Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2012

Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or Customer Development there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. Frank Robinson of SyncDev has been helping companies figure out their minimum viable product and pivots since 1984, long before I even knew what it meant.

San Jose 256

San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 256

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

The key things I want students to take from the class are: Understand that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a profitable business model. Learn how to put together a business model , not a business plan. Class Logistics. As described in the previous post , this is a hands-on class.

Business Model 226

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Reply Why Startups are Agile and Opportunistic -- Pivoting the Business Model , on April 14, 2010 at 6:32 am Said: [.] to see if they need to make a Pivot to find a better model. The search for a profitable and scalable business model might require a startup [.] Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply.

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

And how thinking of a solution to this commonly used model’s failures led to a new model – the Customer Development Model – that offers a new way to approach startup activities outside the building. Startups don’t fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model.

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Our business model changed as we realized that to become a large company, we needed to automate more than just a few marketers. We had validated our new assumptions by a set of orders, and we had pivoted on our business model. This is the pivot, a crucial tactical maneuver for the lean startup [.]

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

The Founder’s New Insight Smart founders are never satisfied with simply executing their current business model, they are constantly observing, orienting and deciding whether their current business model can be made better. It’s a natural part of learning about your customers and business model.)

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. The tools and techniques available to small businesses on Main Street are the same ones that were being used for the last 75 years. Serendipity.

Silicon Valley 305

Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 305

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. By now the company may have found and settled on a repeatable business model.

Cofounder 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Fixing the Missing Pieces of Infrastructure.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Alexander Osterwalder invented the Business Model Canvas , co-founded strategyzer.com and was the lead author of Business Model Generation which sold a million copies in 30 languages. Big companies have great execution habits to manage and improve successful business models and value propositions.

Non-Compete 329

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 329

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

It may just be that the message of building companies that have predictable revenue and profit models hasn’t percolated through the VC business model. Unfortunately, regardless of a VC’s age, their business models are suffering and IPOs seem to be a thing of the past for at least a while longer.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

If you’ve tried to slog your way through my book on Customer Development you know that I’m insistent that the founders need to be the ones getting outside the building (physically or virtually) to validate all the initial hypotheses of the business model and product.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Up and Running

AUGUST 28, 2019

Also, creating a quick lean financial forecast will help ensure your business idea is viable and financially sound. California can be appealing to California-based investors (particularly fast-growth tech companies) despite high income and corporate taxes, and franchise fees for all businesses regardless of size.

Delaware 83

Delaware Stock Nevada Technical Review 83

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Teams are iterating and pivoting right and left, one team threw their entire business model out the window and did a complete restart, and another team was having a meltdown over personalities. Week 7 of the class.

Revenue 213

Revenue West Virginia Oklahoma Oklahoma City 213

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. After a week of hectic customer discovery , the team further refined their new business model. His lecture covered: What resources do you need to build your business? Where is the best place for your business?

South Dakota 217

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 217

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) so at least some parts are being run by people who know what they are doing.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

So I was astonished how ready and eager students were for a class that combines the toughest problems in national security, with learning Lean Innovation methods. We had more applicants (70+) for the 32 seats in this class than we usually get in our Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship class. Result: Hell yes.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 128

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

So I was astonished how ready and eager students were for a class that combines the toughest problems in national security, with learning Lean Innovation methods. We had more applicants (70+) for the 32 seats in this class than we usually get in our Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship class. Result: Hell yes.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Alexander Osterwalder invented the Business Model Canvas , co-founded strategyzer.com and was the lead author of Business Model Generation which sold a million copies in 30 languages. Big companies have great execution habits to manage and improve successful business models and value propositions.

Non-Compete 120

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2016

The cross-disciplinary class brings students from widely divergent backgrounds together in teams of three to five, each aiming to tackle a gnarly international problem vexing Foggy Bottom in just 10 weeks by applying Lean LaunchPad methodology. In practice, students learned that civil servants are busy and sometimes hard to reach.

Lean 273

Lean Saudi Arabia Austria Silicon Valley 273

Steve Blank

AUGUST 11, 2020

A subsegment of those instructors – those trying to teach Lean LaunchPad, whether in I-Corps, or Hacking for Defense – have an additional burden of figuring out how to teach a class that depends on students getting out of the building and talking to 10 to 15 customers a week. Here’s what we learned. And so it began.

Lean 420

Lean San Francisco Silicon Valley Florida 420

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2015

Errol Arkilic was the lead program director for the National Science Foundation I-Corps , which uses my Lean LaunchPad curriculum to teach scientists and engineers how to take their technology out of the lab and into the marketplace. The Lean LaunchPad class. But nothing else like [The Lean LaunchPad class] was being taught. .

Government 120

Government Channel Southern California Lean 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 22, 2020

Digital Response (USDR) CalFresh Onward California Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) "President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1935-1944" SF New Deal donation/volunteer page Transcript for Out of the Crisis #15: SF New Deal Eric Ries : This is Out of the Crisis, I'm Eric Ries.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Government Technical Review Community 60

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. I talk about this in my book and there is always a discussion at the Lean Startup Group at [link]. Faith-based Entrepreneurship At first, entrepreneurship is a Faith-based initiative.

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 212

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

BMNT , a new Silicon Valley company, is combining the Lean Methods it learned in combat with the technology expertise and speed of startups. The University of California managed research and development of the bomb design at Los Alamos while the US Army managed the Los Alamos facilities and the overall administration of the project.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Kuwait 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

– Cornell University; University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center at Carnegie Mellon University; and the San Diego Supercomputer Center at the University of California at San Diego. Was Ardent’s business model flawed from the start for being so short on potential customers with deep pockets?

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 185

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Innovation – Business Model? Waterfall, Agile, Lean? Others you need to know when you execute the plan. Here is the list of basic startupactivities/functions our class discussion generated: Opportunity – How big? Where do the ideas come from? Technology? Customers – Who are the Users? Who are the economic buyers? New/Disruptive?

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2016

The cross-disciplinary class brings students from widely divergent backgrounds together in teams of three to five, each aiming to tackle a gnarly international problem vexing Foggy Bottom in just 10 weeks by applying Lean LaunchPad methodology. In practice, students learned that civil servants are busy and sometimes hard to reach.

Lean 120

Lean Saudi Arabia Austria Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Rule 1: In an existing market Customer Development means not only understanding potential customers, but your competitors in detail – their product features, their sales channels, their demand creation strategy, their business model, etc. We’re about to ship next week.”

Silicon Valley 181

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Is there a profitable business model? The Traditional VC Pitch Entrepreneurs who pursue the traditional product development model don’t have customer data to answer these questions. Can it scale?”

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Service companies are increasingly looking to get into work-for-equity relationships," says Peter Wendell , managing director of the Menlo Park , California -based venture capital firm Sierra Ventures and a faculty member at Stanford Business School. But Ive definitely had to lean on Dave. My official title is CEO," says Kyle.

Arizona 40

Arizona Equity Iowa Venture Capital 40

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

few years ago I also started following Alexander Osterwalder in his blog about his Business Model Generation -mantra. New York, California different toilet, same s#@t. Vision Synching in a Lean Startup - Startup Marketing Blog , November 12, 2010 In the age of the lean startup , we often forget about the importance of vision.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 11, 2019

Ann will be speaking at this year’s Lean Startup Conference in October about all of this and more. I was in California at that point, where there were a handful of women, which to me was already really inspirational. Then above that is business model power—so, how do you make money? I've been in venture now twice.

Founder 68

Founder Lean Venture Capital Cofounder 68

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

If you’re seeking a bank loan or outside investment, you probably need a traditional business plan. But if you’re writing a plan as an internal guide for strategic growth, you should consider a lighter version— a Lean Plan. This guide to writing a subscription box business plan will help you through the process either way.

Business Plan 63

Business Plan Curation Balance Sheet Intellectual Property 63

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

For the first 25 years HP’s business model was static. Of course HP did ship new products and innovate, but their center of innovation was sustaining innovation , around the core of their existing business. Elephant Graveyard Reinvention of large companies, while making for great case studies are rare.

Silicon Valley 164

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 164

Austin Startup

JUNE 21, 2019

These are some important things to look at when deciding whether it is the right time to go full-time on your business. Below, I am assuming you have done the due diligence of vetting your business model and plans and will be focusing on the individual aspects of making the decision. Bonus read? —?

Founder 49

Founder Salary Cofounder Due Diligence 49