Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. There was now a public market for companies with no revenue, no profit and big claims.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

When a startup finds a repeatable sales process and steadily increasing revenue, its investors wants to harvest the rewards and build a culture of “execution.” Let’s Fire Our Customers « Steve Blank (tags: product-management startup business) [.] 3) Managing the relationship is more consumptive than the rewards.

Customer 195

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

When I asked our trade show manager she looked at me like I was the house idiot and said, “Steve, don’t you know that my job is to set up our trade show booth?” But my favorite was when the public relations manager said, “we’re here to write press releases and answer the phone in case the press calls.” This is a big idea.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

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. Lets see why.

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Up and Running

JUNE 4, 2018

He struck up his friendship with Jobs as the result of an introduction by a mutual friend who had met Jobs at their California high school. However, so long as you manage your time and juggle your goals effectively, you can realize the benefits of starting a business in this kind of environment. These include: 1.

Bootstrapping 66

Bootstrapping Colorado Internet Software Review 66

Up and Running

AUGUST 3, 2016

George Hedley, a CSP based in California, is known as “The Business Builder” and has worked in the construction industry since 1977. Job costs are specific to each job your firm is working on, from labor and equipment to project management and worker’s comp. Use good years to buffer lean years. But those aren’t targets.

Revenue 60

Revenue Nebraska Virginia Lean 60

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. A year goes by, you miss your revenue plan, and you’ve burned through your first VP of Sales. What happened?

Silicon Valley 131

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject. It was a management problem. We had been outsourcing an important part of our demand creation strategy – packaging – to an outside agency without having the expertise to judge or manage the results. What did we learn?

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Big companies have great execution habits to manage and improve successful business models and value propositions. This happens because managing the present often takes oxygen away from inventing the future. Alexander and I often collaborate on new ideas for corporate innovation. Equip this “space” with power and prestige.

Non-Compete 329

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 329

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Last week the teams tested their Revenue Models hypotheses: what are customers willing to pay for? Of real interest was their evolving view of their revenue model. All the teams have crossed the Rubicon. . Veritas turbines.

South Dakota 217

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 217

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 17, 2013

Many successful enterprises encountered difficult times and manage to endure, adapt, and even grow stronger and larger because of the trials. While it makes good business sense to branch out and seek other markets and revenue streams, this could also adversely affect the company’s profitability, especially if things don’t turn out well.

San Diego 145

San Diego California Lean Leadership 145

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Leadership & Managing | Tuesdays. LEADERSHIP & MANAGING. Managing Creativity. Leadership and Managing >. Quality Manager Job Description. Quality Manager Job Description. Recruitment Manager Job Description. Technology | Thursdays. Small Business Success | Mondays and Thursdays. Finance | Tuesdays.

Arizona 40

Arizona Equity Iowa Venture Capital 40

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

But then the Lean Startup’s scientific method of validating their business idea quickly has them feeling right at home. from University of California, Davis in Biomedical Engineering. What that meant was that until the test results came back the food can’t ship and that’s lost revenue for them. He received his Ph.D.

Cofounder 190

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 190

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

But then the Lean Startup’s scientific method of validating their business idea quickly has them feeling right at home. from University of California, Davis in Biomedical Engineering. What that meant was that until the test results came back the food can’t ship and that’s lost revenue for them. He received his Ph.D.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 120

Duct Tape Marketing

JANUARY 10, 2018

I enlisted in the Marine Corps at the tender age of 17 and got stationed in California. When I was California, I went to continue … I was doing karate at the time. When I got stationed out in California, which obviously has the larger Asian population, I stumbled across my first Aikido class in May of 1988.

California 41

California Washington Pennsylvania Audience 41

Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

He had just filmed the second of a series of videos called, Speaking to the Big Dogs: How mid-level managers can communicate effectively with C-level executives (CEO, VP’s, General Managers, etc.) As we were plotting marketing strategy, I mentioned that the phrase “Speaking to the Big Dogs” might end up as his corporate brand.

Silicon Valley 176

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 176

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Big companies have great execution habits to manage and improve successful business models and value propositions. This happens because managing the present often takes oxygen away from inventing the future. Alexander and I often collaborate on new ideas for corporate innovation. Equip this “space” with power and prestige.

Non-Compete 120

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

In hindsight it appeared clear that startups that survive the first few tough years do not follow the traditional product-centric launch model espoused by product managers or the venture capital community. As you stated, the VCs only want to hear about product development and, I would add, revenue models.

Silicon Valley 127

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 22, 2020

Digital Response (USDR) CalFresh Onward California Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture (CUESA) "President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1935-1944" SF New Deal donation/volunteer page Transcript for Out of the Crisis #15: SF New Deal Eric Ries : This is Out of the Crisis, I'm Eric Ries.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Government Technical Review Community 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan Foundation , the Sloan School of Management at MIT , the Sloan program at Stanford , and the Sloan/Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in New York. Sloan realized that the traditional centralized management structures (like General Motors had in 1920) were poor fits for the management of GM’s already diverse product lines.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

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. After twelve months Handspring’s revenue was $170 million. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Up and Running

JULY 16, 2015

From the beginning and all along the way, careful planning has guided the business from revenues of $35,000 in 2011, to $400,000 in 2014, and estimates of $700,000 for 2015. Increased revenue has gone hand-in-hand with public acclaim. That made our first winter in the shop very lean, but we made it through,” he says.

Oregon 60

Oregon Prospectus Southern California California 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

I was asked to explain why a marketing program that cost $150,000 bucks literally generated nothing in revenue for the company. They hit each other with baseball bats until one of them dropped.) This first Zen moment happened at a SuperMac exec staff meeting.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

A Progress Graph on the right visually shows how far you’ve come (in whatever units of goodness you’re tracking – revenue, units, users, etc.) Your presentation doesn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. This is a radical departure from a traditional VC pitch. Get back up and running.

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

We Changed Our Mind In 1966, 10 years after Hewlett’s memo, Hewlett Packard’s revenue and headcount had grown ten fold; $200 million and 11,000 employees – all from test and measurement equipment. General managers of divisons are compensated on division P&L not long term innovation. What is a company anyway?

Silicon Valley 164

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Up and Running

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

The subscription box industry is growing rapidly thanks to a steady revenue model and tapping into people’s love for surprises. But if you’re writing a plan as an internal guide for strategic growth, you should consider a lighter version— a Lean Plan. Financial summary : Project your revenue for the first few years.

Business Plan 63

Business Plan Curation Balance Sheet Intellectual Property 63

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 11, 2019

Ann will be speaking at this year’s Lean Startup Conference in October about all of this and more. I was in California at that point, where there were a handful of women, which to me was already really inspirational. Let’s start off with how and why you helped found All Raise and what its mission is. I've been in venture now twice.

Founder 68

Founder Lean Venture Capital Cofounder 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2020

They created a program called Onward California in partnership with the State of California and with the support of governor Newsom. Their model in California was so successful they eventually created a new organization, Onward US, dedicated to putting American workers displaced by COVID-19 back to work.

Fresno 60

Fresno Community Technology California 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 25, 2020

And half our clubs were in the state of California in 2008, so was a very interesting time to be a CEO and learned a lot. And the truth is that's yesterday and you don't really have the ability to change what you did yesterday, but what you do have the ability today, is to lean into this. You're usually your own worst critic.

Technical Review 148

Technical Review Balance Sheet Texas Austin 148

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

So let’s be very specific: let’s assume your dream job is product manager at Google, working on the Analytics product. New York, California different toilet, same s#@t. The Proof Is In The Revenue. As if managing were a waste of time. It’s 2010 and that idea has not graduated to mainstream yet. By doing the job.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

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. Page views drive his ad revenue, which is probably CPM based.

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 10, 2020

So, that was the first moment that we said, "This looks like it could be a thing in California." We weren't fully thinking about California or the country at that point. My first job was a Product Manager at Oracle, then I worked at a tech startup called meVC. It was really myself and my boss, who was our portfolio manager.

California 60

California Silicon Valley Framework China 60

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 24, 2012

Transcript Automated transcription services provided by: Dan Bowen: My name is Dan Bowen, and I’m up in the wine country in Healdsburg, California north of San Francisco, and the company name is SyncBloc, S-Y-N-C-B-L-O-C. We’ve got amazing calendar tools, we’ve got contact management tools. Jason: SyncBloc.

Silicon Valley 204

Silicon Valley Software Review Internet Technical Review 204

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

Moneyball was a story about a mediocre, under-funded baseball team achieving great things when managed by looking at the data. How did he finally manage? Are you familiar with the Lean Startup methodology? They call it Lean Startup, but it’s also essentially conversion optimization. Barack Obama. Jeremy Lin.

PPC 123

PPC Analytics Conversion SEO 123

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 13, 2011

Search engine marketing is a tactic that is perfect for a lean, iterative approach to marketing. To generate sales and revenue? For instance you could target your ads only at people in California, who are single, and who’s birthday it is today. Lean Marketing tips: not-for-profit edition. Graphic: Sam Michel.

Advertising 103

Advertising Lean Marketing Campaign 103

Austin Startup

JUNE 26, 2019

You might notice what’s not on that list above: revenue, investors. No revenue isn’t always a problem for venture-style businesses; no investors + no revenue = challenges for most founders without tremendous self-funding. Lean into it. If you’re a founder/product manager/business owner, I encourage you to find that out!

Silicon Valley 54

Silicon Valley Startup B2C Sweat Equity 54