Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. Two paragraphs, Five bullets. The same was true for the Product Marketing group.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

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. In 1996 no potential customer had even heard of a Personal Digital Assistant.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. Or blame my MarCom department who approved it. But that wasn’t the root cause of the problem.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

But other critical hypotheses such as activities, resources, partners, channels needed testing offshore. And their branding and demand creation activities were going to occur primarily outside of Australia. And their branding and demand creation activities were going to occur primarily outside of Australia. Trip 2 to the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

Finally to have a better chance of a viable enterprise, they need to test all the other hypotheses in their business/mission model (pricing, demand creation, revenue, costs, etc.). The key principles of customer development are: There are no facts inside the building so get the heck outside.

Customer 413

Customer Business Model Restful Video 413

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

The Roominate dollhouse building kits are being sold via their own website and soon, retail channels. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So So what would the retail channel consultant do?” They learned a ton.

PR 314

PR China Lean Channel 314

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

DECEMBER 7, 2010

If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know I believe that: 1) a product is just a part of a startup, but understanding customers, channel, pricing, etc. are what make it a business, 2) business plans are fine for large companies where there is an existing market, existing product and existing customers.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2014

Now they were figuring out how to create demand. The Customer Development process, this relentless drive to turn hypotheses into facts is what makes this learning so rapid. At week six they were trying to figure out their distribution channel ( here ) after another pivot. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching'

Lean 272

Lean Silicon Valley Customer Development Incubator 272

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

These explosions in company size and scale created a demand for professional managers. Business plans presume that building a startup is a series of predictable steps requiring execution of a plan which assumes a series of known facts: known customers, known features, known pricing, known distribution channel. experiential.

Lean 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

press and use it to generate end user demand and then drive that demand into our sales channel. The Potrero benchmark strategy was one component of this creating end user demand through PR.) Getting B-52s through the Soviet Air Defense System Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential? We were constantly creating metrics [.]

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2010

Wait a minute, what about the rest of Customer Development ? Aren’t you going to validate your hypotheses by first getting some customers?”. Now I was confused, and I asked, “Well what do you guys believe – Customer Development or launch on a schedule?” Filed under: Ardent , Customer Development.

Customer Development 307

Customer Development Singapore Channel PR 307

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

The Roominate dollhouse building kits are being sold via their own website and soon, retail channels. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So So what would the retail channel consultant do?” They learned a ton.

PR 206

PR China Lean Channel 206

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2010

One of the key concepts of Customer Development is writing down your initial hypotheses (guesses) of all the parts of your business model, then updating them with the facts you find outside the building. Gather all your hypotheses in Customer Discovery. Filed under: Customer Development. Keeping Score.

Customer Development 211

Customer Development Business Model Early Stage Channel 211

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2010

Distribution, Demand Creation and Partnerships. Customer Discovery. None of the students were domain experts in their areas, and each team had to figure out how to contact potential customers and channel partners. Yet every team did figure out how to conduct extensive out of building Customer Discovery. (By

Intellectual Property 226

Intellectual Property Business Model Customer Development Distribution 226

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. You are correct all channels, web or otherwise, need to generate awareness and leads.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. existing enterprises are establishing corporate innovation groups.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

As a founder you start out with: 1) a vision of a product with a set of features, 2) a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? What’s the distribution channel. How do we create end user demand? Most of the time the darn customers don’t behave as you predicted.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

As a founder you are testing a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? What’s the distribution channel? How do we create end user demand? If you are following Customer Development , the answer is easy. Filed under: Customer Development , Durant versus Sloan.

Balance Sheet 298

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 298

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

For eBay, this is caused by the incredible network effects of their business (so-called demand-side increasing returns and supply-side increasing returns). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? For Neopets, its simply a side-effect of their game-like product design.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 16, 2012

They access the client’s views using a variety of channels — through the relationship manager, during senior executive visits, using independent surveys, and in client forums (virtual and in-person). They are overly demanding, they check up on your every move, and they basically drive you crazy. They seek feedback at multiple levels.

Management 159

Management Partner Channel Demand 159

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 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Thanks to Suns amazing PR blitz, there was tremendous demand for experts on Java, and I did my best to convince people that I was one of that mythical breed. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2016

Balancing business and family, and ensuring demand for your product were key lessons shared by two veteran entrepreneurs on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. There was no demand in companies for using a wide area network like the Internet and they didn’t believe that the demand would ever be there so we got no funding.

Silicon Valley 139

Silicon Valley California Entrepreneur Cofounder 139

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

The other revels in the world as we all know it will be someday: limitless distribution enabled by new technologies, the importance of collaborative filters, and on-demand availability of all content for end-users. Test-marketing is now easier than ever before, thanks to leveraged distribution channels like AdWords and Facebook.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2016

Balancing business and family, and ensuring demand for your product were key lessons shared by two veteran entrepreneurs on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. There was no demand in companies for using a wide area network like the Internet and they didn’t believe that the demand would ever be there so we got no funding.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley California Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2010

Students formed teams, came up with a business idea then talked to customers, vendors and sales channel partners to validate their business model. Each week the students had to submit a two-page analysis of the presenting company’s business model, distribution channels, demand creation activities, and engineering.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley Business Model Customer Development Engineer 126

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

So we tried to craft a strategy that would give us the product development leverage we needed to serve all customers. We combined three tactics: extensive use of free software, an open platform for user-generated content, and leveraged distribution channels. Leveraged distribution channels.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2011

Week 3 of the class and our teams in our Stanford Lean LaunchPad class were hard at work using Customer Development to get out of the classroom and test the first key hypotheses of their business model: The Value Proposition. Next week each team test their Customer Segment hypotheses (who are their customers/users/decision makers, etc.)

Cloud 228

Cloud Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 228

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. Customer Development This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process.

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 212

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. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

By the time we were acquired we had millions of users, we had a massive demand for consumer products, massive demand internationally. Tune in Thursday at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET on Sirius XM Channel 111. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. We needed to translate the game into other languages.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 145

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Some of the conversations went like this: Startup 1 Entrepreneur -“I’m competing against Company x and have been following the Customer Development process and I’ve talked to lots of customers.” Do you know how they create demand? Do you know the archetype of their customers? This is easy to test.

Silicon Valley 181

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

By the time we were acquired we had millions of users, we had a massive demand for consumer products, massive demand internationally. Tune in Thursday at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET on Sirius XM Channel 111. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. We needed to translate the game into other languages.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

The show airs on SiriusXM Channel 111 (weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern). Steven Cohn , founder and CEO of Validately , which helps user researchers, product managers and others validate demand or usability for prototypes and live sites. Tune in Thursday at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET on Sirius XM Channel 111. . Steven Cohn.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

The show airs on SiriusXM Channel 111 (weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern). Steven Cohn , founder and CEO of Validately , which helps user researchers, product managers and others validate demand or usability for prototypes and live sites. Tune in Thursday at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET on Sirius XM Channel 111. . Steven Cohn.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120