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?

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2011

In Silicon Valley the equivalent is the journeyman coder or web designer who loves the technology, and takes coding and U/I jobs because it’s a passion. Small Business Startups: Work to Feed the Family. They are anyone who runs his/her own business. They work as hard as any Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

Government 335

Government Silicon Valley Startup Venture Capital 335

View from Seed

APRIL 14, 2020

Business Models and Sectors. The public markets have clearly rewarded traditional, software based businesses over different business models, and that effect was starting to work its way through the earlier stage ecosystem. In a FOLD world, this is going to continue.

Early Stage 374

Early Stage Software Review Technical Review Due Diligence 374

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

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

Over the last half a century, Silicon Valley has grown into the leading technology and innovation cluster for the United States and the world. In the past, the time to build a first product release was measured in months or even years as startups executed the founder’s vision of what customers wanted.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 26, 2020

As an advisor to new hardware entrepreneurs, I often hear the myth that a business plan is no longer required to find an investor, if your idea is good enough. You may have heard that venture capitalists in Silicon Valley no longer read business plans. Use non-fuzzy terms to quantify customer value.

Business Plan 423

Business Plan Product Intellectual Property Elevator Pitch 423

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

So what’s wrong the product development model? The first hint lies in its name; this is a product development model, not a marketing model, not a sales hiring model, not a customer acquisition model, not even a financing model (and we’ll also find that in most cases it’s even a poor model to use to develop a product.)

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks , turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. After 7 weeks they returned to Silicon Valley for their final presentations.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

As part of our Lean LaunchPad classes at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and for the National Science Foundation, students build a startup in 8 weeks using Business Model Design + Customer Development. Heck, in Silicon Valley even the waiters can do it.). Get customers to the site. Size the market opportunity.

Lean 333

Lean Web Coder Business Model 333

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. But the purpose of this post is what happens when a founder (or large company CEO) finds a better business model. Get it done, now.

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

A version of this article first appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Given the stock market was buying “the story and vision” of anything internet, inflated expectations were more important than traditional metrics like customers, growth, revenue, or heaven forbid, profits. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

As a result they block new iterations of the business model that might take the company to the next level. The Fairchild sales team was on a roll executing a known business model – selling planar diodes and transistors into an existing market. So selling integrated circuits meant a search for a business model.

Silicon Valley 239

Silicon Valley Technical Review Spain Engineer 239

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

BMNT , a new Silicon Valley company, is combining the Lean Methods it learned in combat with the technology expertise and speed of startups. To get closer to his customers, Newell commissioned three mobile laboratories that were airlifted to forward operating bases. Lead, follow or get the heck out of the way. The Gulf Wars.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Kuwait 120

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.” As the engineers were busy rearchitecting the original Stanford MIPS chip into a commercial product, one of my jobs was to find out what features customers wanted.

Customer Development 278

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

Steve Blank

MARCH 12, 2014

Therefore we needed them to think and learn about two parts of a startup; 1) ideation - how to create new ideas and 2) customer development – how do they test the validity of their idea (is it the right product, customer, channel, pricing, etc.). Customer Discovery in the Real World. This was a huge learning moment.

Lean 334

Lean Customer Development Startup Silicon Valley 334

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Starting in the 1950’s, Stanford’s engineering department became “outward facing” and developed a culture of spinouts and active faculty support and participation in the first wave of Silicon Valley startups. Given its inward focus, Berkeley has always been the neglected sibling in Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

business models. But for the last decade “innovation” in Chinese software meant something different than it did in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Perhaps it’s the weather.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 20, 2022

Does your business always seem to be trying to catch up with new competitors and changes in the marketplace? One of the things I learned from my years in Silicon Valley is that you must always focus on three steps ahead, as well as on what exists today. Look outside your industry for new technologies and models.

Silicon Valley 367

Silicon Valley Artificial Inteligence Global Agile 367

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 1, 2015

parent company while providing technical services for foreign customers. They are putting Innovation Outposts into Innovation Clusters -in particular Silicon Valley – to tap into the clusters’ innovation ecosystems. (An They helped to globalize their innovation cycle and tap foreign expertise and resources.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Incubator 120

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. The VC’s response? “Nah,

Burn Rate 248

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 248

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 30, 2011

Blackbox , founded by entrepreneurs Bjoern Lasse Herrmann and Max Marmer, in June released its first Startup Genome Report — a 67-page in depth analysis on what makes Silicon Valley startups successful based on profiling over 650 startups. to 3 times as many of their customers early on. Inconsistent startups are 2.3

Silicon Valley 174

Silicon Valley Software Review Startup Cofounder 174

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

by Bill Lee, author of “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers: Realizing the Untapped Value of Your Most Important Asset “. If so, the business world is full of specialists who are all too eager to help. No one can truly understand your customers or genuinely share their interests unless she is a customer herself. That’s right.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This class is built on conducting in-person of interviews with customers/ beneficiaries and stakeholders, but due to the pandemic, teams now had to do all their customer discovery via a computer screen. How would customer interviews work via video? See here for an extended discussion of remote customer discovery.).

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 19, 2011

He tells the story of how he was out of cash, stressed out, nobody in LA or Silicon Valley would give him money, he had finally found an investor in Minneapolis but his venture bank was going to shut him down for breaking a “covenant&# in their agreement by not having enough cash in the bank. we both love Jason).

Acquisition 304

Acquisition Warrant Customer Term Sheet 304

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 4, 2020

Though the trend in the startup world seems to be relocating to Silicon Valley (a choice that some angel investors and ven­ture capitalists now call mandatory) and knocking on the doors of venture capital, this path doesn’t make sense for all businesses, and it’s not acces­sible to many entrepreneurs because of their life circumstances.

Entrepreneur 180

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Silicon Valley Bandwidth 180

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

It is the traditional way seed stage startups get funded in Silicon Valley and it remains difficult and out of reach for most entrepreneurs. Here in Silicon Valley the rule-makers define smart teams solely based on pedigree. Traction is evidence of customer demand proven with growth data. What makes a smart team?

Seed Stage 100

Seed Stage Silicon Valley Startup Venture Capital 100

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

business models. But for the last decade “innovation” in Chinese software meant something different than it did in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Perhaps it’s the weather.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

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

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.

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

Up and Running

APRIL 25, 2014

The cast of “Silicon Valley” Image credit: HBO. Silicon Valley is a crazy place. I’ve opted not to return to the Valley for various reasons, but still have plenty of friends who work there and return regularly for business meetings. As the dot-com bubble was bursting, I left to work in the U.K.

Silicon Valley 104

Silicon Valley Business Plan Entrepreneur Cap Table 104

Mucker Lab

AUGUST 27, 2014

As an entrepreneur himself, founding and operating printed circuit board factories in Taiwan, my father was debating between two places to immigrate to and build his next new venture: Los Angeles (“The Valley” aka San Fernando Valley) and Santa Clara (“Silicon Valley”).

Los Angeles 138

Los Angeles Southern California Silicon Valley Technical Review 138

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. He continued: “I’d like to convince my boss so our company can be your first customer.”

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Here’s the course announcement from Professor Vergara (in English): Customer Development Course in Chile – Lean Launchpad. The objective of this course is that groups of students finish with a completed software product that has real customers and an identified market. The syllabus for the Stanford course can be seen here.

Chile 235

Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 235

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

The most common mistake startups make is assuming they can operate the same way big companies do, and expect success with little to no feedback from potential customers. A corporation like Starbucks could pick locations by throwing a dart at a map and know they’ll at least break even with a new location and mediocre customer service.

Customer Development 126

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley. 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. And they’ve being doing this while driving product cost down and performance up.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2023

This meant the class was team-based, Lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering) and experiential – where the students, rather than being presented with all of the essential information, must discover that information rapidly for themselves.

Lean 294

Lean Chile Ukraine Spain 294

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2016

ambassador to the United Nations and a Stanford professor of political science; Zvika Krieger , the State Department’s representative to Silicon Valley and senior advisor for technology and innovation; retired U.S. Here’s how it’s been going: Weeks 1 and 2 – Mission Model, Customer Discovery & Figuring Out Who’s Who at State.

Lean 273

Lean Saudi Arabia Austria Silicon Valley 273