Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? But all things are never equal.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 26, 2013

This post is part of our series on the National Science Foundation I-Corps Lean LaunchPad class in Life Science and Health Care at UCSF. Doctors, researchers and Principal Investigators in this class got out of the lab and hospital talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them.

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SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

A lot of my time is spent helping early-stage companies get to proof points so that they can raise capital. They might have some seed money and are thinking or raising a Series A based on success of an early release (MVP). Bill Payne is an expert on how early-stage investors should look at valuation.

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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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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Reply steveblank , on May 22, 2009 at 2:39 pm Said: Morteza, The comments about “ignore this post&# were meant that if your sales channel is the web you rarely go to trade shows. You are correct all channels, web or otherwise, need to generate awareness and leads. Go to trade shows like it matters.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

She has a separate team, with its own culture and office, and a mandate straight from top management to innovate without regard to the company’s historic products, channels, or supply chain. In other words, we want to use the spreadsheet to quantify our progress using the most important unit: validated learning about customers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

, it seemed time to return to the subject of investigating who my customers are. Today, Id like to spend some time on two techniques: the problem presentation and learning what channels of information reach customers. But beyond the obvious, its also important to know where customers go to get answers to pressing questions.

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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. Customer Development This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process. Employ customer development.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. Building the sales channel and supporting the marketing can burn a lot of cash.

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Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

That was the message from the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on Sirius XM Channel 111. Entrepreneurs are Everywhere airs Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern on Sirius XM Channel 111. Tune in Thursday at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET on Sirius XM Channel 111 Filed under: Customer Development.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. That’s why early stage companies aren’t run by accountants with spreadsheets.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. And Jennifer is now my co-instructor in the Stanford Lean LaunchPad class.). Sales channels. The MVP Tree.

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Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

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. Don’t confuse your passion for your tools with why your customers will buy your product.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? This is the usual reason given for a marketing launch, but for most early stage startups, its a failure. Do some Customer Development instead.

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Step 1: Start with a lean plan. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

A Lean Startup methodology offers entrepreneurs a framework to focus on what’s important: Business Model Discovery. Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. Over 10 weeks each team gets out and talks to 100 customers. Those days are over.

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Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

You can be an Independent studio or do “work for hire&# (either a revenue share or buy-out model) - If you’re an independent studio you have a set of choices for distribution channel and marketing models. - We understood none of this. More detail in future posts. steve Twitted by altgate , on July 2, 2009 at 5:22 pm Said: [.]

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. The Customer Validation lesson of, “no formal launch until you have early sales validating the product and sales process&# was also born here.

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Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Filed under: Marketing , Technology , Venture Capital | Tagged: Steve Blank , Venture Capital , Entrepreneurs , Early Stage Startup , Tips for Startups « Customer Analytics – From Those Who Should Know SuperMac War Story 10: The Video Spigot » 14 Responses Michael F.

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Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

And they have channeled all this into whatever activity they could find outside of their home – sports, business, or …entrepreneurship. But a small percentage, whose brain chemistry and wiring is set for resilience, come out of this with a compulsive, relentless and tenacious drive to succeed. Let me know what you think.

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Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Steve I have to tell you some bad news, I just showed our potential channel partners and customers a few completed pieces of the games we had. Customer Development There was nothing wrong about Rocket Science having a vision radically different than the conventional wisdom. They think the games stink.”

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 21, 2018

Jeff Witten started CoinOut four years ago in my Columbia University 5-day Lean LaunchPad class. Anything about the Lean LaunchPad class or just being an entrepreneur in general prepare you for pitching on Shark Tank? ” Coming into the Lean LaunchPad class, what did you know about starting a company? I knew very little!

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Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2012

through the Lean Launchpad class. He wanted to fly out to Stanford and sit in the Lean LaunchPad class about to start in the engineering school. If we’re correct, we can compress the time for commercializing scientific breakthroughs and reduce the early stage risks of these new ventures.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

And at this early stage you’ll be giving up a larger percentage of your firm to investors. A seed round can come from friends, family, Kickstarter, angels – and most importantly, early customers. These sources are a lot more forgiving of iterations and pivots than later-stage venture-capital funds. Lessons Learned.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

And at this early stage you’ll be giving up a larger percentage of your firm to investors. A seed round can come from friends, family, Kickstarter, angels – and most importantly, early customers. These sources are a lot more forgiving of iterations and pivots than later-stage venture-capital funds. Lessons Learned.

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Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 225

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

We were going to do that by turning marketing into a machine to generate end user demand, drive the that demand into our sales channels, and educate our sales channels. In an early stage startup, instead of sales being up front, the point departments are likely to be product development and customer development.

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maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

How to stay lean and iterate quickly while you’re building a two sided marketplace, especially when “network effect” and “critical mass” are the two main focuses? When it comes to early stage investing – it’s all gut. Curate great links for your ideal customers and share them 3 times per day.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Marketing is Heard From Engineering was discussing how sophisticated the graphics portion of our computer should be, debating cost and time-to-market tradeoffs of arcane details such as double-buffering, 24 versus 32-bits of color, alpha channels, etc. Customer development isn’t just for [.] Getting out of the building.

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techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. Twitter is an excellent distribution channel for us. (B) link] The Best Programming Language for a Lean Startup [.] Andrew Holt I love these kinds of articles.

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Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

should have leaned on them a lot more, but I didn't, or at least not in the right ways. 0160; If I need $250,000 to get to 100 customers, or $1 million to get to X, and I can raise both amounts from either Angels or VCs, where do we turn? Customer Validation needs to have the CEO actively involved. I asked.

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Software Review Startup Venture Capital Technical Review 217

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Team Configuration 500 Startups Guerilla Marketing Organizations Entrepreneurship Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs Startups Startup Incubators and Seed Programs Seedcamp Y Combinator TechStars Lean Startups What is the perfect startup team? Find out what motivates people.

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www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

VC Cafe covers early stage Israeli and European tech & mobile startups. Lean Methodology Sources. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Part 3- Lean Cust. Steve Blank’s Lean Startup Resources. Lean Startup Circle â?? Lean project management. Customer Development.

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Software Review Technical Review Startup 53