Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Yet most entrepreneurs and their VC’s make startups use financial models and spreadsheets that actually hinder their success. If you are following Customer Development , the answer is easy. Board meetings are about measuring progress measured against the hypotheses in Customer Discovery and Validation. Here’s why.

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Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 298

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

In my last post I described what happened when a company prematurely scales sales and marketing before adequately testing its hypotheses in Customer Discovery. You would think that would be enough to get wrong, but entrepreneurs and investors compound this problem by assuming that all startups grow and scale by executing the Revenue Plan.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

The only numbers in those documents that are important in the first year of a startup’s life are burn rate and cash balance. What is the entrepreneur supposed to be doing? Most board meetings never get past big company metrics to focus on the crucial startup numbers. What are the board members supposed to be contributing?

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

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.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

The only numbers in those documents that are important in the first year of a startup’s life are burn rate and cash balance. What is the entrepreneur supposed to be doing? Most board meetings never get past big company metrics to focus on the crucial startup numbers. What are the board members supposed to be contributing?

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 13, 2011

Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology that helps startups optimize their chances for success while reducing risk. What is the entrepreneur supposed to be doing? Silicon Valley, New York). Here's how.

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Silicon Valley Balance Sheet Metrics Early Stage 117

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

And throughout my career as an entrepreneur I kept asking questions of my VC investors and friends; Where did entrepreneurship come from? Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. How did Silicon Valley start?

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Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 270

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

Paul Henderson , on May 15, 2009 at 10:37 pm Said: A boot-strapping startup I once worked with was actually doing some real customer development and making real money from real customers for their early, ugly product. Lessons Learned N ew buildings are a distraction. BUT, they moved into a nice office off of Sand Hill Road.

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Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 205

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

The full formula works like this: runway = cash on hand / burn rate # iterations = runway / speed of each iteration Very few successful companies ended up in the same exact business that the founders thought theyd be in (see Founders at Work for dozens of examples). Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Do some Customer Development instead. Figuring this out takes time, and few entrepreneurs have the patience to wait it out, because the business plan does such a good job of explaining what customers are going to think. The problem is that customers dont read your business plan. Help you raise money.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Worse was the large staff in departments appropriate to a mainstream-scale product, especially in customer service and QA. The passionate early adopters who flocked to the product at its launch could not sustain this outsized burn rate. We can capitalize on new customers.

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San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150