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). Will Zell , co-founder and CEO of Nikola Labs wireless power company.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 9, 2013

Unless you’re running your business from underneath a rock, you know that losing a customer is a big deal because it has a significant impact on your organizational health. Besides the loss of potential future revenue, any sunk costs (costs you initially incur to gain the customer) are unrecoverable. Risk getting personal.

Customer 170

Customer Technical Review Florida Cofounder 170

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

What it’s like to go from the comfort of the lab bench to the chaos of a startup was the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more.

Cofounder 196

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 196

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 27, 2014

It wasn’t so many years ago that starting a new e-commerce business on the Internet was a complex custom development project, usually costing a million dollars or more. With a little help from a friend, you can handle expenses, revenue, and payroll, with QuickBooks or a similar package. Martin Zwilling.

Entrepreneur 260

Entrepreneur Burn Rate Social Media LLC 260

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, January 15, 2010 Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Harvard Business Review) The next part in the series I am writing for Harvard Business Review is online. This time, Im discussing the challenge for corporate CFOs and VCs alike in holding entrepreneurs accountable. Read the rest here.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Hearpreneur

JULY 30, 2016

Female entrepreneurs and business owners are no longer taken with a grain of salt. Female entrepreneurs continue to make strides in business despite the pay gap, discrimination, and gender politics which play out on both large and small stages. But only around 2% will actually achieve revenues over $1 million dollars.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Entrepreneur CTO Hire 48

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

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

So far, I have found "lean startup" works better with the entrepreneurs Ive talked to than "agile startup" or even "extreme startup.") The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

My co-author and business Partner Bob Dorf spends much of his time traveling the world teaching countries and companies how to run the Lean LaunchPad program. Lean LaunchPad Colombia starts again today in Bogota with 25 more teams of tech entrepreneurs and at 25 mentors from the country’s universities, incubators, and chambers of commerce.

Colombia 325

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 325

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

What it’s like to go from the comfort of the lab bench to the chaos of a startup was the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

My co-author and business Partner Bob Dorf spends much of his time traveling the world teaching countries and companies how to run the Lean LaunchPad program. Lean LaunchPad Colombia starts again today in Bogota with 25 more teams of tech entrepreneurs and at 25 mentors from the country’s universities, incubators, and chambers of commerce.

Colombia 289

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 289

Steve Blank

MAY 5, 2016

Founders will always encounter naysayers, shut out the voices and listen to the customers instead. Two lessons from the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Joining me in from the studio at Stanford University were: Guido Kovalskys , co-founder and CEO of Nearpod , a learning platform.

Brazil 163

Brazil Entrepreneur Cleveland Cofounder 163

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. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2016

And world-class entrepreneurs never quit. How founders cope with startup challenges was the focus of today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Cofounder Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

MAY 5, 2016

Founders will always encounter naysayers, shut out the voices and listen to the customers instead. Two lessons from the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Joining me in from the studio at Stanford University were: Guido Kovalskys , co-founder and CEO of Nearpod , a learning platform.

Brazil 120

Brazil Entrepreneur Cleveland Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

A lot of entrepreneurs think that their startup is the next big thing when in reality they’re just building a small business. A first order filter is whether the founders are aiming for a scalable startup. Now with customers and early revenue, it was out raising its first round of venture money. Daniel Burnham.

Hockey Stick 299

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 299

Steve Blank

MAY 13, 2010

But startups can shoot themselves in the foot when founders use consultants at the wrong time or in the wrong way. They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. So I met the entrepreneur and asked him how his search for a business model was going. Let me say it again: Getting customer feedback can not be delegated.

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Founder Cofounder Business Model Customer Development 226

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

We make a point of keeping our records updated in the major data-trackers tracking the VC industry, e.g., CB Insights , Crunchbase , Dow Jones , Mattermark , Palico , Preqin , Pitchbook , and ThomsonReuters , since they are a source of data to LPs and to potential co-investors interested in us. . 3) Originate investments.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand. so at least some parts are being run by people who know what they are doing.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. We’d always cringe as we admitted that, no, we really only had a few thousand customers and a few thousand dollars in monthly revenue. Retention cohort analysis.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. What is customer development?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 23, 2015

Knowing your customers is the single biggest driver of startup success, and there’s no substitute for getting out of the building to learn about their problems and needs. Jason Young , co-founder of MindBlown Labs , which makes mobile social games to teach young adults about personal finance. Get out of the building.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Colorado Customer Development 120

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. It turned out that, during the course of the decline, one customer segment was losing customers while another was gaining customers. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Bring your questions.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. That’s because the model is based on assumptions about customers that are totally unproven.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Should you co-found your company with a software development shop? I’ve seen a range of options for supporting entrepreneurs, which I can rank from least to most involvement in companies by investors: financier VCs, e.g., Correlation Ventures. The question is: how should they be compensated when cofounding a company?

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

If you can start getting ROI on a feature in month one of a twelve month project versus waiting until the end, youve comparatively reduced the cost of development by the revenue generated by that feature over 11 months. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

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. In the Udemy course, Alistair and Ben expand these basics into a description of how to create empathy, stickiness, virality, revenue, and scale. Alistair: There are plenty.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Well, it turns out that to port long tail productivity apps to Google's App Engine is a somewhat cumbersome job, and requires a lot of custom development. The long tail apps can easily be ported to or developed on Google App Engine in a third of the time and cost using OrangeScape as an application platform. Enter OrangeScape.

Entrepreneur 114

Entrepreneur India Silicon Valley Massachusetts 114

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

There are a whole range of valid reasons why non-developers would want to dictate the production release schedule (Seasonal/timing issues, marketing, fulfillment concerns, documentation/training, revenue controls, legal/regulatory. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Hunter Walker

MARCH 14, 2014

” While I guess this is better data than not talking to any potential customers, a statement like this is at best, insufficient customer development , and at worst, a false positive that will eventually run your startup aground. Do your customers think of you first? “Would you want this if it existed?”

Cofounder 101

Cofounder Customer Development Revenue Naming 101

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Seed-stage investors are learning the metrics of traction, and are getting better at identifying those companies that are really achieving validated learning about customers. What is the right revenue model? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

We Changed Our Mind In 1966, 10 years after Hewlett’s memo, Hewlett Packard’s revenue and headcount had grown ten fold; $200 million and 11,000 employees – all from test and measurement equipment. At HP the founders were still at the company and still running the business.

Silicon Valley 186

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 186

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. That is customer development. “But it never happened.&# [Alas, customers dont know what they want!

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. And I tried to evaluate the idea and figure out: What did the founder really need here? Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ?

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Spencer Fry

APRIL 17, 2017

If this is the case, you may find yourself starting all over with little revenue (if any), a 1-2 person team that might be consulting on the side to pay bills, and no marketing spend. As a bootstrapped startup, the only accountability you have is to yourself and to your co-founder if you have one. Having great accountability.

Bootstrapping 63

Bootstrapping Cap Table Liquidation Preference Cofounder 63

www.instigatorblog.com

MARCH 2, 2010

The Board probably existed beforehand, but was made up only of the founders. link] Ben Yoskovitz @Mike: If you look at YCombinator they have tons of high quality advisers … so even 20 year olds can get involved with top quality, experienced entrepreneurs/VCs/advisers to help them out. There’s no surprise there.

Advisory Board 40

Advisory Board Startup Cofounder Equity 40

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

There are huge classes of bugs that "work as designed" but cause catastrophic changes in customer behavior. No automated test is going to catch that, but it still will drive revenue to zero. Most QA teams are organized around finding reproduction paths for bugs that affect customers. Better handling of intermittent bugs.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122