Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 25, 2023

No matter how well your business seems to have worked for you up to this point, you can be certain that it will need to be heavily transformed for tomorrow’s new world-wide economy and no industry sector boundaries. I will paraphrase their key strategy challenges here, with my own points added: You can be too focused on the short-term.

Partner 350

Partner Operations Metrics Leadership 350

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 12, 2022

For success these days, the purpose better focus on people, and solve a real problem for customers. Building successful businesses still requires the ability to find and inspire the best people who “have what you haven't,” whether that be skills, knowledge, connections, or funding. Master-mind alliance. Imagination. Enthusiasm.

Technical Review 297

Technical Review Angel Investor Differentiation Business Model 297

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 13, 2023

A well-constructed business model is a foundational element of a business plan and strategy. It provides clarity on how a company plans to succeed in the marketplace and is essential for attracting investors, partners, and customers. Thanks to Jordan Adair, ShirtMax ! #2- Thanks to Rodney Warner, Connective ! #3-

Business Model 134

Business Model Affiliate Jordan B2C 134

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 10, 2023

Investor due diligence on a startup is not a mysterious black art, but is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of your business model, team, product, customers, and plan. Know your partner well before you get married. Marty Zwilling

Technical Review 345

Technical Review Due Diligence Term Sheet Offshore 345

Up and Running

OCTOBER 13, 2021

The world grows more impersonal by the day, and people crave being more than just another number in the customer queue. During the last few years, marketers have turned toward more personalized experiences to win customers over. Businesses must learn how to personalize the experience without asking for too much data up front.

Customer 118

Customer Marketing Artificial Inteligence Technical Review 118

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 15, 2022

Message delivery must be customized for each investor. It takes more than one person to build a business, so the lone entrepreneur, without support from any visible team, advisors, partners, or potential customers, will not attract investors. A proven business model, ready to scale, is particularly attractive.

Intellectual Property 278

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Early Stage Venture Capital 278

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 8, 2023

Most business professionals I know have been conditioned to think of inflation as highly negative, driving up their costs, and reducing customer buying. I see it as an opportunity to find new ways to attract customers , make long-needed changes to improve productivity, and lower your own costs of doing business.

Technical Review 239

Technical Review Revenue Social Media Cost 239

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

I asked Tsutsumi-san to write a guest post for my blog to describe his experience with Customer Development in Japan. But customers didn’t agree. This made me believe deeply in the extreme importance of talking to customers before investing time and money, something I took to my next startup. ————-.

Japan 292

Japan Customer Development Developer Customer 292

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 2, 2022

As a long-time mentor to entrepreneurs, here is my collection of smart risks that investors and I look for in new startups: Focus on a tough customer problem rather than a fun technology. Investors hate technology solutions looking for a problem, due to the high risk of no customers. Implement a modern real business model.

Forecast 304

Forecast Stock Options Technical Review Metrics 304

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. Or can we outsource these activities to Partners?” ——-.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

Women Entrepreneurs Can

JUNE 3, 2021

Business success requires a range of skills and talents and it often makes sense to have a business partner rather than going solo. Once everything is in place, investing in a few online startup tools makes eminent sense as these tools help you in a variety of ways including marketing and customer service.

Partner 52

Partner Technical Review Cofounder Georgia 52

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 30, 2012

The class teaches founders how to dramatically reduce their failure rate through the combination of business model design, customer development and agile development using the Startup Owners Manual. More importantly, it makes no demands of you to stand and deliver your weekly customer development progress in front of your peers.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 21, 2023

They encompass the effectiveness of marketing (the startup’s ability to reach and resonate with target customers) and stickiness (the product’s ability to deliver value to customers over time). In this post, we’ll take a closer look at the benchmarks on conversion, retention and churn for the key business models.

Retention 109

Retention Conversion Churn Rate B2C 109

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. The Lean LaunchPad class uses the three “ Lean Startup ” principles: Alexander Osterwalders “ business model canvas ” to frame hypotheses.

Intellectual Property 281

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 281

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 30, 2020

I suggest looking for painful problems to solve, rather than “easier to use” or “nice to have” solutions, for customers with money. Customers line up to believe and buy from people who are viewed as leaders or experts relative to a specific solution. Get support from credible industry groups and partners.

Merger 386

Merger Acquisition Software Review Social Media 386

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers?

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

I was driving home from the BIO conference in San Diego last month and had lots of time for a phone call with Dave, an ex student and now a founder who wanted to update me on his Customer Discovery progress. Customer Discovery. He worked hard to deeply understand the customer problems of these two customer segments.

Cofounder 336

Cofounder Founder Technical Cofounder Coder 336

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 15, 2020

For success these days, the purpose better focus on people, and solve a real problem for customers. Building successful businesses still requires the ability to find and inspire the best people who “have what you haven't,” whether that be skills, knowledge, connections, or funding. Master-mind alliance. Imagination. Enthusiasm.

Technical Review 315

Technical Review Angel Investor Differentiation Business Model 315

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

Most large companies manage three types of innovation: process innovation (making existing products incrementally better), continuous innovation (building on the strength of the company’s current business model but creating new elements) and disruptive innovation (creating products or services that did not exist before.).

Acquisition 332

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 332

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

This week they were testing who the customer, user, payer for the product will be (and discovering if they have a multi-sided business model , one with both buyers and sellers.) The news from customers was not good. talk to more customers? Which value added services do public clouds want to attract customers for?

Customer 234

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 234

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

In summary, entrepreneurs need to be especially perceptive and sensitive to business and personal relationships, since they normally work with small, closely-knit teams, on innovative and highly unstructured environments. In my experience, even the best technology and business model won’t succeed without successful relationships.

Business Model 229

Business Model Developer Partner Entrepreneur 229

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

A version of this article first appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Since NewTV won’t be making the content, they will be licensing from and partnering with traditional entertainment producers. NewTV will depend on partners like telcos to distribute the content. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2014

It has three parts: a business model canvas to frame hypotheses, customer development to get out of the building to test those hypotheses and agile engineering to build minimum viable products. Teaches you how to use Customer Development to test it. Integration with Customer Development and Lean Startup.

Business Model 335

Business Model Design Customer Development Lean 335

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 13, 2020

Message delivery must be customized for each investor. It takes more than one person to build a business, so the lone entrepreneur, without support from any visible team, advisors, partners, or potential customers, will not attract investors. A proven business model, ready to scale, is particularly attractive.

Intellectual Property 316

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Early Stage Venture Capital 316

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

The classes are built on the Lean Startup methodology: Customer Discovery, Agile Engineering and the Business/Mission Model Canvas. So how do our students get out of the building to talk to customers to do Customer Discovery when they can’t get out of the building? How do should startups do it? You certainly do!

Customer 413

Customer Business Model Restful Video 413

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 11, 2020

Investor due diligence on a startup is not a mysterious black art, but is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of your business model, team, product, customers, and plan. Know your partner well before you get married. Marty Zwilling.

Technical Review 310

Technical Review Due Diligence Term Sheet Offshore 310

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2010

It’s the combination of Business Model Design and Customer Development. Business Model Design. Today every business organization from startup to large company uses the words “business model.” More importantly they showed how any company’s business model could be defined in 9 boxes.

Customer Development 329

Customer Development Business Model Developer Customer 329

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 8, 2020

As a long-time mentor to entrepreneurs, here is my collection of smart risks that investors and I look for in new startups: Focus on a tough customer problem rather than a fun technology. Investors hate technology solutions looking for a problem, due to the high risk of no customers. Implement a modern real business model.

Management 322

Management Entrepreneur Forecast Stock Options 322

View from Seed

APRIL 14, 2020

But the risk to founders is that these investors may not be very committed partners and might quickly disengage if things go sideways. Business Models and Sectors. Also, companies that do find PMF and can attract capital will experience less competition for customers and employees.

Early Stage 374

Early Stage Software Review Technical Review Due Diligence 374

The Startup Magazine

NOVEMBER 17, 2021

As you can see, there are plenty of benefits to having your business involved in a co-selling model. Business models are changing. With digital transformation in full swing, it is no wonder that the business leaders of today are telling us tomorrow’s models will look unrecognizable. Mapping out the account.

Affiliate 143

Affiliate Technical Review Partner Sales 143

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

Over the last three years our Lean LaunchPad / NSF Innovation Corps classes have been teaching hundreds of entrepreneurial teams a year how to build their startups by getting out of the building and testing their hypotheses behind their business model. The next customer segment we tried was startup founders. Wireframes.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 21, 2016

by Joseph Michelli, author of “ Driven to Delight: Delivering World-Class Customer Experience the Mercedes-Benz Way “. All leaders know this in theory … but how many are willing to bet their paychecks on their ability to knock the customer’s socks off? Customer-driven compensation makes people uncomfortable.

Employee 100

Employee Customer Leadership Metrics 100

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 9, 2017

An effective tool I see used more and more, as a prelude to a more detailed business plan, is the Business Model Canvas , first introduced by Alexander Osterwalder back in 2008. In my experience as a new business advisor, a business is nothing until people are aligned and work in sync. Customer relationships.

Business Model 143

Business Model Intellectual Property Startup Angel Investor 143

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 21, 2020

In summary, entrepreneurs need to be especially perceptive and sensitive to business and personal relationships, since they normally work with small, closely-knit teams, on innovative and highly unstructured environments. In my experience, even the best technology and business model won’t succeed without successful relationships.

Business Model 339

Business Model Developer Partner Entrepreneur 339

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2013

My friend Ron Ashkenas interviewed me for his blog on the Harvard Business Review. Ron is a managing partner of Schaffer Consulting , and is currently serving as an Executive-in-Residence at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He is a co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organization.

Business Model 332

Business Model Technical Review Business Plan Search 332

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 19, 2011

He is very hands-on and helpful – especially for any company looking into customer acquisition. Called Tim Spicer (c-companies partner) and he told him matt, they only want one thing, more warrant coverage!!! Passion: Have to be able to motivate people, customers, team, yourself. And he said ok got it. we both love Jason).

Acquisition 304

Acquisition Warrant Customer Term Sheet 304

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2023

Rent seekers are individuals or organizations with successful existing business models who use government regulation and lawsuits to keep out new entrants that might threaten their business models. Start diagraming out the relationships of all the customer segments. Bill Gurley’s point.) Who influences who?

Washington 271

Washington Government Marketing Silicon Valley 271