Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

Technology 142

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SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

How To Pitch A Product - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , August 4, 2010 I've said a bunch of times on this blog that the perfect pitch is a very short intro to provide context followed immediately by a demo. Developer. More tiers = more complication = more confusion. Final Thought. and Flipboard newspapers.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

We were constantly creating metrics to see the effects of different PR messages, channels and audiences on end-user purchases. I wanted our PR department to get close and personal with the press and use it to generate end user demand and then drive that demand into our sales channel. ( The same was true for the Product Marketing group.

Silicon Valley 268

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Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Every generation of new technology seems to find a willing audience in naïve journalists and eager readers. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. We all know how that ends up.

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Ryan Chan, founder at UpKeep said, “We created an LLC at first, but after realizing that we wanted to take on venture capital, we decided to move to a Delaware C corp.”. venture capital. Seek out venture capital funding. 17 Venture Capital Blogs You Should Be Reading. or even be a U.S.

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Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

I’ve built my company using the Customer Development Model from Day One. I recently completed the Validation step (less the industry analyst presentations) and am ready to move on to Customer Creation. Can I buy you lunch to share it with you? &# Yes, I’m serious. So the ask is made — shall it be given?

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

Funny story, after Bill presented at TED (back when Amazon was still a small company) Jeff Bezos was in the audience. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards. Immediately thereafter Amazon became a large business.

Product 350

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Your sales people can gather the crowd, work the crowd and use their sales skills to see if prospects in the audience have interest. The difference between booths offering a demo and those without one is striking. One of them is a loser. It isn’t going to be your booth. What didn’t? Go to trade shows like it matters.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

My two cents is that’s it’s less of a “disinterest in history&# than an inability to make the history of technology accessible to a non-technical audience. I’ll go back and give it another read. It’s the tension between being “technically accurate&# and writing something your mother could understand.

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Hearpreneur

JULY 30, 2016

One of the audience members introduced himself as representing a VC that was looking to encourage female entrepreneurs and business owners. The short answer was no and whilst many of the businesses present had a large technology component to their company, with custom developed software etc they could not present themselves as a tech company.

Technical Review 48

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. Do you know the archetype of their customers? Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

Silicon Valley 203

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

They have many, many man-years of development and customer development in them. But assuming it’s a fair exit, a venture capitalist, and I’m explicitly not saying angel because we could talk about angel and they’re sort of special so that might work out. For venture capital, right?

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. Seed-stage investors are learning the metrics of traction, and are getting better at identifying those companies that are really achieving validated learning about customers. What is the right revenue model?

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ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Well, it turns out that to port long tail productivity apps to Google's App Engine is a somewhat cumbersome job, and requires a lot of custom development. The long tail apps can easily be ported to or developed on Google App Engine in a third of the time and cost using OrangeScape as an application platform. Enter OrangeScape.

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