Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Part 1: Bend, Oregon Ecosystem and Entrepreneurs. Success depends on finding startups that have identified acute customer pains in large markets where conditions are ripe for a new entrant. Few entrepreneurs find this scalable and repeatable business model because it’s not easy. Here’s Part 2 of Dino’s story….

Early Stage 286

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 286

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 11, 2016

When they found out, they questioned my decision-making and me as an entrepreneur. And not keep investors informed about changes to your business model can have serious consequences. They questioned my decision-making and me as an entrepreneur. Meanwhile, the investors thought we were dead. Where did this company miss?

Columbus 245

Columbus Entrepreneur Ohio Cofounder 245

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

While it sounds simple , the Build Measure Learn approach to product development is a radical improvement over the traditional Waterfall model used throughout the 20 th century to build and ship products. Only after shipping and attempting to sell the product would a startup hear any substantive feedback from customers.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). And going for crowdfunding before you do customer discovery with customers can lock you into the wrong idea too early. Tiffani Bell.

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

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.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

The teams present what they learned talking to 10-15 customer/week, and get comments, suggestions and critiques from their teaching team. We’ve recorded these panels for each part of the business model canvas. It turns out that for commercialization, the business model (Customers, Channel, Revenue Model, etc.)

Lean 258

Lean Customer Business Model Customer Development 258

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

Over the last ten years, entrepreneurs began to understand that startups were not simply smaller versions of large companies. While companies execute business models, startups search for a business model. (Or It will spread to the enterprise and ultimately every other business segment. Happy Thanksgiving.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

Alexander Osterwalder and I spent last week in Salt Lake City, Utah as judges at the 2 nd Annual International Business Model Competition , hosted by Professor Nathan Furr , and his team at the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship. The Business Plan ? The Business Plan ?- a roadmap for execution.

Business Model 263

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 263

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. We were positing that 20 years of teaching “how to write a business plan” might be obsolete. This post is part one.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. I don’t recommend anyone become an entrepreneur. Starting a business is too risky. The tools and temperament needed to get from startup idea to startup success were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

In the last five years “ Lean Startup ” methodologies have enabled entrepreneurs to efficiently build a startup by searching for product/market fit rather than blindly trying to execute. However in practice most companies treated the Three Horizons like they are simply incremental execution of the same business model.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 11, 2016

When they found out, they questioned my decision-making and me as an entrepreneur. And not keep investors informed about changes to your business model can have serious consequences. They questioned my decision-making and me as an entrepreneur. Meanwhile, the investors thought we were dead. Where did this company miss?

Columbus 120

Columbus Entrepreneur Ohio Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. I don’t recommend anyone become an entrepreneur. Starting a business is too risky. The tools and temperament needed to get from startup idea to startup success were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2015

Starting this Monday, March 9 th 4-6pm Pacific Time I’ll be on the radio hosting the Bay Area Ventures program on Sirius XM radio Channel 111 – the Wharton Business Radio Channel. Over this program I’ll be talking to entrepreneurs, financial experts and academic leaders in the tech and biotech industries.

Channel 120

Channel Venture Capital Lean Business Model 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

By the end of the 20th century, case studies and business plans had reached an evolutionary dead-end for entrepreneurs. The Rise of Business Schools – Management as an Occupation. The business school was invented in the first decade of the 20th century in response to a massive economic transformation in the U.S.

Lean 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions and even billions of users can happen in years versus decades. Continuous innovation requires the imagination and courage to challenge the initial hypotheses of your current business model (channel, cost, customers, products, supply chain, etc.)

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

Today, however there are two important updates for entrepreneurs everywhere. Two years in the making and literally ten years in development, I’m proud to announce that my new book, The Startup Owners Manual , goes onto the printing press next Tuesday. Startups search for business models, exisitng companies execute them.

Entrepreneur 289

Entrepreneur Lean Business Model Customer Development 289

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2016

To be honest I built the class out of frustration watching schools teach aspiring entrepreneurs that all they need to know is how to write a business plan or how to sit in an incubator building a product. using the business model canvas as the framework. in order to validate/invalidate their business model hypotheses.

Lean 120

Lean Incubator Business Model Channel 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Having just retired from a career as an entrepreneur I had started thinking about why startups were different from large companies. Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

I’m in Australia and just spent time with some great entrepreneurs in Melbourne. The biggest mistake for most of these startups was not understanding that optimizing their business model for the 24 million people in the Australian market would not prepare them for the size and scale they needed to get to big. Trip 2 to the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

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

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ?

Search 320

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

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. We had validated our new assumptions by a set of orders, and we had pivoted on our business model.

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

The Next Web

DECEMBER 30, 2012

These are with no doubt worthwhile goals, but I’d like to pose an important challenge for founders: Make learning and development your key resolution in 2013. How to Build a Startup (EP245) by Steve Blank: You’ll learn the key steps of the Customer Development process. For example, check out this GE Skillshare school.

Artificial Inteligence 156

Artificial Inteligence Founder Private Equity Ruby 156

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

We have two great teaching assistants , plus we’ve rounded up a team of 25 mentors (VC’s and entrepreneurs) to help coach the teams. Business schools teach aspiring executives a variety of courses around the execution of known business models, (accounting, organizational behavior, managerial skills, marketing, operations, etc.).

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

How startup ideas are conceived and nurtured was the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward.

Cofounder 274

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

How startup ideas are conceived and nurtured was the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward.

Cofounder 274

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams can prove their competence and validate their ideas by showing investors evidence that there’s a repeatable and scalable business model. A Lean Startup methodology offers entrepreneurs a framework to focus on what’s important: Business Model Discovery. Here’s how.

Oakland 326

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 27, 2016

Doing customer discovery isn’t the same as running a focus group. And customers don’t always know the best way to solve a problem or fill a need they have. How entrepreneurs gather, understand and use customer feedback to improve their products was the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show.

Cofounder 264

Cofounder Entrepreneur Hawaii Massachusetts 264

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Entrepreneur-in-Residence After SuperMac I had been approached by one of our venture investors to be an entrepreneur in residence (EIR), a Silicon Valley phrase which says one thing but means another. I offered to introduce him to the firm whose Entrepreneur-in-Residence offer I had just accepted.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers. In many of them I get asked similar questions, including the inevitable “what makes a great entrepreneur?” They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. " In fact, 3 of the 10 selected companies from the past two years has followed this business model.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2016

While finding product-market fit is important, getting the rest of the business model right is the difference between and a great demo and a great business. We did a lot of talking to customers, trying to understand who really had the need. That helped us develop a product. . What was the value proposition?

Cofounder 120

Cofounder DC Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. Or blame my MarCom department who approved it.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

For some entrepreneurs this idea that the founder is not necessarily the CEO, is a surprise. Its goal is to take the original idea and search for a repeatable and scalable business model - first by finding product/market fit, then by testing all the parts of the business model (pricing, channel, acquisition/activation, partners, costs, etc.).

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

Steve Blank

MAY 10, 2011

What really matters are the business model canvas diagrams in the body and appendix of each presentation. By comparing the changes the teams made week-to-week-week in their business model canvas diagrams, you’ll see the dynamics of entrepreneurship, as they iterate and Pivot over time. Team Agora. in one quarter.

Lean 279

Lean Business Model Agile Customer Development 279

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2012

Mentors (average age ~50) are an experienced entrepreneur located near the academic institution and has experience in transiting technology out of academic labs. Few of the Principal Investigators or Entrepreneurial Leads had startup experience, and few of the mentors were familiar with Business Model design or Customer Development.

Lean 248

Lean Incubator Business Model Georgia 248

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 21, 2020

However, the key difference between a successful and unsuccessful startup rests on the shoulders of the entrepreneur themselves. What do Successful Entrepreneurs do that Others Don’t? Entrepreneurs who succeed may have crazy ideas, but they do not stop there. They Make Smart, Calculated Business Decisions.

Startup 114

Startup Acquisition Business Model Finance 114