Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

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.” We will reach 35% market share in year one of sales with a headcount of twenty people, spending less than $4,000,000. Two paragraphs, Five bullets. It didn’t take more.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 268

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. In the next few posts that follow, I’ll describe how thinking of a solution to this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – that offers a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

Customer Development 227

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 227

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

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. Marketing starts to build a sales demo, writes sales materials (presentations, data sheets), and hires a PR agency.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 268

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

The key contributors to an out-of-control burn rate is 1) hiring a sales force too early, 2) turning on the demand creation activities too early, 3) developing something other than the minimum feature set for first customer ship. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

Lean 259

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 259

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Since this was the marketing department, I was going to be planning to spend some advertising and public relations dollars. I knew we were selling through a multi-level indirect sales channel. That’s a mouthful to say that our sales people didn’t sell our products directly to a customer. What magazines did they read?

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 206

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

The only difference between us and the Internet bubble that would follow was that we did branding on the cheap by creating our image with public relations, whilethe dot-bomb era was to do it by spending enormous sums on advertising (those large venture rounds had to get spent somewhere.) Hindsight is wonderful.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 17, 2015

In Newark, a Vertical Indoor Farm Helps Anchor an Area’s Revival nytimes.com/glogin?URI=htt…. Will Google’s Algorithm Update Affect Your Franchise Sales? Who Is To Blame For California’s Drought? 5 Tips For Small Businesses During Tax Season forbes.com/sites/drewhend…. entrepreneur.com/article/244517. Intuit objects.

Small Business 48

Small Business Design Social Media Startup 48