, reaching revenue of $7 billion, but then, starting in 1996, saw a decline in sales so precipitous that by 2000, revenue was down to $4.6

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Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. existing enterprises are establishing corporate innovation groups. StageGate Process.

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Venture Chronicles

AUGUST 2, 2013

3) It all starts with the product: Companies can overcome a great many challenges with band-aids, duct tape, and bailing wire. but one aspect of a startup and/or growth stage company that cannot be glossed over is the product. It all starts with the product.

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Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

AUGUST 12, 2021

Leverage the innate agility. In general “insight development” (finding opportunities to grow) is something that should not be purely intuitive. Facilitation — who conducts strategy, visioning, ideation, and solution development meetings? Here’s why. It’s strategic for a growth oriented organization.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

In an enterprise sales context, this is called a "repeatable and scalable sales process" - once you know how to do this, your company can graduate from early adopters and make an attempt at the mainstream. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

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Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 4, 2024

Customer Satisfaction: Improve customer satisfaction scores by 15% in the next year through enhanced support and product improvements. Revenue Growth: Achieve a 25% increase in annual revenue by entering new markets and boosting sales efforts. Brand Identity: Develop a strong brand identity that resonates with your audience.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Expo SF (May.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

This post describes how companies using the Customer Development model can increase their credibility, valuation and probability of getting a first round of funding by presenting their results in a “Lesson Learned&# venture pitch. Is there a profitable business model? Can it scale?” Just as a refresher.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 270

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The goal is to have split-testing be a continuous part of our development process, so much so that it is considered a completely routine part of developing a new feature. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2017

With agile development cycles and uncertain monetization models, they live and die by data and experimentation. More and more, people are using experimentation as a way to optimise not just sales – but also pricing, functionality, and product. Image Source. And that expands the skills that optimisers need.

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YoungUpstarts

MAY 3, 2013

When thinking about product / service development, remember that virtually all great ideas build on an existing trend, and consider developing your product and service concepts around a behavioral movement to leverage existing momentum. Create a Winning Organizational Culture. They are correct.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.) and how to price the product. for new product development that emphasize immediate returns. Now we’re known for “making the numbers,” living on our past successes.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

You can almost set your watch to six months or so after first customer ship, when Sales starts missing its “numbers,” the board gets concerned and Marketing tries to “make up a better story.” The web site and/or product presentation slides start changing and Marketing and Sales try different customers, different channels, new pricing, etc.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

For example, I quickly learned that when I twittered about the event, more often than not I would make a sale. So the product development team was busy creating lots of split-tests for lots of hypotheses. And here is the howto for your sales bell: [link] Have fun! :-) June 9, 2009 1:42 AM David Skillern said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

To acquire new money managers, the company makes traditional sales calls, which means they’ve interviewed many, many professionals and gotten a strong sense of their needs. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? .&# says Rachleff. says Rachleff. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

A few of the detailed case studies include: Tech legend Bill Gross building an MVP in 1999 to test demand for online car sales, which grew into CarsDirect.com. The Embrace infant warmer was developed - by getting out of the country -- and how Rob Emrich learned and scaled his non-profit, Road of Life.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

All successful media companies had at their heart a series of editors, producers, and agents tasked with discovering and developing new talent. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. My blog has over 14000 subscribers, for example. Is that a lot? Is that good?

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