Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

In January, we introduced a new graduate course at Stanford called the " target="_blank">Lean LaunchPad. 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. OK, somehow we got them interested.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.”. It’s time to update Build, Measure, Learn to what we now know is the best way to build Lean startups. Here’s how. Build-Measure-Learn.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 15, 2023

Most new teams are geographically dispersed these days anyway, so paying rent for an office should be differed to later stages when revenue is plentiful. Use multiple social-media channels, blogging, email and voicemail to build the same image and responsiveness as larger competitors. Favor profitability over revenue and user growth.

Equity 349

Equity Hockey Stick Bootstrapping Sweat Equity 349

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 24, 2021

In order to determine your course of action and overall business strategy (financial, marketing etc.), it’s wise to create and implement some kind of business plan with a lean canvas approach as your guide. Since the traditional business plans tend to take weeks or even months to prepare, they’re also rarely updated.

Lean 88

Lean Elevator Pitch Startup Business Plan 88

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 15, 2017

All of our SWOT analysis examples are based on real businesses that we’ve featured in our gallery of free example business plans. See Also: The Complete Sedibeng Breweries Business Plan. See Also: The Complete Botanical Bounty Business Plan. Sales channel relationships. Customer testimonials.

Botswana 148

Botswana Business Plan Oregon Distribution 148

Up and Running

OCTOBER 30, 2020

Their referral marketing strategy contributed to 13% of all revenue, and their referral program generated a 2,600% ROI. Our customer INGLOT Cosmetics Canada is a great example of creating an omnichannel network that extends not only to all online channels but also to their in-store experience. Take the company iWader as an example.

eCommerce 152

eCommerce Sales Software Review Canada 152

Up and Running

JUNE 25, 2020

If your sales have recently hit a plateau, check out these 10 proven methods to continue growing your business. You went through the process of identifying a target market when developing your business plan. But now you have an active customer base that you need to engage with and in the process improve your business.

Small Business 180

Small Business Hosting Social Media Community 180

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 1, 2020

Funding might be a need in some cases — but it’s not an absolute necessity. ? The business should be self-sustainable. The primary source of your funds should be your paying customers, i.e., your business should generate enough revenues and profits to fund the growth and expansion. Crowdfunding.

Startup 150

Startup Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Seed Stage 150

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 18, 2020

Most new teams are geographically dispersed these days anyway, so paying rent for an office should be differed to later stages when revenue is plentiful. Use multiple social-media channels, blogging, email and voicemail to build the same image and responsiveness as larger competitors. Favor profitability over revenue and user growth.

Hockey Stick 423

Hockey Stick Bootstrapping Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 423

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. 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.) This post is part four. Syllabus is here.

Customer 234

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 234

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Teams are iterating and pivoting right and left, one team threw their entire business model out the window and did a complete restart, and another team was having a meltdown over personalities. They did a restart.

Revenue 213

Revenue West Virginia Oklahoma Oklahoma City 213

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. Step 1: Start with a lean plan. Instead of sitting down to write a 40-page business plan, start with a one-page pitch. One-Page Business Pitch Template.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2014

Since the Pivot is one of the core concepts of the Lean Startup I was puzzled. A pivot is a fundamental insight of the Lean Startup. A pivot can change any of nine different things in your business model. Definition: “A pivot is a substantive change to one or more of the 9 business model canvas components.”.

Business Model 330

Business Model Lean Customer Development Channel 330

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Many entrepreneurship courses focus on teaching students “how to write a business plan.” If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know I believe that: 1) a product is just a part of a startup, but understanding customers, channel, pricing, etc. This class is not about how to write a business plan.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions and even billions of users can happen in years versus decades. Continuous innovation requires the imagination and courage to challenge the initial hypotheses of your current business model (channel, cost, customers, products, supply chain, etc.)

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. Analytics spark more questions and discussion than almost any other aspect of the Lean Startup method. Alistair and Ben, co-authors of the book Lean Analytics, will help you sort it out in our next webcast, Lean Analytics for Non-tech Companies.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Finally, I’ll write about how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. Given this certainty, it’s logical that a startup will hire a sales and marketing team to simply execute your business plan.

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

The idea of a Business Model competition first emerged when I realized that Business Plan writing ought to be taught in English Departments – as they’re the best example of creative writing entrepreneurs will ever do. The Business Plan ?- And your revenue plan is something more than a hallucination.

Business Model 263

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 263

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

Every large company, whether it can articulate it or not, is executing a proven business model (s). A business model guides an organization to create and deliver products/service and make money from it. Somewhere in the dim past of the company, it too was a startup searching for a business model. What Does this Mean?

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A minimum viable product in this category must answer the question: does my media content or channel command the attention of a valuable audience? Startup founders need to use their own judgment to ask: which is the riskiest assumption underlying my business plan? These concepts have important implications for any lean startup.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

As a founder you start out with: 1) a vision of a product with a set of features, 2) a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? What’s the distribution channel. How Does Customer Development, Agile Development and Lean Startups Fit? Business Plan Versus Business Model.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

OnlyOnce

JULY 9, 2013

The book has been described by a few CEOs who read it and commented early for me along the lines of “The Lean Startup movement is great, but this book starts where most of those books end and takes you through the ‘so you have a product that works in-market – now what?’ Chapter 3: Telling the Story to Your Investors…The Business Plan is Dead.

Startup 95

Startup Advisory Board Elevator Pitch Forecast 95

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

In other words, how can we adapt the Business Model Canvas when the metrics of success for an organization is not revenue? The Lean Startup is the way most innovators build startups and innovate inside of existing companies. From Revenue Streams to Mission Achievement. Channel is changed to Deployment.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Up and Running

JUNE 7, 2016

You have to be flexible about a business plan, so take what you can from what we say here and make sure it applies to your business. In general, a standard business plan includes three parts of the sales and marketing section. Those are the market analysis, the marketing plan, and the sales plan.

Business Plan 60

Business Plan Sales Marketing Social Media 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

She has a separate team, with its own culture and office, and a mandate straight from top management to innovate without regard to the company’s historic products, channels, or supply chain. And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. So far, so good.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

That means in their core business, large companies have a series of knowns. They’ve learned the best distribution channel to get the product from their company to the customer. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.) They’ve found product/market fit (what products customers want to buy).

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 6, 2016

Most new teams are geographically dispersed these days anyway, so paying rent for an office should be differed to later stages when revenue is plentiful. Use multiple social-media channels, blogging, email and voicemail to build the same image and responsiveness as larger competitors. Favor profitability over revenue and user growth.

Bootstrapping 120

Bootstrapping Hockey Stick Sweat Equity Intellectual Property 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

We’re at 70 people, and we’ll do $40 million in revenue this year and should get to cash flow breakeven this quarter. ” You’ll realize you’re ready to exit the Search step when you have customer validation: You’ve found a sales channel that matches how the customer wants to buy and the costs of using that channel are understood.

Startup 120

Startup Lean Venture Capital Advisory Board 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Week 3 of the class and our teams in our Stanford Lean LaunchPad class were hard at work using Customer Development to get out of the classroom and test the first key hypotheses of their business model: The Value Proposition.

Cloud 228

Cloud Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 228

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Last week the teams tested their Revenue Models hypotheses: what are customers willing to pay for? The concept of Partners , took some explanation as some teams confused partners with the Distribution Channel.).

South Dakota 217

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 217

Up and Running

JUNE 28, 2021

Some of the key features that determine business value include: Financial health—capital structure, cash flow , revenue, and profit. Having a cohesive business plan, that documents the financial elements and strategy of your business can be invaluable for achieving the best valuation possible.

Small Business 84

Small Business Valuation Early Stage Security 84

Up and Running

JULY 17, 2017

That being said, this hopeful climate for small business owners doesn’t necessarily translate to predictions of immediate or steep growth. Of those surveyed, only 48 percent expect to see their revenue increase over the next 12 months. Reinvesting into the business. When she showed up to our lunch […] she had a plan.

Small Business 103

Small Business America Ohio Portland 103

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

A tool like Quuu identifies relevant, shareable content to keep your social media channels active. . Lean Case provides standard business models & metrics, so you can apply a standard approach to business planning, modeling, and profitability tracking. See their blog post on multiples.).

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Customer Development by Vertical - Click to Enlarge (As a reminder, the Customer Development process says your business plan is just a series of untested hypothesis (unless you’re a domain expert.) Some of these are questions that would be addressed in a business plan. Others you need to know when you execute the plan.

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 8, 2014

To be successful, you’ll invest a lot of time and money—so make sure that starting a restaurant is your passion, not just a business venture you hope will make money. Have a solid business plan in place. You can’t scratch a business plan out on a cocktail napkin. Join the local business association.

Philadelphia 143

Philadelphia Business Plan Hiring Florida 143

SVPG

APRIL 21, 2013

Hopefully you are not wasting your precious time on old style business plans , but many have simply replaced their business plan with a Business Model Canvas or Lean Canvas. While I vastly prefer the Lean Canvas to antiquated business plans, I''m seeing many startups falling into the same trap.

Lean 66

Lean Early Stage Business Model Business Plan 66

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. It was adopted by the consumer packaged goods industry in the 1950s and spread to the technology business in the last quarter of the twentieth century.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260