Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

Surprisingly if you’ve filled out the business model canvas you already know who you need. I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup. Filed under: Customer Development. Customer Development'

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

As part of our Lean LaunchPad classes at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and for the National Science Foundation, students build a startup in 8 weeks using Business Model Design + Customer Development. Read Business Model Generation pages 1-72, and The Four Steps to the Epiphany Chapter 3. Lessons Learned.

Lean 333

Lean Web Coder Business Model 333

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

I’ve spoken to dozens of customers, I have a validated customer persona, built an MVP to test key behavioral hypotheses, and the data doesn’t back what you’re saying." " Today I had two conversations with early stage startups (see Free CTO Consulting ). " One was an enterprise software product.

Customer 227

Customer Fractional CTO Viral Lean 227

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. Get Out of the Building and test the Business Model. This post is part one. to get hard-earned information.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

No, the conversation was about to get more interesting. We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. This methodology forces rapid hypothesis testing and Customer Development by getting out of the building while building the product. billion U.S.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

Designing Your Business Model Crafting a business model is like building a blueprint for your venture. Then, consider how you’ll reach your customers and what kind of relationship you want to build with them. Revenue streams are another critical component of your business model.

Intellectual Property 132

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 132

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

I reminded her that all the Lean tools she learned in class–Customer Discovery, business model and value proposition canvases– contained her answer. Filed under: Customer Development , Marketing. She winced as I reminded her that she had gone through the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps.

Marketing 310

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 310

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2021

He was trying to sell the “story” of Customer Discovery as part of the Lean Methodology to his CEO by explaining how discovery worked with the business model canvas, agile engineering, pivots and MVPs. But talking about the method to others is not the same as “doing” Customer Discovery.

Lean 435

Lean Agile Conversion Business Model 435

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. Your product is designed with natural tripwires to trigger other pricing ( Freemium model ), or not (business model left as an exercise to your future self). You will be compared to alternatives and weighed.

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

business models. There is a huge difference between the Chinese who have never left and those who went to school abroad, even for a few months – at least a difference in their ability to relate to me and have a conversation on the same wavelength. business models. Of course “copy” is too strong a word.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 11, 2016

And not keep investors informed about changes to your business model can have serious consequences. We were approached to get funded and had enough success and promise at the time, but we couldn’t find alignment around the notion of building a lifestyle business first, a venture-based business, and how big it could really be.

Columbus 245

Columbus Entrepreneur Ohio Cofounder 245

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

a language corporate innovation groups can use to communicate to business units and finance. Teams can prove their competence and validate their ideas by showing investors evidence that there’s a repeatable and scalable business model. data that investors, accelerators and incubators can use to inform selection.

Sacramento 306

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 306

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. That kicked off this long conversation about how you might try to leverage this evolution of education technology to create scalable impact in places where tuition couldn’t be the driver of growth. It’s too hard.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2014

1:28: Using the Business Model Canvas. 1:49: Use Customer Development to Test Your Hypotheses. 4:24: No Business Plan Survives First Contact with Customers. Module 2, Getting Out of the Building: Customer Development. 0:24: What is Customer Development? 2:44: What is a Pivot?

Intellectual Property 328

Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development Acquisition 328

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 2, 2013

We talk a lot about Customer Development, but there’s nothing like seeing it in action to understand its power. Here’s what happened when an extraordinary Digital Health team gained several critical insights about their business model. device makers own customers would stay their customers for 10 years (i.e.

Customer 323

Customer Churn Rate Customer Development Lean 323

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. That kicked off this long conversation about how you might try to leverage this evolution of education technology to create scalable impact in places where tuition couldn’t be the driver of growth. It’s too hard.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

The art of entrepreneurship and the science of Customer Development is not just getting out of the building and listening to prospective customers. He got my attention when he said, “following your customer development stuff is making my company fail.” Then I asked, “Satish, what’s your business model?

Customer 325

Customer Business Model Customer Development Startup 325

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

business models. There is a huge difference between the Chinese who have never left and those who went to school abroad, even for a few months – at least a difference in their ability to relate to me and have a conversation on the same wavelength. business models. Of course “copy” is too strong a word.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ) Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2013

” conversation with investors. (If The Petal Diagram drives your business model canvas. What the chart is saying is, “we think our customers will come from these markets.” What the chart is saying is, “we think our customers will come from these markets.”

Venture Capital 335

Venture Capital Customer Development Business Model Lean 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2014

For those who don’t know, I wrote the book Open Innovation in 2003, and followed it with Open Business Models in 2006, and Open Services Innovation in 2011. A startup is a temporary organization in search of a repeatable, scalable business model. When companies want to innovate a new business model (vs.

Startup 327

Startup Business Model Lean Russia 327

Steve Blank

APRIL 3, 2012

We now know how to teach entrepreneurs how to think about business models and use customer development to turn hypotheses into facts. We had a couple of minutes to catch up between sessions and the conversation got strangely awkward when I asked him how their startup was going. Epiphany e·piph·a·ny noun ?/i?pif?n?/.

Flash 313

Flash Customer Development Business Model Developer 313

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

We had an almost identical conversation when the subject turned to hiring a Public Relations agency. Bettina said, “We want to drive customer demand into our channel.” I took a deep breath and said, “Look this is just like the channel consultant conversation. Don’t you have 5,000 existing customers? Hiring PR Agencies.

PR 314

PR China Lean Channel 314

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

But businesses are finding that Continuous Deployment not only changes engineering but has ripple effects on the rest of its business model. And these changes may have unintended consequences leading to customer dissatisfaction and confusion. The Old Days – Waterfall Product Development. Lessons Learned.

Continuous Deployment 329

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 329

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

“I’ve been running our company, cycling through Customer Discovery and Validation and the board suggested that I was running out of bandwidth and needed some help in closing our initial orders. I knew where this conversation was going. Every time we iterate even a small part of our business model or product he gets upset.

Startup 312

Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 312

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

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. For software startups, ask yourselves this question: What’s the one screen that will make your customers get it? .

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 11, 2016

And not keep investors informed about changes to your business model can have serious consequences. We were approached to get funded and had enough success and promise at the time, but we couldn’t find alignment around the notion of building a lifestyle business first, a venture-based business, and how big it could really be.

Columbus 120

Columbus Entrepreneur Ohio Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The Customer is a Genius Then instead of talking about our products he segued the conversation into their products. And soon the conversation were about architectural tradeoffs and then how customers didn’t appreciate the elegant designs and how the world was going to hell in a handbasket because of these commodity microprocessors.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

AUGUST 22, 2011

Part of each conversation was getting asked to help them put together a “job spec.”. Now with the data in front of you, the conversation about hiring can start. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development , Family/Career , Technology. I had them leave with a pie chart.

Hiring 290

Hiring Non-Compete Search Customer Development 290

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Reinventing the board meeting may allow venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. for a business model. Victor Hugo.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

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.). Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career/Culture.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Customer Development. A well-developed model is Andreessen Horowitz’s Executive Briefing Center. Build a network of on-call domain experts, who will have short conversations with portfolio management, typically at no cost. . For more, see Recruiting Hacks: Best Practices in Wooing and Winning the High Performers.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

We had an almost identical conversation when the subject turned to hiring a Public Relations agency. Bettina said, “We want to drive customer demand into our channel.” I took a deep breath and said, “Look this is just like the channel consultant conversation. Don’t you have 5,000 existing customers? Hiring PR Agencies.

PR 206

PR China Lean Channel 206

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 30, 2014

It was also found that “Engaged” customers received 3-4 (or more) reviews of their portfolios and were taking part of on-going conversations where their advisor was soliciting feedback and asking for actual input. Understanding the conversions that come from referrals is only one half of the equation though.

Programming 107

Programming Marketing Analytics Portfolio 107

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2019

Followed by an 8-minute slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. All the presentations are worth a watch. Team: Panacea.

Oakland 266

Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 266

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

I suggested the best place to start the conversation is with the 21 st century definition of a startup: A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. That means in their core business, large companies have a series of knowns.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 16, 2013

Seems like every third startup nowadays is using the “Freemium” business model: The lowest service tier is free, and the business is designed to get those users hooked and then upgrade to a paid plan. That’s something few other business models can boast. Stats for selling.

Marketing 318

Marketing Viral Campaign Business Model 318