Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Reply Dan Hodgins , on November 13, 2009 at 1:12 am Said: Hi Steve, Just listened to your “Retooling Early Stage Development&# for about the 10th time tonight as I was cleaning my room. Your results may vary.

Venture Capital 239

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Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# Reply Lots of low cost experiments « Open Ambition , on April 22, 2009 at 8:58 am Said: [.] That’s why startups are agile.

Silicon Valley 307

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. An interesting phenomena of the 1920s that illustrates the fragility and cost of vacuum tubes is the “Reflex Receiver&# design methodology.

Silicon Valley 297

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

Entrepreneur 167

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe 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. Is there some defining factor that easily distinguishes the difference? Sounds like handspring.

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Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I lived through the time when working in my first job in Ann Arbor Michigan we had to get out a map to find out that San Jose was not only in Puerto Rico but there was a city with that same name in California. Today open source software has slashed the cost of software development from millions of dollars to thousands.

Restful 243

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

At first only the national laboratories and the largest companies could afford to buy supercomputers, (the Cray-1 cost ~$9 million) but over time scientists and researchers were also starting to use them. Ardent 3: Supercomputer Porn « Steve Blank (tags: customer-development product-management startup) [.]

Silicon Valley 167

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Marketing is Heard From Engineering was discussing how sophisticated the graphics portion of our computer should be, debating cost and time-to-market tradeoffs of arcane details such as double-buffering, 24 versus 32-bits of color, alpha channels, etc. Customer development isn’t just for [.] Getting out of the building.

Silicon Valley 283

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 283

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. For example, complex new semiconductor architectures, (i.e.

Vertical 162

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 162

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? While we sometimes cut the price of graphics boards, it was only because we offered our customers no compelling reasons to buy one that was priced equivalently to the market share leaders. No, not really.

Silicon Valley 157

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 157

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Computer hardware companies were faced with their customers asking for low-cost (relatively) desktop computers they had no experience in building. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? what Market Type is your startup?

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

The quintessential California couple, they stood out in our crowd as the engineer (in his late 20′s, respected by his peers and the customer) had hair down to his shoulders, sharply contrasting with the military crewcuts of the customers and most of the other contractors.

Silicon Valley 210

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Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Thanks for sharing the lessons you’ve learned, especially the ones where the cost is measured in years. If you are entrepreneur with a solid business that actually makes money you would know that VC has the highest cost of capital imaginable and would find better options.

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Different market opportunities present radically different startup risks and costs. Vertical markets are a risk and cost reduction strategy. But as I learned from my students this “one-size-fits-all” approach does not work for all startups. What is it that’s unique about the market I’m in? You can bootstrap without VC money.

Vertical 156

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Waiting for images to move around the screen were not only driving them crazy, but costing them money. Performance over price : In fact, for over half of these customers performance was even more important than price! (If And by more than anything, I mean that the word performance came up time and again from these professionals.

Silicon Valley 210

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

It will cost you your job.” By accountable I meant, “we agreed on a delivery date, and between now and the delivery date it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office the day something was due and give me an excuse. That kind of accountable.

Silicon Valley 269

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Some are r esegmenting an existing market– directed at a niche that an incumbent isn’t satisfying (like Dell and Compaq when they were startups) or providing a low cost alternative to an existing supplier (like Southwest Airlines when it first started.)

Silicon Valley 143

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 143

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

All of sudden what was an additional engineering and development effort now became a small, variable cost. So we’ve learned to live with our customers. We’re now piloting our application with Tree Farmers in California and working with crop specialists at U.C. Build continuous customer discovery into your company DNA.

Customer 321

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

In less than a month they designed a low-cost video-capture board that plugged into the Mac and allowed you to connect a video camera and VCR. A month or two before the QuickTime public announcement in May, the SuperMac hardware engineers (who had a great relationship with the QuickTime team at Apple) started a “ skunk works ” project.

Video 184

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. When Terman said no, Sylvania, a tube company which built proximity fuse tubes in WWII, won the contract and set up its Electronic Defense Lab (EDL) in Mountain View California in the middle of an orchard. defense spending even higher.

Silicon Valley 194

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Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

Paul Henderson , on May 15, 2009 at 10:37 pm Said: A boot-strapping startup I once worked with was actually doing some real customer development and making real money from real customers for their early, ugly product. Are his costs in control? Stay hungry, stay lean. Lessons Learned N ew buildings are a distraction.

Silicon Valley 230

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Stanford had a Customer Development loop going on inside their own lab. The discoveries in tube and circuit research suggested new electronic intelligence and countermeasure techniques and systems; in turn the needs of the Applied Lab pushed tube and circuit development.

Silicon Valley 155

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Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Tips for Startups « Am I a Founder? Not enough people understand the emotional cost of being a start-up founder. The Adventure of a Lifetime. Girlfriends, wives, and moms will think you are a madman.

Entrepreneur 291

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

My first business trip to the valley was to visit California Microwave. In all the Germans had over 7,500 radars dedicated to tracking and killing the allied bombers. Each allied bombing mission lost 2-20% of their planes. Bomber crews had to fly 25 missions to go home. We needed a way to shut down the German Air Defense system.

Silicon Valley 203

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 203

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

He welcomed us by screaming, “Do you know how much it costs every minute this line is down.&# One day, I was at the Ford Wixom auto assembly plant training my replacement and I was at met at the door by an irate plant manager. the manager followed us still yelling. Let me know what you think. Comments and brickbats welcomed.

Founder 310

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 310

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2016

. — When Michael and his father started the Robert Mondavi Winery, few people were drinking California wines. Before that, restaurateurs would never compare California with France. It was “France is great” and “California is jug wine.” Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley California Entrepreneur Cofounder 141

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2019

I’ve been an adjunct for almost 18 years, and I still remember the onboarding process at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. I knew I wanted to write a book about a (then) radically new entrepreneurship idea called Customer Development (later the foundation of the Lean Startup movement).

Cofounder 153

Cofounder Lean Reputation Programming 153

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2012

Here are some of the final Lessons Learned presentations and team videos: Akara Solutions: Flexible, Low Cost Cooling Technology for LED Lighting. Principal Investigator: Ellis Meng University of Southern California. Principal Investigator: Jacob Schmidt University of California-Los Angeles. Syllabus for the class is here.

America 244

America Rhode Island Southern California Illinois 244

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2016

. — When Michael and his father started the Robert Mondavi Winery, few people were drinking California wines. Before that, restaurateurs would never compare California with France. It was “France is great” and “California is jug wine.” Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley California Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

The Ultimate Combination of Startup Business Development Methods - ArcticStartup , November 16, 2010 I've been a huge fan of Steven Blank's Customer Development methodology for a long time. Meet the New Enterprise Customer, He’s a Lot Like the Old Enterprise Customer - Ben's Blog , November 15, 2010 Meet the new boss.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2012

Doing good for all [or at least citizens of California]. Solutions are found by betting on a portfolio of low-cost experiments. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development , Teaching. ” Our goal(s) could be: Looking good. Doing well by our enrolled students.

Portfolio 328

Portfolio California Customer Development Framework 328

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

She said, “Dad, one of the great things you and Mom did was never tell us how much things cost.” Now that I’m older, I’m starting to know what things cost. It was something I never thought about, and when I first heard it I thought it was a terrible thing to have taught her. For a minute it was a pretty depressing thought for a parent.

North Carolina 160

North Carolina Silicon Valley RSS Connecticut 160

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

from University of California, Davis in Biomedical Engineering. Sunny’s startup idea emerged from a diagnostic tool he’d developed in his lab to detect pathogens. In talking about how expensive the costs of that two-day delay are for them we could start seeing that maybe our research could help these people. .

Cofounder 196

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 196

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that. However, for the Web 2.0

Vertical 137

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 137

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 125

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. Me – “Have you used Company x’s product? We’re about to ship next week.”

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 206

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Reply steveblank , on September 16, 2009 at 7:00 pm said: Greg, The Google Group “Lean Startup Circle&# at [link] is a wonderful repository of Customer Development/Lean Startup success and failure. It’s more reference material. Thus, these pages. I’ll add more as time goes on.

Software Review 110

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