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. We were positing that 20 years of teaching “how to write a business plan” might be obsolete. This post is part one.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2015

It is in need of innovation on many fronts and is also trying to embrace the amazing amount of innovation happening with early-stage companies. Yet, I have noticed that many healthcare startups make “leap of faith assumptions” as they try to build their businesses. This isn’t just about conducting 100 customer interviews.

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Startup Early Stage Azure Lean 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. Others dream things that never were and ask why not. George Bernard Shaw.

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Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 332

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

As I looked around at other schools, I saw pretty much the same landscape – business plan classes, business plan competitions and loosely coupled accelerators that focused primarily on mentoring. Traction and evidence from customers were what investors were looking for – even in “slow” sectors like healthcare and energy.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

You find early stage employees expecting to work normal hours, to get paid a regular salary, and not asking or expecting equity. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. There isn’t much of a killer instinct among the masses.

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Finland Naming Russia Government 324

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. They’ve tested their hypotheses with literally hundreds of customer interviews on every continent in the world.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

The first time a few brave corporate innovators tried to overlay the Lean tools and techniques that work in early-stage startups in an existing corporation, the result was chaos, confusion, frustration and ultimately, failure. 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

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

The cause is often sales and marketing execs who’ve become too comfortable with an initial sales model and panic at the first sign of a Pivot. As a result they block new iterations of the business model that might take the company to the next level. So selling integrated circuits meant a search for a business model.

Silicon Valley 239

Silicon Valley Technical Review Spain Engineer 239

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

There was no burden on those who proposed a new idea or technology to talk to customers, build minimal viable products, test hypotheses or understand the barriers to deployment. Who are the customers? One of the quickest ways to sort innovation ideas is to use the McKinsey Three Horizons Model. Commercially available solutions.

Incubator 312

Incubator Curation Engineer Government 312

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

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. The problem stems from selling each customer a custom one-time product.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any engineering, customer or competitor problem, and you shouldn’t agonize over trying to find one. An example of a reversible decision could be adding a product feature, a new algorithm in the code, targeting a specific set of customers, etc.

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Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Dan Kozikowski, Partner and Head of Platform, First Mark Capital , said to me, “Firms should match services to the stage-specific needs of companies. For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. But things like vendor introductions are only needle-movers at the earliest stages.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? Yet for every founder there are 10-20 other employees who take the near-equivalent risks in joining an early-stage company. And you will be dealing with change, but it won’t be the constant daily change the early employees dealt with.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

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. It bears repeating: an early-stage startup must focus on making one customer group excited by a mission-aligned product.

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Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Lean Planning is a set of tools for discovering a business model that works, building an action plan to test your assumptions, creating financial models and a plan for a viable business, and tracking your performance so you can adjust your plan on the fly, quickly and easily.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. — An experienced team made all the difference to 2U finding success, Jeremy said: We had a phenomenal early group of people that were brought together to try to address the problem. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams can prove their competence and validate their ideas by showing investors evidence that there’s a repeatable and scalable business model. A Lean Startup methodology offers entrepreneurs a framework to focus on what’s important: Business Model Discovery. We focus on evidence and trajectory across the business model.

Oakland 326

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. — An experienced team made all the difference to 2U finding success, Jeremy said: We had a phenomenal early group of people that were brought together to try to address the problem. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

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

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

Business Model Issues. Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up. Business Model Issues. Yet healthcare has its own unique regulatory and reimbursement issues and business model issues that must be understood. Venture Capital Issues. Regulatory Issues.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. Victor Hugo.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

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. These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

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. I got to spend time inside his company while I was using their software to analyze early-stage ventures. And that’s where the problem was.

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Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 316

The Equity Kicker

MAY 7, 2015

Steve Blank gave us this now famous definition of a startup: A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. We think the best next step is to find a point of emotional connection with customers. We have gone a step further. we re-join Blank).

Business Model 60

Business Model Search Due Diligence Early Stage 60

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 thought our new Sales VP would be out in front helping us lead Customer Validation and help us find the Pivot. That was the plan.

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Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 312

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

A lot of my time is spent helping early-stage companies get to proof points so that they can raise capital. They might have some seed money and are thinking or raising a Series A based on success of an early release (MVP). Think about how you can prove your business model with an MVP. is a requirement.

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Valuation Revenue Pre-Money Valuation Early Stage 198

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.

Marketing 321

Marketing Startup Government SEC 321

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

When you take money from investors their business model becomes yours. Sigh… What I should have been hearing is the search for the business model, specifically the progress on product/market fit, but I hear the fund raising story first at least 90% of the time. How do we attract, keep and grow customers?

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 333

Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

The premise of the class is that startups, are not about executing a plan where the product, customers, channel are known. Startups are in fact only temporary organizations, organized to search –not execute–for a scalable and repeatable business model. The EngineKites customer discovery narrative blog is here.

Lean 256

Lean Business Model Agile United States 256

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2010

One of the toughest problems for entrepreneurs is to keep score as they search for their business model. One of the key concepts of Customer Development is writing down your initial hypotheses (guesses) of all the parts of your business model, then updating them with the facts you find outside the building.

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Customer Development Business Model Early Stage Channel 211

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

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. What startup stage do they typically invest in? Do they “get&# Customer Development ? What Startup Stage Do they Invest In? Your potential business model?

Founder 231

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

To a Hammer Everything Looks Like a Nail In hindsight my failure was that I executed to my strength – telling a compelling story – without actually listening to customer feedback. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to listen to customers. I had outsourced customer feedback and ignored the input.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. Yet boards of large companies exist to monitor efficient strategy and execution of a known business model.

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

In the real world, most business plans don’t survive the first few months of customer contact. And even if they did – customers don’t ask to see your business plan. MootCorp in particular has an impressive track record of putting early stage tech companies on the right path towards funding.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140