Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

I pointed out that the “data” you gather in 10 weeks (talking to 100+ customers, partners, payers, etc.,) Now that you’ve gotten to know your potential channel and customers, regardless of how much money you’re going to make, will you enjoy working with these customers for the next 3 or 4 years?

Cofounder 325

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 325

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2019

The class was unique in that it was 1) team-based, 2) experiential, 3) lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering). When we started this class, the concept of Lean (business models, customer development, agile, pivots, mvp’s) was new to everyone. Class Velocity/Depth.

Lean 248

Lean Business Model Balance Sheet Video 248

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

It turns out that for commercialization, the business model (Customers, Channel, Revenue Model, etc.) You can get a feel for how different by looking at the first two weeks of lectures – covering value proposition and customer segment – from each of the therapeutics, diagnostics, devices and digital health cohorts.

Lean 258

Lean Customer Business Model Customer Development 258

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Learning could be about product features, customer needs, the right pricing and distribution channel, etc.) Rather it is the simplest thing that you can show to customers to get the most learning at that point in time. They are: value proposition, product/service the company offers (along with its benefits to customers).

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

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. Even if they did, what if the assumption – that we had developed a better approach to teaching entrepreneurship – was simply mistaken?

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

Start by defining your key resources, activities, and partners. Then, consider how you’ll reach your customers and what kind of relationship you want to build with them. Revenue streams are another critical component of your business model. Develop a marketing strategy that leverages both digital and traditional channels.

Intellectual Property 132

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 132

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. But other critical hypotheses such as activities, resources, partners, channels needed testing offshore. With 317 million people the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

How can we attract buyers to our channel before they make purchasing decisions? They had 16 interviews with target customers (Zynga, Yahoo, VMware, Walmart, Zeconder, etc.) as well as channel partners and cloud industry technology consultants. Then different again for direct and indirect channels.

Customer 234

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 234

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2014

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. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development.

Business Model 330

Business Model Lean Customer Development Channel 330

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

1) It all starts from the Growth Hacking Funnel - in the early stages, startups should not just focus on top/bottom line metric like unique users and revenue. They should understand the different states of the user (Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue) and focus on moving users from one state to the next.

API 167

API Viral Startup Retention 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Funding challenges and other issues founders face in the early days of starting up were the focus of interviews with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern). whether that’s partners or employees that you bring on.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

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. An MVP is an experiment.

Customer 413

Customer Business Model Restful Video 413

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

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

But I pointed out that he would be up against competitors that had spend years building relationships with the big financial services companies (as well as channel partners) and he was going to have to start from scratch. The exact same team had worked on 2 previous customer service startups (and 1 non-CS product).

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

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

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

For decades startups were managed by pretending the company would follow a predictable path (revenue plan, scale, etc.) The Revenue Plan – The Third Fatal Assumption. Notice that the traditional product introduction model leads to a product launch and the execution of a revenue plan. Albert Einstein. Ritualized Crises.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

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

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2012

Few of the Principal Investigators or Entrepreneurial Leads had startup experience, and few of the mentors were familiar with Business Model design or Customer Development. 2) Get the teams out of the building to test their hypotheses with prospective customers. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

Lean 248

Lean Incubator Business Model Georgia 248

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

The test is: If you add one more sales person or spend more marketing dollars, does your sales revenue go up by more than your expenses? Does our product or service solve a customer problem (product-market fit)? How do we attract, keep and grow customers? What are revenue strategy and pricing tactics? What is an IRR?

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 333

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. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. Usually, this is via storefronts, online, or via distributors.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

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

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. These three tools allow startups to focus on the parts of an early stage venture that matter the most: the product, product/market fit, customer acquisition, revenue and cost model, channels and partners.

Oakland 326

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

If you were a “with it” VC you needed to have a “Content&# or “Multimedia&# company in your portfolio to impress your limited partners – educational software companies, game companies, or anything that could be described as content and/or Multimedia. We understood none of this. More detail in future posts.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

A business model diagram also shows how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. And it shows your company’s cost structures, how each department interacts with the others and where your company fits with other companies or partners to implement your business. Who are our partners?

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 26, 2013

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. Part 7: Revenue Streams in Life Sciences. Part 8: When Customers Make You Smarter : Customer Discovery in Digital Health.

Lean 237

Lean Customer Development Video Early Stage 237

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

In fact, by the start of class they had ~$750K in revenue for 2011 – not quite Facebook but a nice small business. Their sales had given them some real data on three potential distribution channels: direct to consumer, brick and mortar retail, retailers. What Do You Mean You Only Spoke to 1 Customer?

North America 120

North America Lean Customer Development Distribution 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. He was constantly in front of customers, listening, selling, installing and learning. I offered that at Epiphany, my partner Ben’s office was the first place I would go when I thought I had new “insights.” And that’s where the problem was.

Founder 316

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 316

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

The test is: If you add one more sales person or spend more marketing dollars, does your sales revenue go up by more than your expenses? Does our product or service solve a customer problem (product-market fit)? How do we attract, keep and grow customers? What are revenue strategy and pricing tactics? What is an IRR?

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 225

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

I had been confused for years why I had to update an income statement each board meeting that said zero for 18 months before we had any revenue. 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? Who are our partners?

Balance Sheet 298

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 298

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Second, and full disclosure, I’ve invested in a few of these funds ; and third my teaching partner Ann Miura-Ko is a partner in one of these funds. Most of the social and mobile channels (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, iPhone, Android) have emerged in just the past 3-5 years. Quickly iterate the product in front of customers.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

They’ve found product/market fit (what products customers want to buy). They’ve learned the best distribution channel to get the product from their company to the customer. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.) and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

Last week the teams tested their Revenue Models hypotheses: what are customers willing to pay for? This week they were testing their hypotheses about Partners. For example, Apple needed music from their record label partners to make the original iPod and iTunes experience complete. Week 8 of the class.

South Dakota 217

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 217

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

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

In today’s language of Customer Development , RIM positioned the Blackberry as a segment of an existing market – pager users who needed two-way communication. In today’s language of Customer Development , a TiVo positioned as a segment of an existing market (VCR’s) was a no brainer. New Market Revenue Curve.

Hockey Stick 271

Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 271

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

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.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

Steve Blank

MAY 16, 2016

This week teams figured out how to measure mission achievement and success, and our advanced lectures were on activities, resources and partners. In companies this would be product line extensions, more efficient supply chain, new distribution channels. In a company you know you’ve been successful when you generate revenue and profit.

San Diego 142

San Diego Metrics Indonesia Silicon Valley 142