Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Few entrepreneurs find this scalable and repeatable business model because it’s not easy. The cloud , open-source development tools and web 2.0 as a distribution channel have vastly reduced the amount of capital a startup needs at the early stage when the risk is greatest. Valley-sized VC funds don’t work.

Early Stage 287

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 287

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. (I

Burn Rate 249

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 249

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. Alex Osterwalder – Business Models. Mark your calendar for 4-6pm Pacific Time on Sirius XM Radio Channel 111 : March 9 th.

Channel 120

Channel Venture Capital Lean Business Model 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

The first, the notion of the “ ambidextrous organization ” from O’Reilly and Tushman , posits that companies that want to do continuous innovation need to execute their core business model while innovating in parallel. Horizon 1 activities support existing business models. Horizon 1 is the company’s core business.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

If you’re a technical startup founder, one of the painful lessons is that it’s not enough just to build a great product. You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). Clay Hebert , founder of Crowdfunding Hacks. Clay Hebert.

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. He was constantly in front of customers, listening, selling, installing and learning. What I saw reminded me of some of the best and worst things I did as a founder. And that’s where the problem was. A Pivot a Week. he’d declare. “We

Founder 317

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 317

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

Business plans presume that building a startup is a series of predictable steps requiring execution of a plan which assumes a series of known facts: known customers, known features, known pricing, known distribution channel. The reality is that most business plans don’t survive first contact with customers.

Lean 435

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 435

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

Talking to customers seems like a simple idea, but most founders find it’s one of the hardest things they have to do. Founders innately believe they understand a customers problem and just need to spend their time building a solution. You can test your hypotheses with a series of experiments with potential customers.

Customer 415

Customer Business Model Restful Video 415

Steve Blank

JULY 14, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Alexander Osterwalder – inventor of the Business Model Canvas. What’s the Business Model Canvas? Because at the end of the day a business model only survives if it can be profitable.”.

Channel 120

Channel Business Model Cofounder Business Plan 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

However, in meeting some of the sports startups one of the things that struck me is that most of the founders who said they wanted to grow big hadn’t given much thought about how they would go about building size and scale. But other critical hypotheses such as activities, resources, partners, channels needed testing offshore.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

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. Market segments drive your business model.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 143

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 143

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

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 322

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 322

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 246

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 246

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

The Roominate dollhouse building kits are being sold via their own website and soon, retail channels. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So So what would the retail channel consultant do?” They learned a ton. It’s wrong.

PR 316

PR China Lean Channel 316

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

In fact, you could say that all that remains from my last book are the four steps of Customer Development. Integrates Alexander Osterwalders “Business Model Canvas” as the front-end and “scorecard” for the customer discovery process. Startups search for business models, exisitng companies execute them.

Entrepreneur 291

Entrepreneur Lean Business Model Customer Development 291

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

But founders need to know how to ask for their advice and when to ignore it. Startup Insights From Paul English, Co-Founder of Kayak - OnStartups , May 10, 2010 I’m just wrapping up several weeks of attending conferences across both coasts. They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

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

JUNE 3, 2013

The Roominate dollhouse building kits are being sold via their own website and soon, retail channels. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So So what would the retail channel consultant do?” They learned a ton. It’s wrong.

PR 208

PR China Lean Channel 208

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

Even though the Ceres Imaging founders initially wanted to build drones, talking to potential customers convinced them that as I predicted, the farmers couldn’t care less how the company acquired the data. All of sudden what was an additional engineering and development effort now became a small, variable cost.

Customer 318

Customer Algorithm Customer Development California 318

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

In this post we’re going to offer a new definition of why startups exist : a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. A Business Model. Ok, but what is a business model ? A business model describes how your company creates, delivers and captures value.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2014

It’s now been over 3 years since the team has left my classroom and I thought I’d share with you what the two founders, Jorge Heraud and Lee Redden, learned then and what they’re doing now. Students need to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching'

Lean 274

Lean Silicon Valley Customer Development Incubator 274

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 The three drivers of growth for your business model. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?) He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

A startup founder needs to never lose sight of the vision, but be extremely adaptable to pretty much everything else. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. Lots of people have visions.

Cofounder 276

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 276

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

A startup founder needs to never lose sight of the vision, but be extremely adaptable to pretty much everything else. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. And realizing your vision as a founder takes equal parts determination and flexibility. Lots of people have visions.

Cofounder 276

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 276

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Startups that are searching for a business model need to keep score differently than large companies that are executing a known business model. Yet most entrepreneurs and their VC’s make startups use financial models and spreadsheets that actually hinder their success. Managing the Business. Here’s why.

Balance Sheet 300

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 300

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

(For the teaching team this was our first opportunity to see if the Lean Startup process and this Lean LaunchPad class would work not just for new startups, but also for existing businesses, a test we would face years later teaching established Life Science companies rather than startups for the National Institutes of Health.

North America 120

North America Lean Customer Development Distribution 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

Bob looked wistful, “Our founders built a company known for taking risks and moving fast. More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. Therefore startups trade off certainty for speed, adopting “ good enough decision making ” and iterating and pivoting as they fail, learn, and discover their business model.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2013

Part 4: This Will Save us Years – Customer Discovery in Medical Devices. Part 5: Value proposition and customer segments in Life Sciences. Part 6: Distribution channels in Life Sciences. Part 8: When Customers Make You Smarter –Customer Discovery in Digital Health. Basil Ayish , MBA, Business Development.

Lean 243

Lean Customer Development IP Agile 243

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2009

Gathering real-world feedback from customers is a core concept of Customer Development as well as the Lean Startup. I called the founder and noted that there are SAT tests that are shorter than the survey. Customer Development suggests that founders have continual and timely customer, channel and market information.

Metrics 240

Metrics Customer Customer Development Lean 240

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. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder DC Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Michael Ingle , founder of Clean Sleep mattress sanitizing service. Graeme Gordon , founder of Sneak Guard , creator of safe responsible storage containers.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Fort Worth America Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. A Day in the Life of A Founder For those of you who’ve never started a company, let me assure you that it never happens like the pleasant articles you read in business magazines or in case studies.

Founder 302

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 302

Steve Blank

JULY 19, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Peter Arvai , co-founder of Prezi , an interactive presentation platform. Peter and his co-founders were committed to making Prezi a global company.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Sweden 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

And no amount of business success is enough if you don’t have time with your family. Values – who and what founders and customers hold dear – were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Ryan Smith , co-founder of Qualtrics insight platform. Ryan Smith. Lane Merrifield. You guys were geniuses.”

Cofounder 146

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 146

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2016

What it was like to get out of the research lab to build a startup was the focus of interviews with two of the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern). We couldn’t figure out the right business model to move forward with.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Michigan Detroit 120