Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

We’re deep into teaching a Lean LaunchPad class for Life Sciences and Health Care (therapeutics, diagnostics, devices and digital health) at UCSF with a team of veteran venture capitalists. The class has talked to 1,440 customers to date.). Filed under: Customer Development , Life Sciences , Teaching. This can be taught.

Lean 258

Lean Customer Business Model Customer Development 258

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Over the years Dino and I brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. However, four critical advances over the past decade (cloud, accelerators, Lean, and Angels) not only changed the math for tech investing but made regional tech clusters possible. The Bend Experience.

Early Stage 286

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 286

Steve Blank

JANUARY 2, 2014

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.

Lean 240

Lean Algorithm Customer Development IP 240

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

In January, we introduced a new graduate course at Stanford called the " target="_blank">Lean LaunchPad. It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. OK, somehow we got them interested.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

” She looked at bit puzzled, so I continued to explain… One of the virtues of using the Business Model Canvas as part of a Lean Startup is that it helps you frame each one of your nine critical hypotheses. Filed under: Customer Development. Customer Development'

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

As our Lean LaunchPad for Life Sciences class winds down, a good number of the 26 teams are trying to figure out whether they should go forward to turn their class project into a business. It was a lifelong lesson that taught me to never start a business where you hate your customers. see 0:30 in the video below). It never goes well.

Cofounder 325

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 325

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Disruption today is more than just changes in technology, or channel, or competitors – it’s all of them, all at once. These processes reduce risk to an overall organization, but each layer of process reduces the ability to be agile and lean and – most importantly – responsive to new opportunities and threats.

Government 315

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 315

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.”. It’s time to update Build, Measure, Learn to what we now know is the best way to build Lean startups. Here’s how. Build-Measure-Learn.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

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

APRIL 4, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. This week they were testing who the customer, user, payer for the product will be (and discovering if they have a multi-sided business model , one with both buyers and sellers.) This post is part four. Syllabus is here.

Customer 234

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 234

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2014

Since the Pivot is one of the core concepts of the Lean Startup I was puzzled. A pivot is a fundamental insight of the Lean Startup. A pivot may mean you changed your customer segment, your channel, revenue model/pricing, resources, activities, costs, partners, customer acquisition – lots of other things than just the product.

Business Model 330

Business Model Lean Customer Development Channel 330

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And it was going to mention the two words that SuperMac marketing needed to live and breathe: revenue and profit. To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. The Rise of the “Lean VC’s” – Consumer Internet Gets Funded. Lean VC’s are Different.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

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

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

There's a lot out there around Customer Development - read Steve Blank : Entrepreneurship as a Science – The Business Model/Customer Development Stack - Steve Blank , October 25, 2010 Checklists for Chaos, The Path to Success - Steve Blank , October 28, 2010 and reading about Lean, MVPs, etc. is a requirement.

Valuation 198

Valuation Revenue Pre-Money Valuation Early Stage 198

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 19, 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. Part 4: This Will Save us Years – Customer Discovery in Medical Devices. Part 5: Value proposition and customer segments in Life Sciences. Part 6: Distribution channels in Life Sciences.

Lean 251

Lean Customer Development Video Distribution 251

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.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2013

It’s Lean, it’s fast, it works and it’s unlike anything else ever done. Welcome to the Lean LaunchPad for Life Sciences and Healthcare (part of the National Science Foundation I-Corps ). This post is part of our series on the Lean Startup in Life Science and Health Care. Part 6: Distribution channels in Life Sciences.

Lean 251

Lean Customer Development Business Model Channel 251

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

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.

Oakland 326

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. Analytics spark more questions and discussion than almost any other aspect of the Lean Startup method. Alistair and Ben, co-authors of the book Lean Analytics, will help you sort it out in our next webcast, Lean Analytics for Non-tech Companies.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2012

———– The Lean LaunchPad class for the National Science Foundation (NSF). Over the last 6 months, we’ve been teaching a version of the Lean LaunchPad class for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps. In an incubator, the Lean LaunchPad develops angel or venture-funded startups.

Lean 248

Lean Incubator Business Model Georgia 248

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 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. They learned a ton.

Lean 241

Lean Customer Development IP Agile 241

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. Step 1: Start with a lean plan. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. One-Page Business Pitch Template.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

The classes are built on the Lean Startup methodology: Customer Discovery, Agile Engineering and the Business/Mission Model Canvas. So how do our students get out of the building to talk to customers to do Customer Discovery when they can’t get out of the building? All you have are a series of untested hypotheses.

Customer 413

Customer Business Model Restful Video 413

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions and even billions of users can happen in years versus decades. Continuous innovation requires the imagination and courage to challenge the initial hypotheses of your current business model (channel, cost, customers, products, supply chain, etc.)

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

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.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

This makes sense in a company where your customers, channel and competition are known. And your revenue plan is something more than a hallucination. Yet year after year, decade after decade, VC’s would watch as no startup business plan survived first contact with customers. The International Business Model Competition.

Business Model 263

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 263

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

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.

Lean 237

Lean Customer Development Video Early Stage 237

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Mass blasts of information are ineffective, because the broadcast channels are suffering from information overload (even in social media). Test-marketing is now easier than ever before, thanks to leveraged distribution channels like AdWords and Facebook. What is the right revenue model? If not, there are plenty of alternatives.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

In other words, how can we adapt the Business Model Canvas when the metrics of success for an organization is not revenue? The Lean Startup is the way most innovators build startups and innovate inside of existing companies. From Revenue Streams to Mission Achievement. Customer Segments is changed to Beneficiaries.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

I thing I’ve learned over the years is that technology purists hate advertising even when it is that revenue stream that truthfully drives much of our industry. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards. The Wedding Channel.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

Hershey just bought Krave Jerky, a team in our 2011 Berkeley Lean LaunchPad class, for >$200 million. —– Jon Sebastiani and his team came into the 2011 Berkeley Lean LaunchPad class with several key observations: Snack foods were a large ~$35 billion but the moribund food category was starving for innovation and modernization.

North America 120

North America Lean Customer Development Distribution 120

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. Most of the time the darn customers don’t behave as you predicted. When revenue, users, traffic, etc.,

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

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. And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. So far, so good. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102