Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

In the early stages of a startup your hypotheses about all the parts of your business model are your profound beliefs. You can’t be an effective founder or in the C-suite of a startup if you don’t hold any. Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development. What do you think?”

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Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 315

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 249

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 249

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2014

Kauffman just launched Founders School - a new education series to help entrepreneurs develop their businesses during the startup stage by highlighting how startups are different from big companies. 0:43: Business Plans versus Business Models. 1:46: The Differences: Accounting, Engineering & Sales.

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Founder Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 328

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Try innovating inside a large company where 99% of the company is executing the current business model, while you’re trying to figure out and build what comes next. Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? You think startups are hard? Is it that some CEOs are better than others?

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Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 408

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. He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject.

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 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. Market segments drive your business model.

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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

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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 246

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

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

I''ve been thinking a lot lately about scaling sales. . Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. How do I build a repeatable, scalable sales process that is like an industrial machine - not a crafts project? 1) Enterprise Sales.

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Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

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.)

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 201

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

The role of a founding CEO in a startup searching for a business model is radically different than a CEO building and growing a company. So if you’re the founder of a startup, you may want to consider who you take money from. Is Your VC Founder Friendly? Do they “get&# Customer Development ?

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Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

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. Through advertising or direct sales, these sites harvest intent. It says what?!”).

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They looked at their watches, gave our sales guy a quizzical look and left.

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

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 ?

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Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 322

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Are there customers for what you are building? How many are there?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

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. For example, many of the Australian sports tech business models shared common elements. sales office.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need. The “I know what features to build” flaw.

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Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

You’ll learn more about what destroys startups, how to use the Customer Development method to succeed, how to use the Business Model Canvas, how to identify and keep your customers, and how to drive profits. Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers.

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Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. Hiring Channel Sales. “So Why doesn’t this sound like the right thing to do for channel sales?” They thought about it for a moment and said, “Well we feel like we understand how to build things, but sales is something we thought we’d hire an expert to do.”.

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PR China Lean Channel 316

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 27, 2015

—– In a recent workshop with a large company focused on the Innovation@50x process, I mentioned that founders and intraprenuers operate more like artists than accountants – on day one they see something no one else does. I wondered what lessons Pixar, an animation studio, could have for founders. Like a startup founder.)

Founder 120

Founder Lean Hawaii Incubator 120

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. Mainstream Entrepreneurship recognizes that with the Lean LaunchPad class we now have a methodology of making small businesses fail less.

Silicon Valley 307

Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 307

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. Hiring Channel Sales. “So Why doesn’t this sound like the right thing to do for channel sales?” They thought about it for a moment and said, “Well we feel like we understand how to build things, but sales is something we thought we’d hire an expert to do.”.

PR 208

PR China Lean Channel 208

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.

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Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

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.

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Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 300

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Little Indians and Big Indians At MIPS Computers , my second semiconductor company, I was the VP of Marketing and defacto head of Sales. Isn’t that what I was supposed to do?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 280

Steve Blank

AUGUST 22, 2011

Having sat through these job discussions as an entrepreneur, board member, and now an interested observer, here’s what I concluded: Decide whether you’re hiring someone to help search for the business model or to help execute a business model you’ve already found (same is true is you’re looking for a job – are you going to be searching or executing?)

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Hiring Non-Compete Search Customer Development 292

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

So the departments either didn’t have the capacity to pay or it would be an endless sales-cycle, where we would spend lots of time on the sales, but it still wouldn’t close. In the end the revenue simply wasn’t enough to make a sustainable business and so we had to switch gears once more (in today’s parlance that would be a “Pivot”).

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Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

What matters is proving the viability of the company’s business model, what investors call “traction.&# It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. For a startup, having great sales DNA is a wonderful asset.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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.

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Metrics Customer Customer Development Lean 240

SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2011

This site aggregates and filters content from thought leaders who talk about topics such as Marketing , Sales , Design , Revenue , Hiring , Social Media , Business Models , Metrics , PR , Venture Capital , Angel Investors , Bootstrapping , Incubators , Agile and many others.

Intellectual Property 175

Intellectual Property Aggregator Startup IP 175

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

These new entrants disrupted their food categories by offering high quality proprietary recipes, outsourcing their manufacturing, and using their cash and resources on sales and marketing to build distribution and a differentiated brand. They ran 10 in-store demos, which got them talking to 100s of more customers.

North America 120

North America Lean Customer Development Distribution 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

A lot of entrepreneurs think that their startup is the next big thing when in reality they’re just building a small business. A first order filter is whether the founders are aiming for a scalable startup. Now with customers and early revenue, it was out raising its first round of venture money. Go For Broke. Take No Prisoners.

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Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 284

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

OCTOBER 9, 2018

They use the Business Model (or Mission Model ) Canvas to keep track of their key hypotheses and then rapidly test them by talking to customers and iterating their Minimal Viable Products. Diagram Your Business Model. The best way to start is by drawing a business model canvas. In what order?

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Marketing Startup Government SEC 322

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? The core idea behind customer development is that the assumptions you make about a target market are only guesses. Website Analysis.

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Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. The goal was commercial products, but as scientists and engineers the company’s founders realized that at times the cost of experimentation was failure. Scientists and Engineers as Founders.

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Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 307