David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund and mutual fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. The extreme example of this are algorithmic investors in the public markets, who design algorithms which trade on the designer’s behalf, as opposed to making trading decisions directly.

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Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 252

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. Is there some defining factor that easily distinguishes the difference? Sounds like handspring.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 217

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# Reply Lots of low cost experiments « Open Ambition , on April 22, 2009 at 8:58 am Said: [.] That’s why startups are agile.

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Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 305

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Computer hardware companies were faced with their customers asking for low-cost (relatively) desktop computers they had no experience in building. Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.)

Technology 142

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

One would think that designing a medical device would be a simple engineering problem, and startups would be emerging right and left. Cost pressures are unrelenting in every sector, with pressure on prices and margins continuing to increase. Venture Capital Issues. Venture Capital. Business Model Issues.

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Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 299

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Blog at WordPress.com.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? While we sometimes cut the price of graphics boards, it was only because we offered our customers no compelling reasons to buy one that was priced equivalently to the market share leaders. No, not really.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Brendan McManus said: “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [link] #startup #advice [.] Your “Customer Development Process&# has really resonated for me. Your results may vary.

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

We talked about some simple design rules and I remember him thanking me for coming, saying we were the only chip company who cared enough to call on him (little did he know.) Long gone from Zilog I saw the picture of the original Macintosh design team. I thought nothing about the meeting until years later.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 140

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

ARM, a competitor, not only had a better, much lower power processor, but a better business model – they licensed their architecture to other companies that designed their own products. For the first 75 years of the 20 th century, when capital for new ventures was scarce, the smartest engineering talent went to corporate R&D labs.

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Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.”

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 283

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

In less than a month they designed a low-cost video-capture board that plugged into the Mac and allowed you to connect a video camera and VCR. He showed me a little Korean hard drive portable music player, not much more than the Compaq reference design it was based off of. It was fun watching it happen. com Michael Robertson.

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Video Silicon Valley RSS California 180

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

The goal was commercial products, but as scientists and engineers the company’s founders realized that at times the cost of experimentation was failure. government backed venture firms and limited partnerships. A wave of innovation was about to meet a pile of risk capital. It was learning, discovery, iteration and execution.

Engineer 310

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 310

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. A-12 OXCART CIA Spyplane ESL found other ways to stay very close to its customers. could design and produce, and a good part of it was coming from Silicon Valley.

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Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 190

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

It will cost you your job.” Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. By accountable I meant, “we agreed on a delivery date, and between now and the delivery date it’s OK if you ask for help because you’re stuck, or something happened outside of your control. But do not walk into my office the day something was due and give me an excuse.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 268

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Stanford designed Klystrons producing 2½ Megawatts were manufactured by Varian and Litton would power the radar in the BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System) built at the height of the cold war.) Stanford had a Customer Development loop going on inside their own lab.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

It only emerges after an intense business model design and search activity based on the customer development process. Companies will have to maintain a portfolio of new business model initiatives, not unlike a venture capital firm, and they will have to accept that maybe only 1 out 10 initiatives might succeed.

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Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 334

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. Startups could now get a first version of a product out to customers in weeks/months rather than months/years. That requires building a company using Agile and Customer Development.

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Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.) There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.) In contrast, startups search for a business model. (Or

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Wiki Lean Management Business Model 315

www.kernelmag.com

MARCH 8, 2012

in hosting costs for an app with nearly a million registered users that serves several million requests a month. But if tools are plentiful and costs resemble rounding errors, what stands in the way of the would-be entrepreneur of 2012? Please design a logo for me. ?With Since then, I’ve had to pay a grand total of $4.88

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Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Coder 43

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

So they systematically designed electronic devices called “jammers&# to shut down each part of the German air defense system. The German air defense system had 100′s of early warning radars, and thousands of radar controlled anti-aircraft guns, and Ground Controlled Intercept radars to guide the fighters into the bombers.

Silicon Valley 199

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 199

VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

“After the crash, venture capital was scarce to non-existent. Ditch the business plan and when assumptions are proven wrong, pivot Customer Development: Build a product your customers want (vs. If you can afford to make an MVP look and feel great, even at the expense of time to market or cost, why compromise?

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Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

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. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 259

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2016

Peggy Burke , founder of 1185 Design digital brand agency. I talked it over with some friends that night, and decided the next morning we’d have to cut all of our costs. . Peggy Burke is a 30+-year design executive with expertise in creating global brands. I started working with startups and venture capitalists.

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Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Cofounder Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that. However, for the Web 2.0

Vertical 135

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 135

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

She said, “Dad, one of the great things you and Mom did was never tell us how much things cost.” Now that I’m older, I’m starting to know what things cost. It was something I never thought about, and when I first heard it I thought it was a terrible thing to have taught her. For a minute it was a pretty depressing thought for a parent.

North Carolina 157

North Carolina Silicon Valley RSS Connecticut 157

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

While the Innovation Clusters designated specific areas of the countries where high tech was to occur, it’s the Technology Business incubators located inside these clusters where the startup companies physically reside. Part 3, the next post describes the rise of Chinese venture capital. Technology Business Incubators (TBIs).

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Programming Technical Review SBIR China 283

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2010

Truth: The Lean Startup method is not about cost, it is about speed. Truth: There’s nothing wrong with raising venture capital. Many lean startups are ambitious and are able to deploy large amounts of capital. Myth: Lean Startups replace vision with data or customer feedback.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 167

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. Me – “Have you used Company x’s product? We’re about to ship next week.”

Silicon Valley 203

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 203

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 124

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 268

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

Steve my name is Donald xx, and I’m the head of external affairs of the CIA’s venture capital firm and we’d like you to keynote our conference.” And you’d like me to do my talk on Customer Development and startups?” “No, we’re the other CIA.” Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 264

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Venture Capital 264

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

While the story about the Potereo benchmarks was about relentless execution, its glib description of designing the benchmarks could be read as we cheated. These were applications we had never seen or ran before when the boards were designed. As a private company you can decide that winning at all costs is your culture.

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Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

Without a budget, costs can quickly spiral out of control (last minute impulse purchases to jazz up your booth, for example) and defeat your best laid plans. A rule of thumb is that your space costs represent about a quarter of your total show budget. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Plus tips on overall trade show strategy.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 199

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. Competing To Win Deals - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 7, 2010 The venture capital business is highly competitive.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan put in place GM’s management accounting system (borrowed from DuPont) that for the first time allowed the company to: 1) produce an annual operating forecast that compared each division’s forecast (revenue, costs, capital requirements and return on investment) with the company’s financial goals.

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Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 175