Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

He just hired Meg Whitman. Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. Startups wrote business plans, generated expansive 5-year forecasts and executed (hired, spent and built) to the plan.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

In fact, they were screaming at them to dramatically reduce their burn rates. In a capital scarce environment following the Dot Com crash, startups needed to do more with less and survive long enough to generate revenue. It was a nuclear winter for startup capital.” ” Steve Blank, “Is the lean startup dead?”

Lean 214

Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

The Customer Development process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model , reducing customer and market risk. The first step of Customer Development is called Customer Discovery. outside the building and test them in front of customers.

Burn Rate 248

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 248

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. And I can even imagine cases where it might burn more cash than a traditional startup. Lets see why.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

Let’s take your revenue line. It should talk about how many customers you think you will acquire and how much you’ll charge for your product. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? Or lower revenue assumptions.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

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.

Revenue 230

Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 230