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 242

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.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

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. Ultimately you want to see if you can find customers and a market for the product as specified – as early as possible.

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Startups and Sales If you read this post you can come away with the impression that every startup with a direct salesforce needs a consultative sales team. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? what Market Type is your startup?

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2011

Second, to share how my how my thinking about entrepreneurship as a distinct practice and how Customer Development as one of its central components has evolved over the last decade. Clearshore is a “matchmaker&# that helps small businesses get their fair share of the $60-billion US government budget for R&D and innovation.

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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.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Many thanks, you’ve changed my startup a hundred times already. Maybe the core of what you talk about in getting companies to success lies in the answer to these 2 questions. Oh, I absolutely love your “I was having coffee with person the other day&# stories. Keep ‘em coming.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

An existing market is one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.” Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

There is no certainty about a startup on day-one. You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. At each startup I couldn’t wait to do this. No building, no money, no customers, no market? Great, sign me up.

Silicon Valley 212

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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 [.] [.] Was it your error or cruel fate?

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Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

The best entrepreneurship textbooks and blogs assume that advice to startups is generalizable. But as I learned from my students this “one-size-fits-all” approach does not work for all startups. Different market opportunities present radically different startup risks and costs.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of the 21 st century with the observation that startups aren’t smaller versions of large companies – large companies at their core execute known business models, while startups search for scalable business models. Here’s their description of why and how.

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Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 420

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.

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Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Reply Mark Essel , on July 2, 2009 at 9:14 am Said: Reality distortion field isn’t the basic technique covered in startups 101? Reply Wyatt ODay , on July 2, 2009 at 8:18 am Said: Great post, Steve. I love all these war stories. If entrepreneurs can’t imagine and convince us that we can achieve the impossible, who will?

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

It’s why all of you operated so well in the unpredictable environment that all startups face.” What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. I couldn’t figure out if I was more perturbed about how casual the comment was or how insightful it was.

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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. So while the words may have passed through my ears I couldn’t “hear&# it.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Almost every university, region and car wash now has a business plan competition; the rules, who can participate, how large the prizes and who are the judges vary by school. Over scrambled eggs and diet coke, I listened to this seasoned startup veteran describe the excitement of his students who came to the U.S. to compete.

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The Startup Toolkit

JANUARY 25, 2017

With so many potential instruments to teach, the founder decides to start with just one (this is right) and then decides to talk to customers to figure out exactly which to pick first (this is wrong). And if/when you do get some traction, then you’ll expand into other verticals later anyway. So what are the scary questions here?

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Vertical Video Conversion Business Model 20

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

It’s Episode 3 my little “ Loveline for startups. ” Introduced a few months ago as an Austin event, I’m now doing this live audio advice column to the web, taking phone calls from startups around the country. My co-hosts were Bob Walsh and Patrick Foley , hosts of the well-known Startup Success Podcast.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 22, 2009

Getting Out of the Building Wasn’t Entertainment – Discovery and Validation Now that I was the master of the “facts” about customer needs in these specialized vertical markets , and with my team of vertical marketers , I thought I had achieved absolution and redemption. But there was one fatal flaw.

Silicon Valley 172

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Steve Blank

JULY 23, 2009

In contrast, my customers at Zilog had nothing more than a set of visions, guesses and hallucinations about their customers; who they were, what they wanted to achieve and what was the right path to get there. At these startups both the problem and solution were unknown.

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steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Useful blogs and links for startups Click Here ————– 2.

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