Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. Let’s Fire Our Customers Part of the DNA of great entrepreneurs is a bias towards decisive and immediate action. Get it done, now.

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

NYU has adopted the Lean LaunchPad ® class as a standard entrepreneurship course across twelve different schools/colleges within the University. Over 1,000 students a year are learning lean startup concepts. Teams have to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week.) Spread it Widely. Student Impact.

Lean 269

Lean New York City New York Customer Development 269

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

As organizations we have become more open and I believe this is great for businesses and their customers. We spent time out in the marketplace talking with customers, looking at their solutions, comparing ourselves with our competition and then squirreling ourselves away in our offices designing our next set of features.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Customer/Market Risk Versus Invention Risk One day I was having lunch with a VC sharing what I learned from my students. Our firm has a portfolio of companies across a broad range of markets and the way we look at it is pretty simple – the deals fall into two types: those with customer/market risk and those with invention risk.”

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

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

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

When I retired after 21 years working in 8 startups, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the business school at the University of California Berkeley. This unorthodox idea has become a movement …called The Lean Startup – and has led to entirely new ways to start companies, commercialize science, and think about innovation.

Lean 221

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 221

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2012

Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or Customer Development there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. I want to tell you a story about how a team pivoted and succeeded by synchronizing product and customer development. Here’s a guest post from Frank.

San Jose 256

San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 256

Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Our first question was, did the total number of customers that had already bought products from our competitors and us represent a saturated market or the tip of the iceberg? Since I was heading a marketing department, not acting as an individual contributor, I needed to teach all of marketing the importance of customer data.

Silicon Valley 134

Silicon Valley Customer RSS Philippines 134

Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

Today, the first half of the Stanford Engineering Lean LaunchPad Class gave their final presentations. It’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since we taught the first 10 teams in the Stanford Lean LaunchPad class. We’ll teach over 175 NSF Innovation Corps teams in the Lean LaunchPad course in 2012. Only in California!

Lean 256

Lean Business Model Agile United States 256

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

While the last post was titled “ You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When They Offer You a Job “, this post should probably be titled, “You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When You Offer Them a Job.&# Context here.) To a person they became passionate evangelists and effective marketers.

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2017

Guest Post by Misti Yang, Writer for Lean Startup Co. This is the mantra of Lean teams described by Eric Ries in his upcoming book, The Startup Way. Drawing on the advice of experts and recent research, here are seven insights on how to best build a Lean team. A hallmark of Lean teams is cross-functionality. Start small.

Lean 140

Lean San Francisco Employee California 140

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

They sold to a set of customers I knew nothing about. After talking to its resellers and customers I realized that SuperMac was the only company that could be described as “fifth in a group of three.” They had an existing distribution channel and their dealers and customers thought they knew who the company was and what it stood for.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 146

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. and “What did customers think of your prototype?”

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. We were excited by the response at last year’s Lean Startup Conference to Diane Tavenner’s eye-opening talk on her experience implementing Lean Startup methods at Summit Public Schools, the California charter for which she is CEO and co-founder.

Lean 164

Lean New York City Startup San Francisco 164

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

This year, with the kids grown, their choice was to fly up from Southern California and spend the holidays at our ranch. So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. California, where even the rabbits are bigger than life!

Silicon Valley 137

Silicon Valley Turkey United States RSS 137

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Forget the Hypertext idea and come on back to California. Oh, and since it was not code compatible with anything, we were going to have to port all the key scientific applications our customers needed (as soon as we figured out who they were.) The response from across the country? We’re building a supercomputer.”

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. He continued: “I’d like to convince my boss so our company can be your first customer.”

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any engineering, customer or competitor problem, and you shouldn’t agonize over trying to find one. An example of a reversible decision could be adding a product feature, a new algorithm in the code, targeting a specific set of customers, etc.

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

Steve Blank

APRIL 21, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment with a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Last week the teams tested their hypotheses about Customer Relationships (how do they get, keep and grow customers.) its product or service) to its customers. Parts one through five are here , Syllabus is here.

Channel 215

Channel Artificial Inteligence San Francisco Business Model 215

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 25, 2013

The Lean Startup methodology has its roots in the tech sector, where companies need to iterate quickly in order to survive. In fact, at last year’s Lean Startup conference we had speakers from a number other sectors, including government, transportation, education and public health. Here''s just one example.

Lean 167

Lean Ghana Startup Government 167

Mike Michalowicz

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

Tip 1: Improve Your Customer Service | Dr. Eric White, OD. His practice, Complete Family Vision Care Optometry, is in San Diego, California. Dr. Aaron Neufeld, OD is an Owner/Optometrist at Los Altos Optometric Group in Los Altos, California. Lean on your accountant and hire a good financial coach to hold you accountable.

San Diego 111

San Diego Technical Review California Retention 111

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

The Times Square Strategy discussion I had with Eric Ries , was still top of mind, so instead of my standard Customer Development lecture , I offered my thoughts on: the origin of Customer Development, where we are today, and where does Customer Development go, and how you can help get it there.

Customer Development 212

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 212

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

The “strategy” of learning who SuperMac’s customers were, what solutions they needed and what our repositioning would be was a three month effort. it was the speed of the applications that customers were using to get their work done. So I was going to give our customers metrics neither they or anyone else had ever seen before.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. Get customers first.

Cofounder 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

A partner allows me the flexibility to miss a session or two (my job as a California Coastal Commissioner meets three days every month up and down the coast of California.) For example, when we taught the value of getting out of the building and agile development, we had Eric Ries talk about the Lean Startup.

Business Model 226

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

Hearpreneur

JUNE 4, 2021

These are keepsake cards and many of our customers tell us that the recipients frame their cards. 9- Providing Legitimate B2B Customer Data in the Era of Mistrust. That's when I was struck by the idea: Why not provide a legit B2B customer database that is neither dodgy and nor a bad fit for a business? that add texture.

Entrepreneur 131

Entrepreneur B2B Database Technical Review 131

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2010

This week I’m at the California Coastal Commission hearing in Ventura California wearing my other hat as a public official for the State of California. After the hearing I drove up to Santa Barbara to give a talk to a Lean Startup Meetup.

San Francisco 251

San Francisco California Startup Customer Development 251

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. So he had adopted Steve’s Lean LaunchPad class and was using The Startup Owner’s Manual as his core text. They accounted for 65 percent (or 9.8

Silicon Valley 305

Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 305

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter. It did not mean building a startup into a company to flip or hype on the market with no earnings or revenue, but building a company that had paying customers. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story. That is until I saw that in startup after startup customers come from places you don’t plan on. Your board nods sagely at your target customer list.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

And I got to experience a type of customer buying behavior I had never seen before – the Novelty Effect. People who aren’t current customers of our graphics boards will get to know our company and brand. All we had to do was tell customers they could get video into their computer – and not promise anything else.

Video 164

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 14, 2011

Have you tested the concept with customers using paper? Have you signed some test customers? Don't try to hunting programmers until you've pushed this as far as you can on paper and get early customers. He had a few early customers ready to go. " and start leaning to prompt them to start walking with you.

Fractional CTO 349

Fractional CTO Southern California Startup Mobile 349

Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

The Customer Development talk can be seen here. If you’ve never seen Eric’s Lean Startup presentation, take a few minutes to at least watch his part. That said I will be giving a Customer Development talk at TIECON , Saturday May 16th, 1:30 thanks for asking. steve Customer Development is Hard. Order Here.

Customer Development 139

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 139

crowdSPRING Blog

SEPTEMBER 14, 2012

5 Warning Signs That Your Customer Service SUCKS - [link]. Good reminder on why it’s important to never breach your customers’ trust - [link]. Small Business and Startups: The True “Lean” Movement – [link]. Small Business and Startups: The True “Lean” Movement – [link].

Social Media 92

Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

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. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244