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. You may know how much to pay in cash or equity for your new VP Engineering. The Agile Board. Always seek input. Board Meetings.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, science and engineering at both Stanford and U.C. Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. 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.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

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.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

This process forced companies to release and launch products by model years, and market new and “improved” versions. In the last few years Agile and “Continuous Deployment” has replaced Waterfall and transformed how companies big and small build products. The Old Days – Waterfall Product Development.

Continuous Deployment 331

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 331

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

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. Lastly, a foundational skill of great product managers is GSD.

Product 62

Product CTO Hire Architecture Startup 62

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

The human tendency to moralize about debt affects engineers, too. I hope to show why lean and agile techniques actually reduce the negative impacts of technical debt and increase our ability to take advantage of its positive effects. The biggest source of waste in new product development is building something that nobody wants.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

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.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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. Google wasn't the first search engine around. 13- Google.

Technical Review 124

Technical Review Entrepreneur Software Review SEO 124

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

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Algorithm Channel Analytics 127

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This theory has become so influential that I have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. You can learn about customer development, and quite a bit more, in Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. It slices, it dices.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

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. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Expo SF (May.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

AUGUST 12, 2021

Leverage the innate agility. Prototyping — including: design, graphic arts, and concept writing are skills that go beyond engineering. New ideas need to integrate product development with marketing and sales as well. Here’s why. Speed and momentum matter in innovation, even more so to smaller firms.

Framework 71

Framework Agile Product Development Hiring 71

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. What kind of objectives would a startup want or need for sales and marketing?

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 228

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. Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campa. Expo SF (May. Conference streaming, sponsors, discounted tickets.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

“Some people weren’t comfortable because it wasn’t as fun, and one senior engineer thought we’d be losing the part of kaChing that was an enabler for anyone who wanted to make it as a pro,&# Rachleff recalls. says Rachleff. says Rachleff. Expo SF (May. Conference streaming, sponsors, discounted tickets.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

This gets me into trouble, because it conjures up for some the idea that product development is simply a rote mechanical exercise of linear optimization. You just constantly test little micro-changes and follow a hill-climbing algorithm to build your product. Expo SF (May. Conference streaming, sponsors, discounted tickets.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

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

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. PayPal, under the leadership of David Marcus and Bill Scott, re-defining and re-engineering itself by embracing Lean Startup to improve the product experience.

Lean 167

Lean Entrepreneur Agile San Francisco 167

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. And that expands the skills that optimisers need.

Conversion 48

Conversion Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Analytics 48

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.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

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.

Burn Rate 251

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 251

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Overall, this is part of a tendency to see Lean Startup as simply an evolution of Agile, and to mistakenly think that it thus “belongs” in Engineering, or that it’s only useful for new product endeavors. That’s when the sales and marketing functions adopt Lean Startup for customer acquisition.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Agile Leadership 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

But if that piece-parts solution is great, then its unlikely they are going to need to buy any additional products. Because this language may lead you to believe this concept is for enterprise sales only, I thought Id walk you through an example from the world of consumer electronics. Combining agile development with customer developm.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Execution by Vertical Market As the class progressed, students asked how the activities/functions of a startup; (Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Product Development, etc.) For example, How does sales differ from one market to another? Sales – What Channel to reach the customer? New/Disruptive?

Vertical 125

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

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

OCTOBER 25, 2022

The consulting firm suggested that they organize these 15 topic areas as a matrix organization, and the ballroom was filled with several hundred people from across their company – action groups and subgroups with people from across the company: engineering, manufacturing, market analysis and collection, distribution channels, and sales.

Framework 397

Framework Distribution Channel Leadership 397

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 14, 2014

As companies strive to stay agile and innovative, they’ve discovered that units of 8 to 12 people work best as the natural size of high-performance teams. This is the magic number for leadership teams, product teams, research teams, design teams, and more. I definitely know that those jerks from Sales have their own selfish agenda.

Agile 196

Agile Leadership Architecture Product Development 196

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Everyone from the receptionist to engineers is selling. This can take the form of a traditional sales pipeline or a registration-activation-revenue chart. Reprioritize & rerationalize all R&D. Everything is negotiable in this climate. Everybody should be selling. Selling is an honorable profession. Offer equity instead of cash.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

But instead of spending the time and money to develop products on spec, TPGTEX creates mocked-up webpages that list the features of a potential new product -- such as a system for making radio-frequency identification, or RFID, labels -- along with its price. Read the rest. Read the rest. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 137

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 137

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. No engineering team. April 21 - Agile Vancouver is sold-out (thank you all so much!). Those are only symptoms.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

Meanwhile, individuals and smaller companies emailed by the hundreds to say that they wanted the features of custom channels, but the sales model—arranged like a media buy—didn’t make sense to them. -Eric] Big companies said they liked the idea, but SlideShare found it hard to close deals.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

MAY 22, 2019

Companies are investing in innovation training, mostly learning frameworks like Lean, Agile, or Design Thinking. Nearly all that training is for dedicated innovation teams , or employees who are focused on new product development. Engaged support for strategic and tactical innovation initiatives developed by others.

Operations 54

Operations Employee Technical Review Agile 54

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

Corporate Agility. Transparency correlates to agility (Does your CEO know how many tests you ran last month?). Facts don’t change minds – true for both sales and customers. Ed Fry – Customer Data Operations: Unleashing your hidden growth engine. Offline sale – typically. Quality of leads.

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

This builds on a lot of great thinking that has come before, like the agile movements insistence that only the creation of working code counts as progress for a software development team. We set sales targets from day one, $300 the first month. As the experiments progressed, day-in-day-out we werent making sales.

San Francisco 98

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. While it’s useful to be able to have a sales forecast and expense budget early on, it’s not something you need until you’ve validated your idea. Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74