Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Four Steps primarily centers its stories and case studies on B2B hardware and software startups.

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rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

Finding Technical Cofounders Is Hard. Yesterday, Michael Pope posted an article titled Technical Cofounders Are a Myth. He begins by explaining how he arrived at his conclusion: I began the hunt to find a technical co-founder – a software engineer who works for no cash – to help me build my dream website.

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www.kernelmag.com

MARCH 8, 2012

The Scene Developers Nailing that elusive technical co-founder. The upshot of all of this is that today’s startups can concentrate maximum time and resources addressing the problems they set out to solve. Are there any ‘Founders Dating’ events coming up?”. New technology for enquiring minds. Andy Young.

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Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Coder 43

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

This is a guest post by my Startup Owner’s Manual co-author Bob Dorf. While statistics are weak on startup success rates, the worst one I’ve seen suggests that 2 in 1000 venture backed startups will ever achieve $100-million or more in valuation. Can every startup skyrocket like Facebook or Square or Google?

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

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? It was a lifelong lesson that taught me to never start a business where you hate your customers. It never goes well.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Can this methodology be used for startups that are not exclusively about software?

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 21, 2012

I often get asked about finding cofounders and I usually give the standard list of characteristics of what I look for in a founder. And I emphasize the value of a founding team with complementary skills sets – i.e. the hacker/hustler/designer cofounder archetype for web/mobile apps. So I asked her to write a guest post.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

Once again, along with my partners at 500 Startups, we are proud to present the most substantive track at SXSW: [link] There was a running joke last year that "the Lean Startup track was the only place at SXSW you couldn't get out of the building." Juan Diego Calle CEO Dharmesh Shah Co-founder & CTO Ross Snyder Sr.

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Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering 165

viniciusvacanti.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

Home About Contact Me How To Make It as a First-Time Entrepreneur Vinicius Vacanti Guide to Finding a Technical Co-Founder September 7, 2010 | View Comments Steve Job's Technical Co-Founder “I’ve got this HUGE idea. I just need to find a technical co-founder.&# So, why should they pick you?

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Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Ruby 43

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. Jim Murphy is a long-time agile practitioner in startups. But startups sometimes have trouble applying agile successfully. Enter Jims post.

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Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2012

When Bob Dorf and I wrote the Startup Owners Manual we listed a series of Customer Development principles. I thought they might be worth enumerating here: A Startup Is a Temporary Organization Designed to Search. Pair Customer Development with Agile Development. Not All Startups Are Alike.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

The email continued, &# The problem I’m working on is that many founders are either making uninformed decisions or inefficiently learning the new skills they need. The solution I’m exploring is a just in time learning methodology that accelerates founders’ learning curve by aggregating relevant content, peers and mentors.&#.

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Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Continuing my series of posts that I’ve been collecting that live at the intersection of Startups and being a Startup CTO : Startup CTO Top 30 Posts for April 16 Great Startup Posts from March here are the top posts from May 2010. But founders need to know how to ask for their advice and when to ignore it.

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Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2015

A startup is not a part-time activity. Trying to do a startup while keeping your day job may doom you to failure. So will failing to understand your customers. Joining me in the Stanford University studio were: Reetu Gupta , co-founder and CEO of CirkledIn , an online platform that compiles students’ school life achievements.

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Cofounder India Entrepreneur Maryland 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

This post was co-written by Eric Ries and Sarah Milstein, co-hosts of The Lean Startup Conference. This year, for the first time, we've added a day of workshops and site visits to The Lean Startup Conference. Lean startup principles work differently in different environments.

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ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 15, 2011

Just as the Human Genome Project aimed to crack the human code, the Startup Genome Project hopes to be able to drill down into some of the details of what it's calling the "innovation code.". More than 90% of startups fail, due predominantly to self-destruction rather than competition.

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Software Review Merger Cofounder Startup 157

The Equity Kicker

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

Two developments have changed the face of startup investing in the UK in recent years. The first development is increased capital efficiency. The second development is SEIS and EIS. Both of these schemes use the tax code to make it more attractive for high-net-worth individuals to invest in startups.

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Early Stage Development Team Review Technical Review Software Review 119

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

And building a startup is not for the faint of heart. The tools and temperament needed to get from startup idea to startup success were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Prior to founding Andela , he co-founded 2U , an education technology startup that went public in 2014.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

If you’re a technical startup founder, one of the painful lessons is that it’s not enough just to build a great product. You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). Clay Hebert , founder of Crowdfunding Hacks. Clay Hebert.

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Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 8, 2008 The lean startup Ive been thinking for some time about a term that could encapsulate trends that are changing the startup landscape. After some trial and error, Ive settled on the Lean Startup. Of course, many startups are capital efficient and generally frugal.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

And building a startup is not for the faint of heart. The tools and temperament needed to get from startup idea to startup success were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Prior to founding Andela , he co-founded 2U , an education technology startup that went public in 2014.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Posted on December 7, 2009 by steveblank In my 21 years of startups, I had my ideas “stolen” twice. Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked.

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Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

The Next Web

AUGUST 2, 2014

Tenoch Esparza is the co-founder of Sensory Percussion, a next-generation electronic drum startup. As Steve Blank preaches in his book The Startup Owner’s Manual, you need to get out of the building for customer discovery interviews and see your customers’ pupils dilate when they see your product.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Cofounder 130

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

Reading lists are dime a dozen, but reading lists that focus on rapid-growth startup businesses? It’s the ultimate startup guide if you’re looking for systematic business growth and guidance on what not to do. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses.

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Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

How to make corporate innovation work and drive success in startups were the topics of discussion with 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.

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Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 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.

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Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

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. For startups, social media and color printers have essentially replaced the need for external public relations and marketing services.

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Cost Entrepreneur Burn Rate Social Media 405

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2023

I just spent a month and a half at Imperial College London co-teaching a “Wicked” Entrepreneurship class. Co mpanies also face Wicked problems. Startups vs. Large Companies vs. Governments Innovation at Speed for Horizon 1, 2 and 3 (Managing the Portfolio across Horizons) What is Systems Thinking?

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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.

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Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

This is part of an ongoing startup advice series where I answer (anonymized!) Freshman Salesman writes: I’ve read somewhere in your blog about how you had a very large organisation as the first customer for your software. Maybe you worked there or a co-founder or investor has some juice).

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Customer Software Review IP Technical Review 231

Steve Blank

JULY 24, 2012

I Know A Great Customer. A year later my co-founders and I had formed Epiphany. As other startups were quickly automating all the department of large corporations (SAP-manufacturing, Oracle-finance, Siebel and Onyx-Sales) our first thought was that our company was going to automate enterprise-marketing departments.

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Seattle Cofounder Engineer Sales 259

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, June 2, 2010 The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business Review) I continue my series for Harvard Business Review with the Lean Startup technique called Five Whys. As start-ups scale, this agility will be lost unless the founders maintain a consistent investment in that discipline.

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Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 3, 2009 Lean Startup fbFund wrap-up Last week I had a real blast meeting with the companies at the fbFund incubator at Palo Alto. The Lean Startup fbFund Edition View more documents from Eric Ries. We tend to equate startup success with making money, but that is a poor choice.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, January 12, 2010 Amazing lean startup resources A year ago, there was no lean startup movement. I continue to believe that the explosion of interest in the lean startup has very little to do with me. If you are attempting to apply lean startup ideas in your own business - you are not alone.

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Lean San Francisco Wiki Startup 146

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2015

Phil Randazzo , is the founder of American Dream U , a national entrepreneurship and coaching program that helps transitioning soldiers find work or start their own business. Derek Andersen , is the founder of Startup Grind , a 200,000-person entrepreneurial community with chapters in 75 countries run by more than 1,000 volunteers.

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Las Vegas Entrepreneur Cofounder Nevada 120

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, August 26, 2009 Building a new startup hub Last week, I had a unique opportunity to spend some time in Boulder at the behest of TechStars. It was a great experience to see a relatively new startup hub in action - and thriving. Their model looks like a key ingredient in the startup brew there.

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