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. How would that change my company strategy?

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 147

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

We four instructors would grumble and complain to one another about our lack of leadership. Entrepreneurs are fearless, persistent and uninhibited about asking – whether it’s asking to assemble a team, get financing, sell customers, etc. I’ve built my company using the Customer Development Model from Day One.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

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 123

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 123

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

corporation, and by extension Sloan laid the foundation for America’s economic leadership in the 20th century. Sloan kept the corporate staff small and focused on policymaking, corporate finance and planning. The Modern Corporation Sloan is rightly credited with formalizing the idea of the modern U.S. One guy really did all of this.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 161

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

And you’d like me to do my talk on Customer Development and startups?” “No, we’re the other CIA.” We witness similar behavior in corporate finance. Steve my name is Donald xx, and I’m the head of external affairs of the CIA’s venture capital firm and we’d like you to keynote our conference.”

Silicon Valley 253

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Venture Capital 253

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Founding a company is a sheer act of will and tenacity in the face of immense skepticism from everyone – investors, customers, friends, etc. You literally have to take your vision of the opportunity and against all rational odds assemble financing, and a team to help you execute. And that’s just to get started.

Founder 302

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 302

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. The story had universal appeal, and we spun the tale and keep the buzz going.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Among those: plentiful financing and nerds , a culture that celebrates both failure and success, and an ethos of openness and sharing. Silicon Valley’s development is intimately entwined with the long history of industrialization and innovation in the larger San Francisco Bay Area. What is customer development?

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

In an early stage startup, instead of sales being up front, the point departments are likely to be product development and customer development. Later on in this same company’s life, sales will become the pointy end and product development moves to a supporting role. It varies by company and changes over time.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 127

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

While SBIC’s were set up around the country, companies in Northern California including Bank of America, Firemans Fund and American Express (Reid Dennis of the Group ran theirs), began to set up SBIC funds to tap the emerging microwave and new semiconductor startups setting up shop south of San Francisco.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley SBIC San Francisco RSS 126

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Corporate Finance One of the ironies in Silicon Valley is that the two companies which gave birth to its entire semiconductor industry weren’t funded by venture capital. Since neither of these startups were yet doing any business with the military—and venture capital as we know it today did not exist, they had to look elsewhere for funding.

Silicon Valley 163

Silicon Valley Securities and Exchange Commission Venture Capital RSS 163

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

recently did a lecture at a Babson MBA summer class on Entrepreneurial Leadership. In other words, the future of financing is continuous funding, not discrete. California Milk Processor Board) – 1993. Customer Validation needs to have the CEO actively involved. Customer Development Diagnostics over Lunch.

Software Review 217

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Technical Review 217

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

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110