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. End result? If they had done this, there would have been zero dollars in sales. .

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

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. It didn’t take more.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

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

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Metrics – Mine is Bigger Than Yours The first thing SuperMac needed to do was to change how our potential color desktop publishing customers viewed our products versus our competitors’ products. As hokey as it is, when confronted with uncertainty or unknowns, human beings like to be reassured by comparative metrics.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

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. The reality is that most business plans don’t survive first contact with customers. experiential.

Lean 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

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

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. Klout Puts Metrics Into Social Media Management - Tim Berry's Blog - Planning Startups Stories , May 21, 2010 I really like klout.com for three good reasons: 1.) it’s about measuring online influence and I’m big on metrics as a key element of business planning; 2.)

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

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. They measure their success on metrics that reflect success in execution, and they reward execution.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

In fact, you could say that all that remains from my last book are the four steps of Customer Development. Integrates Alexander Osterwalders “Business Model Canvas” as the front-end and “scorecard” for the customer discovery process. Briefly, the new book.

Entrepreneur 289

Entrepreneur Lean Business Model Customer Development 289

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? An early indication that you’ve found the right business model is when you believe the cost of getting customers will be less than the revenues the customers will generate.

Balance Sheet 298

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 298

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. There are too many products clamoring for attention. Is that a lot?

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? Customer Segments is changed to Beneficiaries. Channel is changed to Deployment. Customer Relationships is changed to Buy-in/Support. Customer Segments Change to Beneficiaries.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. They’ve found product/market fit (what products customers want to buy). and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

ConversionXL

JANUARY 31, 2014

note: If you’re a startup, you’ll want to use customer development questions for your page to resonate with future traffic). Ask Peep about analytics, and he’ll tell you, “Metrics are there to provide actionable insight. You need to look at a metric, ask “so what?” – and have an answer.”. image source.

Analytics 134

Analytics Video Matching Conversion 134

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2010

Customer Discovery. Metrics That Matter (Business Model Metrics). 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

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. What is customer development?

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule. Time-to-complete-a-sale is not a bad metric for validated learning at this stage.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

- simply because I left the large, famous MMO company I was working for to prepare a quiet startup) Personally, I got lucky and started in an area (online games) where I found channels such as MUD-DEV (and early GDCs) for meeting, listening to, and speaking to other people where people were taken how they were found.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

Or depending on your metrics for success, get users, grow traffic, etc.). A business model diagram also shows how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. What’s the distribution channel. Most of the time the darn customers don’t behave as you predicted.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Recently, he was bitten by the lean startup bug and has started writing about his experiences attempting to apply lean startup and customer development principles. Managing weekly releases got a lot harder once I started doing customer development. Things started to slip. I am not advocating adding no features at all.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

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 a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics. So far, so good.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

It provides a basic introduction to analytics as they apply to Lean Startup, including sections on what metrics to use and how to interpret them. For instance, Ben lists out the worst of the “vanity metrics,” a term that describes appealing but meaningless or misleading numbers. Alistair: There are plenty. Consider a restaurant.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

Your customer. The sales channels you will use to reach your target customers. It’s structured around a model that Steve has become famous for—the Customer Development Process. Our self-guided tool will also help you forecast financials and manage your business metrics once you’re up and running. .

Curation 60

Curation Lean Software Review Finder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

It requires separating the product launch from the marketing launch (see Dont Launch ) as well as other staple Lean Startup tactics: minimum viable product, split-testing, customer development and the pivot. Early this year, SlideShare launched custom channels. That is customer development.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. You dive deep into a customer development process, working closely with a few customers who feed you requirements and are willing to trial an imperfect product that is evolving quickly. Related articles.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

Steve Blank

MAY 16, 2016

In companies this would be product line extensions, more efficient supply chain, new distribution channels. They have to change the metrics across the entire organization. If not, then the effectiveness of the Horizon 3 effort will be graded using Horizon 1 metrics. But in the military success has different metrics.

San Diego 142

San Diego Metrics Indonesia Silicon Valley 142

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

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.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

This is another sub-optimization caused by incentivizing the wrong metric. Given that most recruiting channels are pay-for-performance, its usually cheaper, too, because it has a lower conversion rate. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

A Crowded Space

AUGUST 20, 2015

They will need to do tons of customer development. The sales and marketing channels will be complete guesses - trying lots of different things to see what works. Once the product / market fit is established and acquisition channels are better understood, the startup can enter the next phase.

Vertical 60

Vertical Channel Acquisition Metrics 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. the fatigue rate of customers in that notification channel 2. Thoughts?

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door. You might also get immediate access to channels that might have otherwise taken years to break into. Step 8: Track your metrics.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

The concept of Partners , took some explanation as some teams confused partners with the Distribution Channel.). After a week of hectic customer discovery , the team further refined their new business model. What are the key financials metrics for costs in your business model? The Nine Teams Present. Importance of cash flows?

South Dakota 217

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 217

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

FM KQED live-streams over the internet here : [link] Forum is also broadcast on Sirius XM satellite radio (channel 135 NPR Talk) I know for many of you 10AM is not the common time you're sitting by the radio with nothing better to do than call into a live radio show. There are several ways to tune in: In the Bay Area, tune your radio to 88.5

Lean 159

Lean San Francisco Houston Engineer 159

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 11, 2016

We did three iterations of the product in less than 12 months, each one progressively going off of different consumer metrics that we found and then partner feedback. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. Ultimately, it didn’t work and we decided we had enough time to maybe do one last iteration.

Columbus 245

Columbus Entrepreneur Ohio Cofounder 245

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

Or, in canvas terms, channel plus relationship. You shift from qualitative feedback (customer development) to quantitative feedback (metrics). They’ve focused on their channel costs and have done a wonderful job of making them 40x lower than their competitors. Growth is acquisition plus retention.

Startup 55

Startup Business Model Retention Acquisition 55