Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

When you look through the list , you’ll see big names that we’re very pleased we landed, epic companies we really want to hear from, and people we’re particularly excited to present because they have incredible stories to share--and you won’t hear them anyplace else. Eric Ries will interview him.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

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. Perhaps you can determine whether a product is new by asking customers to name the competition.

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

We learned this weekend that it was named after his East Hampton home. 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.

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. These were inspiring stories, but I realized that, no surprise, the popular press were writing books that had mass appeal. Where were the books explaining why were all these chip and computer companies started here?

Silicon Valley 297

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 297

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

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Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 334

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

Below, you will find a list of books recommended by serial entrepreneur David S. In this book, Michael Gerber walks you through the entire process, dispelling the myths as he goes. This book demonstrates how what really matters is the planning process, and not a plan you use once and never again. Not so much. B y Michael E.

Startup 80

Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

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. Would you mind if you could share to us the name your competitor who stole your ideas ?

Silicon Valley 253

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 253

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2014

Product/Market fit now has its own book. It has three parts: a business model canvas to frame hypotheses, customer development to get out of the building to test those hypotheses and agile engineering to build minimum viable products. His new book does three things: 1. Alexander Osterwalder wrote it.

Business Model 335

Business Model Design Customer Development Lean 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers. Business customers were starting to ask for “office automation solutions” – word processing, spreadsheets, graphing software on a desktop. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

My boss, the CEO, had just come from a string of successes at Convergent Technologies, Intel and Digital Equipment, names that at that time carried a lot of weight. Your response and version #3 begs another question, namely: was everyone treated this way or just you? Customer development isn’t just for [.]

Silicon Valley 283

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 283

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Follow the Leader At the conference I attended a bunch of technical sessions, and got lost when the speaker got past, “My name is xxx.” When I learned that Cray users would be giving papers at the Society of Petroleum Engineering conference in Denver the next day, I got on a plane to listen and learn.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 167

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 6, 2014

[Customer] Retention is King (good insights on measurement) – crowdspring.co/1haiyJt. Need a great name & URL for your new business? 5 Quick Tips for Buyers in Naming Projects – crowdspring.co/ThAKX4. Need a great name & URL for your new business? Customer Development 101) – crowdspring.co/1pNIOcD.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Software Review 94

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

I just spent a few weeks in Japan and China on a book tour for the Japanese and Chinese versions of the Startup Owners Manual. Note to Chinese Communist party – the best name for your propaganda department should probably not be the “Propaganda Department.”). China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

China 327

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 327

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

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). It seamlessly creates a deal folder (company name) in our Google Drive.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

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). It seamlessly creates a deal folder (company name) in our Google Drive.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

The key principles of customer development are: There are no facts inside the building so get the heck outside. You can test your hypotheses with a series of experiments with potential customers. Hello, my name is xx. Alex Osterwalder and David Bland’s new book, Testing Business Ideas is a great help here.).

Customer 419

Customer Business Model Restful Video 419

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

automatic links to generated images Rietveld - asynchronous code reviews on changesets Tech*if*er0*urs – blog on roadmap for learning rails Best free programming books Project Management Basecamp - web-based project management and collaboration tool. WebSequenceDiagrams - sketch sequence diagrams. It’s more reference material.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Venture Capital | Tagged: Entrepreneurs « Customer Development Manifesto: Market Type (part 4) Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) » 16 Responses Jon Ziskind , on September 14, 2009 at 9:19 am Said: Steve – Great post and really great advice.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

That foundational idea, so clearly articulated in books like Lean Thinking, is what originally led me to start using the term lean startup. As Im pontificating about agile, I see the name Kent Beck in my peripheral vision. Eric Names matter. By pulling in a web of associations, names help people quickly assess ideas.

Lean 140

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 140

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

So, if youre interested in helping avoid mistakes like that, here are the steps: Get a domain name. It doesnt have to be the worlds catchiest name, just pick something reasonably descriptive. If youre concerned about sullying your eventual brand name, dont use your "really good" name, pick a code name.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Any customer who used the four critical color publishing applications was going to be blown away by how much better the SuperMac boards were. Tell Me How to Find You But having benchmarks in hand that showed us as the winner did us no good unless all our potential customers could see them.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 127

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

If you’re a startup raising money or just want to see your name online, there’s not a better blog on the web. It was always a welcome change of pace to leave the brown of the unchanging desert and travel into town and have dinner with them and have a non-technical conversation about books, theater, politics, travel, etc.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 210

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

I just spent a few weeks in Japan and China on a book tour for the Japanese and Chinese versions of the Startup Owners Manual. Note to Chinese Communist party – the best name for your propaganda department should probably not be the “Propaganda Department.”). China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

China 219

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 219

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I worked at Multiflow, a name you’d recognize, ending up running the OS group. He was my role model at Convergent, mentor at Ardent and partner at E.piphany. Future posts will have some Ben stories. steve Chris Ryland , on October 5, 2009 at 12:08 pm Said: Anyway, looking forward to this series.

North Carolina 131

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 131

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

competitive analyses, channel and customer collateral (white papers, data sheets, product reviews), customer surveys, and market requirements documents. I feel that I’ve derived as much value from this post as I would from reading 2 or 3 lengthy books on the topic. on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

A large number of these customers had mailed back their registration cards (this was pre-Internet) with their names, phone numbers, job titles, etc. So I asked the fatal question, “Has anyone ever looked at the customer registration cards? Has anyone ever spoken to a customer?” Silence.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 210

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. This post, which is divided in two parts, is the story of the first time it happened to me. You created it and own it.

Silicon Valley 200

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 200

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Outside of Andela, Jeremy serves on the board of the Young Entrepreneur Council and the education non-profit PENCIL and co-authored a book Education & Skills 2.0: Before founding 2U, Jeremy developed Zinch, intended to be a virtual guidance counselor to help low-income students navigate the college application process.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 145

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 13, 2009 The Principles of Product Development Flow If youve ever wondered why agile or lean development techniques work, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen is the book for you. What will this do?

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

You may know it by its final name. Filed under: Customer Development , Marketing , SuperMac , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , SuperMac « Love/Hate Business Plan Competitions Gravity Will be Turned Off » 17 Responses EricS , on May 11, 2009 at 11:05 am Said: I loved my Spigot.

Video 184

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 184

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Outside of Andela, Jeremy serves on the board of the Young Entrepreneur Council and the education non-profit PENCIL and co-authored a book Education & Skills 2.0: Before founding 2U, Jeremy developed Zinch, intended to be a virtual guidance counselor to help low-income students navigate the college application process.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. The “Good” Student » 14 Responses Shane Rogers , on April 6, 2009 at 1:37 pm Said: The names of ‘secret’ customers is funny. If you think the Cold War turned out the right side up (i.e.

Silicon Valley 194

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 194

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2015

Named to Forbes 30 Under 30 in Education list in 2014, Mandela Schumacher-Hodge is a former high school teacher who later served as global director of Education Entrepreneurs, a Gates Foundation initiative operated within UP Global, now Techstars. In fact, I used to think, “I should write a book on how to raise a rebel in society.”

Cofounder 120

Cofounder India Entrepreneur Maryland 120

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Often companies think their Rock Star customers are the biggest spenders, or the most loyal customers, or perhaps the marquee names or brands. So who are your potential high-value Rock Star customers? In my book, “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers “, I provide a model for helping you find and cultivate them.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Customer Development. A well-developed model is Andreessen Horowitz’s Executive Briefing Center. In-house, brand-name guru. These folks are rare, expensive, and often have multiple side obligations (book deals, speaking engagements, etc.). Advantages. Disadvantages. In-house functional specialists.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

We’ve both published bestselling books.*. Okay: my book sold way less copies than Steve’s. Steve and I have long held similar beliefs about how to run start-ups, even if we’ve used different names to describe the key principles. Lean Start-up Connection: Customer Development. Filed under: Customer Development.

Lean 299

Lean Agile Customer Development SEO 299