Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

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.

Customer Development 266

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 266

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I hate business plan competitions. I Love Business Plan Competitions I had a breakfast with a friend who has founded a few companies in Thailand and started the New Ventures Program at one of their universities. For all the reasons why business plan competitions are wonderful for students from outside the U.S.,

Business Plan 148

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 148

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that. Who’s the customer?

Lean 257

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 257

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 124

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

There’s nothing wrong with a business that supports you and perhaps an extended family. But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. With 317 million people the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

But the team believed adding video as an integral part of an operating system and user experience (where there had only been text and still images) would be transformative. But Apple had planned to announce and demo QuickTime without a way to get video into the Mac. It was fun watching it happen.

Video 176

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 176

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. How to move from a free to a paid product without losing all your users. Jason: get into customer development and it’s a big waste.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208