David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

Over the past decade, I’ve (somewhat accidentally) put together on this blog a syllabus on how to launch, manage, and invest a VC fund. Another critical design consideration is your tech stack. On Copper (our deal board), a due date of two business days is automatically set for us to review the opportunity.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

This is a customer development problem. By the end of this article, you should have a better understanding of how to develop new products or tweak your existing offerings by working with existing or prospective customers to incorporate their feedback to create viable solutions to their problems, and clearly communicate their value.

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Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 17, 2010

You probably think of "tech support" as the bottom of the food chain. After all: Tech support deals with insane customers. Tech support answers the phone; a job even salesmen don't want. Tech support keeps angry customers at bay while having no power to effect change. Tech support is sales.

Technical Review 245

Technical Review Sales Turkey Software Review 245

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. The United States is now a debtor nation to China and that the bill is about to come due. These are probably the two sites where I've posted the most reviews. One out of ten of Americans are out of work. Keep the day job.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 21, 2013

In the talk I reviewed the basic components of the Lean Startup and described how we teach it. This video is a companion to the blog post here. 15:22 NASA and Technology Readiness Level (TRL). 15:22 NASA and Technology Readiness Level (TRL). Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching Venture Capital'

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Video Oakland Venture Capital Lean 284

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

What does your Chief Technology Officer do all day? Often times, it seems like people are thinking its synonymous with "that guy who gets paid to sit in the corner and think technical deep thoughts" or "that guy who gets to swoop in a rearrange my project at the last minute on a whim." But along the way, something strange happened.

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CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? The core idea behind customer development is that the assumptions you make about a target market are only guesses. Website Analysis.

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Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

The Equity Kicker

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

It went up on their blog yesterday. _. Two developments have changed the face of startup investing in the UK in recent years. The first development is increased capital efficiency. I wrote the post below for Crowdcube , one of the UK’s leading equity crowdfuding sites.

Early Stage 119

Early Stage Development Team Review Technical Review Software Review 119

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

For example, to outflank a competitor who had faster products, Intel moved the conversation about microprocessors away from speed and technology to create a valued brand. Both Apple and Intel were selling complicated technology but did so by simplifying the message so it had broad emotional appeal. Step 4: Messengers.

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Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 315

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, June 2, 2010 The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business Review) I continue my series for Harvard Business Review with the Lean Startup technique called Five Whys. Five Whys has its origins in the Toyota Production System. Applied to a start-up, heres how it works. Speed up or slow down?

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

Summer is always the time when large numbers of new participants in the tech ecosystem arrive and start to get their bearings. It’s also surprisingly difficult for students to get plugged-in to everything that is happening in the local tech ecosystem. Greenhorn Connect: Excellent collection of BOS tech events and resources.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

some came from our customer service, some were to improve performance / scalability from tech ops, some were bug fixes, etc.) Tim encouraged us to set up a blog and start talking openly about what we were doing as a company and inviting comments. But he didn’t grow up with technology. Back then it seemed foreign.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. What started as a technical problem actually turned out to be a human and process problem. We didnt even practice TDD across our whole team.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This class is built on conducting in-person of interviews with customers/ beneficiaries and stakeholders, but due to the pandemic, teams now had to do all their customer discovery via a computer screen. How would customer interviews work via video? While I authored this blog post, this class is a team project.

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Lean Security Asia SBIR 410

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

Even more so than pricing, reviews and location proximity. Using his own personal website for content marketing and blogging, he has set himself up as an influencer in the marketing industry: By leveraging his personal brand, he has taken multiple SaaS tool companies to generate millions in revenue. Custom development.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

When I went through their financials as part of my due diligence I realized that if they ditched their low margin disk drive products, it wouldn’t take much to make them a profitable company. They had an existing distribution channel and their dealers and customers thought they knew who the company was and what it stood for.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 161

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

I have developed a founder curriculum on my blog. I recommend building a strong internal tech stack, to handle the deluge of requests for help you’ll get from companies as you scale. For technology vendors and models, see Venture capitalists eating our own dog food: Using technology and analytics to make better investments. .

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Posted on September 14, 2009 by steveblank Over the last 30 years Wall Street’s appetite for technology stocks have changed radically – swinging between unbridled enthusiasm to believing they’re all toxic. Tech acquisitions went crazy at the same time the IPO market did. 3) invest in and take equity stakes in exchange for capital.

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Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 233

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 6, 2014

The embedded presentation above is filled with valuable data on the state of the Internet and trends in technology around the world. How to Outsource without the Headache | by Frank Gruber in Tech Cocktail – crowdspring.co/1hyLg7A. Customer] Retention is King (good insights on measurement) – crowdspring.co/1haiyJt.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Software Review 94

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc. I’m going to save that for a future blog post. It is the key to “customer development” that Steve Blank talks about.

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PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2019

So in 2011, with support from the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (the entrepreneurship center in the Stanford Engineering School), we created a new capstone entrepreneurship class – the Lean LaunchPad. When we started this class, the concept of Lean (business models, customer development, agile, pivots, mvp’s) was new to everyone.

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Lean Business Model Balance Sheet Video 254

andrewchenblog.com

MARCH 10, 2010

Coupled with A/B testing, customer development, and thinking through business problems in a scientific, hypothesis-driven way, you end up with a powerful cocktail of techniques to build a modern startup in the most iterative way possible. Anyway, let’s dive into this topic more, starting with technical debt.

Technical Review 47

Technical Review Design Las Vegas Product 47

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

5 Lessons from 150 startup pitches - A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks , July 11, 2010 I just reviewed several hundred startup pitches for Capital Factory. 10 Blogging Tips. Though this was 2000 , and all startup & VC blogs we've grown to love didn't exist yet, I did have mentors available. Not that I blame you!

Software Review 217

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Technical Review 217

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Notice that none of those five reasons deals with TDD or automated testing, which have changed the game. This is the approach of test-driven-development (TDD). Even if youve developed for years without automated tests, this one practice is part of a remarkable feedback loop. Do you have testers?

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 28, 2013

Doris Korda, spent the first 15 years of her career in the high-tech industry and is now the Associate Head of School. We determined as a class that we wouldn’t pass judgment on ideas until we dove into the customer development process. Students blogged using Steve’s four prompts, below. This is what I thought. .

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Lean Cleveland Ohio Business Model 314

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

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Once he was on board, I sat down with him on a weekly basis to review our progress with our list of software vendors. Reply Daily Review #21 | The Queue Blog , on November 9, 2009 at 8:06 pm Said: [.] Think Different I still remember the day I discovered that I thought about progress differently than other people.

Silicon Valley 331

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 331

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

Freshman Salesman writes: I’ve read somewhere in your blog about how you had a very large organisation as the first customer for your software. I’m putting myself in the same boat now with the solution I’m developing so could you tell me: 1. How did you reach out to your first customer? I had a $39.95

Customer 231

Customer Software Review IP Technical Review 231

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

It took me 8 startups and 21 years to get it right, (and one can argue success was due to the Internet bubble rather then any brilliance.) No internet, no blogs, no books on startups, no entrepreneurship departments in universities, etc. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot.

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Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 200

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Its common to find a hacker at the heart of almost any successful technology company. When a startup encounters difficult technical problems, this is the guy you want solving them. As the company grows, hes the go-to person for almost everything technical, and so hes very much in demand. All is not lost, though.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

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. You can check out his blog and follow him on Twitter. Previously, he worked in venture capital in Europe. Reference Checks. it’s hard to check them.

San Francisco 159

San Francisco Europe Technical Review Due Diligence 159

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. There is a earlier phase *prior to Vacuum Tubes* in Santa Clara Valley tech history as well involving Federal Telegraph and “Federal-Poulsen Arc Converter&# radio transmitter. Who would have known?

Silicon Valley 294

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 294

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Two studies have shown that only about 10 percent of promoters actually refer profitable new customers. Some of the most creative technology coming out of Silicon Valley is designed to do exactly that. Find and engage customer advocates using a gamification platform that makes it interesting and enjoyable to advocate.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

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. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious. Are These Your Slides?

Silicon Valley 248

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 248

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Two bucket list items got ahead of my blogging so I’ve combined the final two lecture weeks of the class into this one blog post. In these last three weeks the benefit of having a team of mixed business and technical resources becomes apparent. Slide 5 does a good job of separating out their technical versus business activities.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

As Peter began to speak extemporaneously our mouths slowly fell open as he described the video game market, its size, its demographics, the state of the technology, and the state of games. You’re in a “ hits-based &# entertainment business like movies or music rather than a product business like traditional high-tech. -

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

Convergent Technologies When I was in my 20’s I worked at Convergent Technologies , a company that was proud to be known as the “Marine Corps of Silicon Valley.” I had thrown myself into a startup because work was an exciting technical challenge with a fixed set of end points and rewards. The Adventure of a Lifetime.

Entrepreneur 290

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 290