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 248

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 248

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 252

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 252

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. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 233

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 233

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 229

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 229

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Some really great stuff in 2010 that aims to help startups around product, technology, business models, etc.

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back. Now In Print!

Technology 142

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Ps: my limited perspective comes with self recognition of a lack of hands on experience always enjoy it when I stop in to read here Steve Reply Aamir , on July 2, 2009 at 10:18 am Said: Awesome post Steve… but isn’t drawing the business model for a gaming company going to be easy? Make game, market, sell, profit?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. Hype before shipping any product is an obvious flaw, but what about hyping products that have shipped but have zero business model?

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

“vertical&# works perfectly fine in quickly telling you about a general direction of a company’s business model. What is it that’s unique about the market I’m in? We’ll talk about the implications of what vertical market you’re entering in the next few posts. Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here.

Vertical 154

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 154

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I hate business plan competitions. I Love Business Plan Competitions I had a breakfast with a friend who has founded a few companies in Thailand and started the New Ventures Program at one of their universities. as one attempt to clearly define how exactly the company is creating value in the market. I now think that was a mistake.

Business Plan 152

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 152

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.) But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Reply steveblank , on September 16, 2009 at 7:00 pm said: Greg, The Google Group “Lean Startup Circle&# at [link] is a wonderful repository of Customer Development/Lean Startup success and failure. I hewar via thew grapevine that you’re thinking about a ‘Business Model Competition’ Interesting.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

The dysfunctional family theory may explain why founders who excel in the chaotic early phases of a company throw organizational hand grenades into their own companies after they find a repeatable and scaleable business model and need to switch gears into execution. Let me know what you think. Comments and brickbats welcomed.

Founder 308

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 308

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Great article youre now in my rss feeds :) October 2, 2008 4:37 AM kamilski81 said. Hi Eric, Great article - Ive added you to my regular RSS reads. For example, how are you going to explain that component drive architecture like.NET isn't going to work for cross platform open open source business models?

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. Customer Development This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 231

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 231

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.”

Silicon Valley 203

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 203

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Cray called two years ago and bought it back for parts for an unnamed customer still running one. Was Ardent’s business model flawed from the start for being so short on potential customers with deep pockets? I liked to fail fast, move on, and not look back. I liked to fail fast, move on, and not [.] [.]

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 206

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

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 22, 2009

At this point in my career I didn’t understand that the goal of getting outside the building was not only finding markets with potential customers to sell to but also confirming the company’s vision, business model and product/market fit. I had done a good job of Customer Discovery but failed at Customer Validation.

Silicon Valley 193

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 193

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 124

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

Steve Blank

JULY 23, 2009

Startups were not just smaller versions of a large company, they were about invention, innovation and iteration - of business model, product, customers and on and on. And one of my conclusions was that I needed to pick one job not two. At these startups both the problem and solution were unknown. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 121

Silicon Valley RSS California Chad 121

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. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 182

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 182

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

You can listen by subscribing to my podcast on iTunes , or it’s enclosed in this blog’s RSS feed , or you can just download the mp3 of the first hour. Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

market-by-numbers.com

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Market By Numbers on Twitter | Entries RSS | Comments RSS Market By Numbers High-Tech Marketing and Customer Development Home What is Customer Development? one component of the business is the driving force of the strategy — the company’s so-called DNA. Please Share!

San Diego 40

San Diego RSS Lean Elevator Pitch 40

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

Certainly using techniques such as customer development (www.custdev.com) and lean startup (minimum viable product) can help go a long way to giving the tech co-founder some early payback in terms of whether there will be any traction in the idea and reduce their inital involvment to get to prototype stage. Search: RSS Feed.

Technical Cofounder 42

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. If you enjoyed this article, Get VC Cafe delivered by email or subscribe using your Feed Reader and RSS Share this: Email Twitter Google +1 Facebook LinkedIn Share/Bookmark. broken vc model. Business Culture. Business Model Canvas. Business plan.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

I’m not afraid to pick up the phone, cold call someone, use LinkedIn to find someone who’s recently left a company that might be considered competitive and ask them for advise around the business model and marketplace. Now our biz model is lighter, more flexible. Subscribe via RSS. I may iterate 3 times in one day.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44