Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way. Heres the catch.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

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. But the eye opener for me was reading Clayton Christensen HBR article on disruption in the mid 1990’s and then reading the Innovators Dilemma.

Technical Review 327

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 327

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. Jim Murphy is a long-time agile practitioner in startups. But startups sometimes have trouble applying agile successfully. Enter Jims post.

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Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. Most startups fail. The most common mistake startups make is assuming they can operate the same way big companies do, and expect success with little to no feedback from potential customers. This is a customer development problem.

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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. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup. Lets see why.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

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. But the eye opener for me was reading Clayton Christensen HBR article on disruption in the mid 1990’s and then reading the Innovators Dilemma.

Technical Review 219

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 219

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2021

How did we build startups in the past? How to Get, Keep and Grow Customers ? What is Customer Development. What is Customer Discovery and Why Do it? A short article on how to do Customer Discovery via Zoom. Customer Validation. Why Customer Development is done by founders.

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Lean Customer Development Business Model Video 356

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 2, 2013

Of the 100,000 people who will read this post, how many have made more money, and more consistent money, with less stress, with their startup than with their day jobs?) But the real life of a startup founder isn’t that at all. Startup founders want to say that, though. Even if it’s not really true day-to-day.

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Cofounder Startup Founder Engineer 312

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Posted on December 7, 2009 by steveblank In my 21 years of startups, I had my ideas “stolen” twice. Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked.

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2013

The Harvard Business Review is offering free reprints of the May 2013 cover article, “ Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything “ Available here.

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Lean Venture Capital Customer Development Startup 330

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2010

If we use our “startup to large company,” diagram, we can see that sustaining innovations occur within a large company’s existing management structures. If you’ve been reading my book on Customer Development and follow my work on Market Type , this type of innovation is best for adding new products to existing markets.

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Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 242

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. The Lean LaunchPad class uses the three “ Lean Startup ” principles: Alexander Osterwalders “ business model canvas ” to frame hypotheses.

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Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 281

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? 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.

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CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

View from Seed

DECEMBER 8, 2015

Editor’s note: At a recent team meeting at NextView, we looked at the high number of startups we invested in which were pre-product at the time. The below article answers that question. The post How a Seed VC Approaches Pre-Product Startups appeared first on NextView Ventures.

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Product Startup Early Stage Seed Capital 120

The Next Web

MAY 4, 2013

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Stefano Bernardi, who is on the founding team of Betable , where he heads Customer Development. He is a part-time hacker, angel investor, and product advisor, and was selected from more than 300 people to “shadow” Dave McClure at 500 Startups. You probably have visa problems.

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San Francisco Europe Technical Review Due Diligence 159

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2013

The Harvard Business Review is offering free reprints of the May 2013 cover article, “ Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything “ Available here.

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Lean Venture Capital Customer Development Startup 222

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

My job was to figure out what markets Ardent should target, who were the key customers in these markets and what applications these customers had to have. The articles described the applications these users depended on and featured interviews with their most important customers. The problem was I didn’t have a clue.

Silicon Valley 147

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2019

This article previously appeared in VentureBeat. I just had a coffee with Mei and Bill, two passionate students who are on fire about their new startup idea. How has the market/technology/customers evolved since then? What’s Mei and Bill’s unique insight that makes their startup different? Why did those fail?

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Bandwidth Database Venture Capital Demand 281

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Useful blogs and links for startups Click Here ————– 2.

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Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

This article previously appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Once upon a time every great organization was a scrappy startup willing to take risks – new ideas, new methods, new customers, targets, and mission. The type of disruption most companies and government agencies are facing is a once-in-every-few-centuries event.

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Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 315

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

This article first appeared in Poets and Quants. Textbooks, papers, and journal articles proliferated. By the end of the 20th century entrepreneurship education fell into two categories: 1) starting small businesses and 2) starting high-growth, high-risk scalable startups. Revolutions start by overturning the status quo.

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Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 22, 2010 The new startup arms race (for Huffington Post) The Huffington Post published an op-ed on the Startup Visa movement that Ive been working on for some time. Ive quoted from the article extensively below, but I hope youll take a moment and read the whole thing.

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San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Technical Marketing Years later in my career I would realize I had simply reinvented what the early pioneers in Silicon Valley knew and did – hiring engineers who were domain experts who could talk as peers to customers and communicate effectively with their own company’s engineers.

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

But in a startup, it is very important to be surrounded by efficient people. PS1- I run a small software startup in Brazil and just found out about Customer Development and your blog (I’ve been reading and listening to everything I can get my hands on online, like Venturehacks and Ries’ blog). 45 is efficient.

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Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 324

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

These don’t require coding skills—they’re usually visual templates that are easy to use but don’t allow for great customization (that would require technical skills). Custom development. This means hiring/contracting a freelance web developer or an agency to design and develop your site from start to finish.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 28, 2013

They thought they were learning about other people’s ideas in case studies and articles. We determined as a class that we wouldn’t pass judgment on ideas until we dove into the customer development process. Now, we’ve worked the customer development process for three companies and we treated them like our own.

Lean 309

Lean Cleveland Ohio Business Model 309

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2014

The article summarized 10 key learnings from the Unicorn club. ” One of my students sent me the article and asked, “What does this mean?” Since the Pivot is one of the core concepts of the Lean Startup I was puzzled. The authors of the article didn’t understand what a Pivot was. Could I be wrong?

Business Model 330

Business Model Lean Customer Development Channel 330

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. It was a long way from Ellis Island.)

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. This wave of 1950′s/’60′s startups (Watkins-Johnson, Varian, Huggins Labs, MEC, Stewart Engineering, etc.) After I retired, Jerry Engel , director of the Lester Center on Entrepreneurship , at U.C.

Silicon Valley 270

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 270

Steve Blank

AUGUST 25, 2021

It was a development process that would’ve taken three weeks in a startup, but inside this agency took 10 months (which was considered fast.) Asking a series of “ five whys ,” (see this HBR article ) would have discovered that: The agency’s existing processes were not designed for non-standard work. see this HBR article.)

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Non-Compete Government Incubator Design 436

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

One day, we became convinced that a killer app for IMVU would be to sell a presidential debate bundle, where our customers could put on a Bush or Kerry avatar, and then engage in mock debates with each other. It was one of those brilliant startup brainstorms that comes to the team in a flash, with a giant thunderclap. Expo SF (May.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 28, 2013

They thought they were learning about other people’s ideas in case studies and articles. We determined as a class that we wouldn’t pass judgment on ideas until we dove into the customer development process. Now, we’ve worked the customer development process for three companies and we treated them like our own.

Lean 201

Lean Cleveland Ohio Business Model 201

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

If these sound like reasonable answers to you, and you are in a startup/small company, update your resume. Most startups put together a corporate mission statement because the CEO remembered seeing one at their last job, or the investors said they needed one. What I was actually hearing was a failure of management.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

I thought it would be helpful to compile my past articles in one place. HOF Capital has stitched together our workflow across Google Suite , Slack , Airtable , Asana , Copper , and some other tools (leveraging Zapier for basic 3rd party integration, in addition to custom development for certain other integrations).

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

I thought it would be helpful to compile my past articles in one place. HOF Capital has stitched together our workflow across Google Suite , Slack , Airtable , Asana , Copper , and some other tools (leveraging Zapier for basic 3rd party integration, in addition to custom development for certain other integrations).

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). Venture Capital Cafe > Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). VC & Startup Resources. Seed Startups. VC Cafe covers early stage Israeli and European tech & mobile startups. Hundreds of startups featured since 2005, will yours be next? About VC Cafe.

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Software Review Technical Review Startup 53