Remove Business Plan Remove Customer Development Remove Design Remove Developer
article thumbnail

Raising Money Using Customer Development

Steve Blank

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Entrepreneurs put together their funding presentation by extracting the key ideas from their business plan, putting them on PowerPoint/Keynote and pitching the company – until they get funded or exhausted.

article thumbnail

The Customer Development Manifesto: Reasons for the Revolution.

Steve Blank

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Document Your MVP for a Developer

SoCal CTO

He wanted to get input from me on what he's doing, and he wants to begin to ask developers what it would take to build his product. what format would you and the developer want that in? This should be an iterative process with advisors and customers providing feedback on the product. Founder : Ummm. what do you mean?

Developer 354
article thumbnail

No One Wins In Business Plan Competitions

Steve Blank

Last week one of the schools I teach at invited me to judge a business plan contest. I suggested that they first might want to read my post on why business plans are a poor planning and execution tool for startups. At best I think business plan competitions are a waste of time.

article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: What is customer development?

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way. Heres the catch.

article thumbnail

Blowing up the Business Plan at U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School

Steve Blank

Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. 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. We had multiple business plan competitions.

article thumbnail

When Hell Froze Over – in the Harvard Business Review

Steve Blank

For decades this revered business magazine described management techniques that were developed in and were for large corporations – offering more efficient and creative ways to execute existing business models. All of this in one magazine, with no hype, just a continual stream of great ideas.