Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

New strategic direction in companies with loyal customers have different consequences then when you had no customers Acquiring new customers are a lot more expensive that converting existing ones. 5) The customer’s needs don’t match your long term direction. Fire might be a strong word.

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Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Meanwhile my partner was in heaven working with his newly hired group of game designers directing and producing our first games. No, not really, but my partner owns the studio and tells me it’s spectacular and everyone will love it. Go spend some time outside the building talking to potential distribution partners.

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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

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Oh, and we had no installed customer base. I had hired the VP of marketing from a potential software partner who was responsible to get all this 3 rd party software on our computer. I’ve been on the side of your potential partners, and I know that often too much ‘persistence’ is offputting.

Silicon Valley 331

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Forget the Hypertext idea and come on back to California. He and his wife Gwen would found the Computer Museum, first in the lobby of DEC headquarters, then in Boston (and now as the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California.) He was my role model at Convergent, mentor at Ardent and partner at E.piphany.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Law firm partners often have anger management issues, but the thing about anger is that it is not always wrong to be angry — if somebody is angry at you because you did something wrong, then that anger is valid. Customer development isn’t just for [.] understands and groks Customer Development.

Silicon Valley 282

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Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

I packed up my life in Michigan and spent five days driving to California to start work. No one will say work less and go home and spend time with your partner and/or family. You’re Hired, You’re Fired. My first job in Silicon Valley: I was hired as a lab technician at ESL to support the training department.

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Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

If you were a “with it” VC you needed to have a “Content&# or “Multimedia&# company in your portfolio to impress your limited partners – educational software companies, game companies, or anything that could be described as content and/or Multimedia. Not all VCs are equal.

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

The positive effect of the tidal wave of press was as a door opener for us to raise money from corporate partners. Our VP of Business Development had no problems getting meetings and fund raising was easy. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea.

Silicon Valley 122

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Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

And one would become my mentor and partner in later companies.) Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Tips for Startups « Am I a Founder? Two of my role models for my career were in this company. (And But this story is not about Convergent.

Entrepreneur 290

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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 152

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners. What didn’t? Go to trade shows like it matters.

Silicon Valley 134

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Founders Pad.

Silicon Valley 316

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. You leave the comfort of your existing job, convince a few partners to join you and you jump off the bridge together. No building, no money, no customers, no market? Employ customer development.

Silicon Valley 231

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Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

So I got out out of the building to meet and understand our customers and distribution partners. I remember after a month or two of talking to 14-22 year old male gamers (our potential target market,) I realized that for the first time in my career I had no emotional connection to my customers or channel partners.

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Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

Partners Booths While your booth may be small, some of your potential or existing partners may have much larger ones, in much more visible locations. For a small company this is like throwing your tradeshow money on the floor. Look for locations near entrances, food concessions, rest rooms, seminar rooms, or close to major exhibitors.

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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. Can we touch base on this.

Software Review 110

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Whitney Company by writing a personal check for $5M and hiring Benno Schmidt as the first partner (Schmidt turned Whitney’s description of “private adventure capital&# into the term “venture capital”). set up companies to do just that – find and formalize investments in new and emerging industries. In 1946 Jock Whitney started J.H.

Silicon Valley 174

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

The Group is worth noting for: Investing their own private money, Reid Dennis would found Institutional Venture Partners in 1974 First group specifically investing in the valley’s electronics industry SBIC Act of 1958 During the cold war the launch of Sputnik-1 by the Soviet Union in 1957 both traumatized and galvanized the United States.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

Hewlett’s partner Dave Packard wanted to get into the computer business.) steve Elephants Can Dance – Reinventing HP » Dig for Leadership - Stories that try to make the world a better place. , AKPC_IDS += "376,"; (No Ratings Yet) Loading … Posted in Leadership | Tagged Amp, [.] carry on reading.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2009

They would also set the standard for the 20% carry for general partners. They would be one the first venture firms to organize their firm as a partnership rather than an SBIC or public company. Tommy Davis would go on to found the Mayfield Fund in 1969.

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Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

or out here in California, to contribute in the fight against terrorism, to help the young men and women who are out there putting their lives on the line for us. . Steve: Is the problem with these institutions leadership, technology, bureaucracy that has no incentives to change, all of the above? . I thought there was no question.

Silicon Valley 120

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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.” Their VC firm, In-Q-Tel , has been in business for 10 years, and like most VC firms they have an annual event where they show off their new portfolio companies to their limited partners and other VC partners.

Silicon Valley 264

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Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

We were about to be partners in building a new product family. This requires deep customer and competitive knowledge. The change in his demeanor – from trying to kill me – to laughing, as it dawned on him where I was going, could only be described as hysterical relief. “40%?” Yes, yes and yes.

Silicon Valley 143

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Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2009

When I ran Rocket Science our corporate partners were in Japan (Sega), Germany (Bertelsmann) and Italy (Mondadori) and some travel was unavoidable. My ideas about Customer Development started evolving around these concepts. Thanks to my wife for being a great partner. Document every step. It takes two.

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