Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

A version of this article first appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. It’s the antithesis of the Lean Startup. Most startups born in the bubble died in the bubble.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

You may have read my previous posts about the Lean LaunchPad class taught at Stanford , Berkeley, Columbia , Caltech and for the National Science Foundation. Ten years ago I started thinking about why startups are different from existing companies. I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. Experienced entrepreneurs kept finding that no business plan survived first contact with customers.

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Up and Running

APRIL 19, 2017

When it comes to starting and managing a business, forecasting your sales is essential. Having a sales forecast can help you budget and manage your business’s funds, create a plan for expansion, and avoid unpleasant surprises. To that end, here are our best resources on sales forecasting, starting with the basics and moving on to industry-specific examples. The basics of sales forecasting. How to Forecast Sales. Just Do a Sales Forecast.

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Up and Running

DECEMBER 5, 2016

Lean Planning is a concept that we introduced back in 2012 as an evolution in business planning. The traditional business plan just wasn’t fitting the needs of modern, fast-moving companies and it was time to bring more of a scientific approach to business planning. However, the traditional business plan took too long to write, often wasn’t read by anyone outside the business, and wasn’t used properly to start, grow, and manage businesses.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2013

The Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship curriculum has caught fire. Ten years ago I started thinking about why startups are different from existing companies. I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. It dawned on me that the plans were a symptom of a larger problem: we were executing business plans when we should first be searching for business models. It’s called the Lean Startup.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2013

The Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship curriculum has caught fire. Ten years ago I started thinking about why startups are different from existing companies. I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. It dawned on me that the plans were a symptom of a larger problem: we were executing business plans when we should first be searching for business models. It’s called the Lean Startup.

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Up and Running

AUGUST 21, 2018

This article is part of our Business Planning Guide —a curated list of our articles that will help you with the planning process! Today, I want to introduce a new approach to business planning: Lean Planning. Lean Planning replaces lengthy business plans with a 20-minute planning process that focuses on increasing your chances of success in business. Lean Planning is simpler and faster than writing a traditional business plan.

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Up and Running

OCTOBER 10, 2016

When it comes to business planning, unless an investor has asked you to provide a formal business plan, we recommend writing a Lean Plan instead—it’s faster, more flexible, and will remain relevant throughout the life of your business. To give you a better overview of Lean Planning and how it can help your business, we’ve curated a list of some of our best articles on the topic. All about Lean Planning. Why Lean Planning?

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Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? And when do business planning and execution come into play? replace all the tools and classes that are currently being taught in entrepreneurship curriculums and business schools.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Last May, I shared the news that long-time Lean Startup advocates Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits were working on a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur featuring illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. LitMotors approach to using Lean Startup to create a new vehicle category. Telecom O2 learning to move at the speed of the internet 500 Startups and their accelerated feedback loops on what works, and what doesn't work in early-stage investing.

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Up and Running

MAY 28, 2015

We recently had Tim Berry, Palo Alto Software founder and business planning expert, present our Bplans audience with his latest advice on lean business planning. He is the known guru in business planning, particularly for small businesses, startups and entrepreneurs, although he’s worked with Fortune 100 and Fortune 500 companies as well. Start your lean business plan today: Download our Free Lean Plan Template one-page-pitch-download.pdf.

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Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Today, I want to introduce you to a new concept for starting and growing successful companies: Lean Planning™. 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. The business plan should no longer be just a single event.

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Transformify - Recruiting

JUNE 6, 2019

The practices have long been admired as a model for other companies to follow. Called the Toyota Production System, it is one of the success stories about the lean manufacturing process. Lean manufacturing simply aims to minimize waste as much as possible because in this industry, and other manufacturing-related industries, it is very easy to accumulate it. Here are three things a business looking to implement their own lean process can learn from Toyota.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2020

The pandemic has upended the business models of most startups and existing companies. Suppliers are going out of business or requiring cash-up-front terms. Revenue models and forecasts are no longer valid. Take the example of Abionic , a nanotech startup.

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Up and Running

JULY 20, 2020

Small businesses are great. But becoming an entrepreneur needn’t mean decimating your savings or robbing a bank—instead focus on these five main strategies to start a business on a budget. You’ll likely find it incredibly easy to make a massive list of startup costs.

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Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

This approach would shape Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial ethos: In startups, failure was treated as experience (until you ran out of money). The combination of Venture Capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. government agency that supports research in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering - is changing the startup landscape for scientists and engineers. Lean LaunchPad Teaching Venture Capital

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Up and Running

NOVEMBER 20, 2018

This article is part of our Business Startup Guide —a curated list of our articles that will get you up and running in no time! Starting up a business requires a lot of different steps. First-time entrepreneurs and small business founders often feel anxious when they think about all the factors that play into getting their idea off the ground. Big or small, every successful business starts with an innovative idea.

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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? However the Customer Development Model and the Lean Startup work equally well for startups on the web.

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Up and Running

JULY 14, 2015

Peter and Jonathan discuss startup incubators, and our guest Caroline talks to us about the “F” word and 10 reasons why startups fail. Startup Incubators – (2:13). Read also: Q&A with Business Incubator Co-founder Joe Maruschak. Learn more about Techstars , a startup accelerator program. 10 Reasons Why Startups Fail – (9:31). View the Slideshare: Top 10 Reasons Startups Fail + How to Pitch and Get Funded.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? But I dont think most startups really have a need for someone to do that on a full time basis. The CTOs primary job is to make sure the companys technology strategy serves its business strategy. Have you ever heard a technologist use technical mumbo-jumbo to make it sound like a business idea he or she didnt like was basically impossible? Not all CEO's have business sense.

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The Next Web

FEBRUARY 7, 2014

The chances of your startup failing are perilously high. Most entrepreneurs think it can’t happen to them, but in fact recent research from Harvard Business School lecturer Shikhar Ghosh finds approximately 75 percent of all startups go under. Findings put incompetence and lack of managerial experience as the two most dangerous warning signs your startup might be headed for the grave. Unfortunately, most startups don’t operate in a space with a lot of stability.

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SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

" Today I had two conversations with early stage startups (see Free CTO Consulting ). Startups Need to Make Leaps of Faith, But Not Blindly Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers Entrepreneurship as a Science – The Business Model/Customer Development Stack You Can’t “Feature” Your Way to Success The Phantom Sales Forecast – Failing at Customer Validation Customer Development and Marketplaces No Business Plan Survives First Contact With A Customer – The 5.2

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Up and Running

MAY 3, 2012

From a young person’s perspective, with tight labour markets, decreasing barriers to entry, low capital-intensive business models and immediate free access to a global market, the appeal is also compelling. Eric Ries , author of The Lean Start-up , puts it best: ‘ The grim reality is that most start-ups fail. Sean Seton-Rogers of PROfounders Capital recently claimed that of the more than 3,500 business plans they had received, his London, U.K.

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Up and Running

NOVEMBER 7, 2018

Get all your ducks in a row with an initial assessment of your business opportunity. This article is part of our Business Planning Guide —a curated list of our articles that will help you with the planning process! Start your business planning with a quick assessment. Even an established business should take the time to step away from daily operations and look at the basics. Do your business numbers make sense? The Lean Business Plan.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, June 5, 2009 It’s a startup, not a spreadsheet Some people, when they start to realize the power of using data to inform their decisions, become obsessed with optimization. Unfortunately, most decisions that confront startups lack a definitive right answer. Spreadsheets, and predictive modeling in particular, have an important role to play in startups. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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Up and Running

JULY 3, 2015

Check out Tim Berry’s book, Lean Business Planning , coming soon. Check out Lara Galloway’s new book, Moms Mean Business. I actually almost every day I use this analogy of this classic business plan being problematic in the sense that a lot of folks out there will create a plan. Well that’s where the lean planning comes in. That’s where maybe the lean startup mode comes in.

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Up and Running

FEBRUARY 10, 2021

Raising money for your business is a major effort. You need to practice your pitch and be ready to intelligently answer any number of questions about your business. A key to making this entire process much easier is to invest a little time and write a business plan.

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Up and Running

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

Learn why the traditional way of writing a five-year business plan is often a waste of time and how to use a Lean Plan instead for smarter, easier strategic planning to establish your long-term vision. It has less focus on financial forecasting and a greater focus on the big picture.

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Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

In every startup I did, every new course I created, and everything I’ve taught, the phrase “make every day count” took on new meaning when I knew how many were left. When I retired after 21 years working in 8 startups, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the business school at the University of California Berkeley. Soon I began to pester the head of the department about this new idea I had… that startups are not smaller versions of large companies.

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Up and Running

APRIL 27, 2020

There’s a great amount of uncertainty, people losing their jobs, and a direct hit on cash flows that can place businesses in dire straights. They’re surviving and finding ways to thrive, but for those looking to start a business, now may be one of the best times to do so. .

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Up and Running

DECEMBER 31, 2018

Is 2019 the year that you finally start your own small business or startup? You don’t necessarily need a degree in business or finance to be successful. A great business idea. Our guide to coming up with a great business idea is packed with ideas for all kinds of industries. This article on generating hundreds of business ideas is a great place to start. A 30-day roadmap to starting a business. That depends on what type of business you’re starting.

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Up and Running

JANUARY 8, 2019

The basic idea of a sample business plan makes perfect sense. If you haven’t done a business plan before, a sample plan gives you an instant idea of what you should include, how to structure it, and even what to write. Bplans offers a library of more than 500 sample business plans across a wide variety of industries. Here’s how to get the most of any sample business plan. What is a sample business plan? Can I really write my business plan myself?

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Up and Running

JANUARY 15, 2018

But you’ll also be in charge of every aspect of running your business and making hard decisions which can impact the success and growth of your company. Once you’ve decided that you’re ready to start a small web design firm, you’ll need to develop a host of skills to help you run a successful business, including time management, sales and promotional strategies, and client acquisition. Create a Lean Business Plan. Calculate startup costs.

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Up and Running

AUGUST 24, 2020

Cutting costs , revisiting forecasts , and stabilizing your business. You’re not forgetting it or avoiding the practices that have saved your business so far. So what can small business leaders do to emerge from the COVID-19 crisis as winners?

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Up and Running

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

My business was in a highly competitive industry, rated as one of the best industries to start a new business in. Around 58 percent of businesses in the insurance sector survive longer than four years. Things went well in the beginning, but just as I approached my first year, business started to slow down dramatically. It was like my business came to a halt. My business came to a standstill. I started to take a close look at my business.

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Up and Running

JUNE 25, 2020

Getting your business off the ground is challenging. Continuing to grow your business once it’s established is just as difficult. And while generating new business and growing your customer base is necessary to succeed, it doesn’t happen overnight.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

In the summer of 1999, I started working on a startup from my college dorm. And the great ideas that became todays successful tech startups dwarf anything that had been done to that point. Nonetheless, my first startup was a tool for college students from elite colleges to create resumes and help them find jobs. Unfortunately, we were fixated on "building a real business" and never noticed that maybe students would want to share their profiles with each other.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2015

Joining me at the Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco were: Andrew Breen , vice president of product delivery for American Express’s World Service division. It follows the entrepreneurial journeys of founders sharing their experiences of what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries to entrepreneurial education and more. Andrew also teaches at NYU’s Stern School of Business.

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Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2020

When starting a new business you should consider the potential industries your company may have the best opportunity to compete in. To help with this, we’ve compiled a list of the top 4 industries that show the most promise for startups in 2020. Transportation business plan samples.

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Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 19, 2018

One of our Bplans writers described going into business in cannabis as a “ once-in-a-generation opportunity ,” with the product rapidly becoming legal for recreational as well as medical use in many states. Write your business plan and develop your business model with this in mind so you can avoid these issues. . You can choose from a few different types of business plans depending on your needs. Remember that a business plan is a living document.

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Up and Running

OCTOBER 30, 2017

This article is part of our “ Business Startup Guide ”—a curated list of our articles that will get you up and running in no time! People often ask us for a list of steps they can use to start their own business. From business type to business model to physical location, there are so many variables! However, there are things that every business needs to do to get off the ground. In order to start a successful business, passion alone isn’t enough.

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Up and Running

AUGUST 8, 2018

This article, which originally appeared on our LivePlan Blog , is part of our “Business Planning Guide” —a curated list of our articles that will help you with the planning process! It only takes an hour each month, keeps the management team up to speed on everything that’s going on in the company, and helps us plan and manage in a lean and effective way. For us, business planning isn’t just a one-time or annual event. How did we do last month compared to our forecast?

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Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

Whether or not you’re raising money for your business, getting advice from venture capitalists can be invaluable. Fortunately, many of the top VCs share their thoughts on their blogs and are full of advice for startups, both big and small. Eric Ries of The Lean Startup has called Andrew Chen’s blog “one of the best entrepreneurship blogs of all time.” And, there’s a good reason why; it includes back-to-back essays on mobile, high-growth startups and technology.

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