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. While that’s not true, it is a fact that entrepreneurs only have one word for “startup.”

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2014

Skunk works differed from advanced research groups in that they were more than just product development groups. They had direct interaction with customers and controlled a sales channel which allowed them to negotiate their own deals with customers. Skunk works looked much like a startup.

Channel 286

Channel Customer Development Distribution Restful 286

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

In the last few years we’ve recognized that a startup is not a smaller version of a large company. We’re now learning that companies are not larger versions of startups. But paradoxically, in spite of all their seemingly endless resources, innovation inside of an existing company is much harder than inside a startup.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

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. It has become an integral part of startup culture. None of mine did.)

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

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. For Neopets, its simply a side-effect of their game-like product design. Choose one. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?) One last thought.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

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? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Don’t startups exist for the same reason?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

For decades startups were managed by pretending the company would follow a predictable path (revenue plan, scale, etc.) Luckily most startups now realize there is a better way. Startups Are Not Small Versions of Large Companies. The revenue numbers and revenue model came from a startups original Business Plan.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

One day, we became convinced that a killer app for IMVU would be to sell a presidential debate bundle, where our customers could put on a Bush or Kerry avatar, and then engage in mock debates with each other. It was one of those brilliant startup brainstorms that comes to the team in a flash, with a giant thunderclap.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, June 5, 2009 It’s a startup, not a spreadsheet Some people, when they start to realize the power of using data to inform their decisions, become obsessed with optimization. Unfortunately, most decisions that confront startups lack a definitive right answer. But this is wrong, too.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

(Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

Knowing how to sort between vision and hallucination can avoid chaos inside your startup. He turned his PhD thesis into a killer product, got it funded and now was CEO of a company of 30. It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. Filed under: Customer Development.

Founder 316

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 316

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Ash Maurya is the founder of WiredReach , a bootstrapped startup that he has been running for seven years. 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. Things started to slip.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

In other words, they are facing conditions of extreme uncertainty, just like startups. But, as any startup can tell you, this opens up a tremendous set of opportunities for the rest of us. Mass blasts of information are ineffective, because the broadcast channels are suffering from information overload (even in social media).

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

I pointed out to Bob the irony – in a large company “fear of failure” inhibits speed and risk taking while in a startup “fear of failure” drives speed and urgency. Startups have finite time and resources to find product/market fit before they run out of money. and how to price the product. That’s now changed.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

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

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. Lets see why.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

MARCH 15, 2011

Our new Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. what’s the product? what distribution channel? Customer Segment : Owners/administrators of large green spaces (golf courses, universities, etc.) Channel : Mowing and agricultural equipment dealers.

Business Model 236

Business Model Nebraska Peru Germany 236

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Fundamentally, lean startups do more with less, because they systematically find and eliminate waste that slows down value creation. I want to talk specifics, and when you come right down to it, most technology startups dont have a very interesting cost structure. As a mentor of mine always says, "Startups dont starve, they drown."

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Today, Id like to spend some time on two techniques: the problem presentation and learning what channels of information reach customers. If this was a startup, Id be asking it of a sample of customers even more often, because getting a regular tracking result is helpful for informing your decision loop.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

First, SlideShare is a fantastic product (that I use on a regular basis) and an impressive company example of Lean Startup practices in action. Second, their story illustrates a key Lean Startup idea: proving the business in micro-scale. Early this year, SlideShare launched custom channels. How are we doing?

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 19, 2009 Support the Startup Founders Visa with a tweet Its been an exhilarating first day here in Washington DC for the Geeks on a Plane tour. We can remedy it by creating a special visa for startup founders. Its actually part of a lean startup story. Will you join us?

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Founder DC Washington 150

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. 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.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 31, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 31, 2009 The Lean Startup workshop coming soon I am currently gearing up for my talk tomorrow at the Web 2.0 As you can tell from recent posts, Ive been experimenting with different formats and channels to try and find the best way to help. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2022

How do they become present on new social media and communications channels? How do they connect with a new generation of customers who had no brand loyalty? How to they use the new distribution channels competitors have adopted? To succeed they realized this isn’t simply coming up with one new product.

Framework 389

Framework Distribution Channel Leadership 389

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 31, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 31, 2009 A new way to recruit for (and find) startup jobs In my work, I come across a lot of great startups. Similarly, I get pinged by many colleagues, friends, and fans who are looking to find a job with a startup. Great startups are always hiring, if the fit is right.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Startup Continuous Deployment 68

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

It’s why all of you operated so well in the unpredictable environment that all startups face.” What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. Next, you have to deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers.

Founder 297

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 297

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

I promised to post the slides for my highly abbreviated version of the lean startup presentation, so here they are. 2009 09 08 The Lean Startup Gov 2.0 whorunsgov : Eric Ries: Startups fail not because the technology works, but because no one wants the tech. dhinchcliffe : Lean startups go faster. Startup=Experiment.

San Francisco 92

San Francisco DC Washington Lean 92

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

The App Store is a channel for customer acquisition. As the channel gets more and more crowded, just launching an app in the store is getting worse and worse as a strategy for each new entrant. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

To give you a better idea of what entrepreneurs in this industry are thinking about during each phase of the startup process, I interviewed SaaS entrepreneurs from all over the world, including our own COO Noah Parsons. Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. or even be a U.S. Establishing a U.S.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

Those who have tried to build apps that exist just as glorified landing pages or marketing channels have generally failed. And, most importantly, you have several reliable communciation channels to talk to them including including email, profile notifications, feed items and status messages. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

Its goal is to take the original idea and search for a repeatable and scalable business model - first by finding product/market fit, then by testing all the parts of the business model (pricing, channel, acquisition/activation, partners, costs, etc.). Speed, tempo and fearless decision-making are a startups strategic advantage.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

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? Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. Do some Customer Development instead. Help you raise money.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

189 Answers To The Top Startup Questions On Your Mind. 189 Answers To The Top Startup Questions On Your Mind. Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. I love startups. Building Product 2. Here’s my high-level approach for startups.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

2010 – Sean Ellis, who currently runs Qualaroo , coins the term “growth hacking” in his article, Find a Growth Hacker for Your Startup. He puts the focus on product, not “growth hacks” Unfortunately, this post only receives 182 shares. Andrew Chen , Uber : “Startups don’t need growth hackers – at first.

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Over scrambled eggs and diet coke, I listened to this seasoned startup veteran describe the excitement of his students who came to the U.S. Win, lose or draw, these students have a life changing experience where they can network and get smarter as they see what good startup thinking looks like. to compete.

Business Plan 140

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

There are other models, in other distribution channels. As the AppStore becomes increasingly saturated one of the goals of the socialDeck platform is to create an alternative distribution channel -- a way to drive installs of casual games outside of the AppStore oligopoly. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# A successful startup strives for this latter case.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156