YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2016

From manufacturing to sales to finance, the supply chain routinely fails to command the respect it deserve. On an elementary level, this translates into efficient manufacturing at a lower cost. Suppliers also have machinery and technology issues to contend with as they create customized products.

Management 145

Management Forecast Los Angeles San Francisco 145

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 254

Lean Business Model Balance Sheet Video 254

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

Examples are Hollywood for movies, Milan for fashion, New York for finance and today, Silicon Valley for technology entrepreneurship. In 2007 the Ministries of Science and Finance raised the stakes to get VC’s focused on funneling more VC money into growing startups – they set up a Venture Guiding Fund. Venture Guiding Fund.

Programming 176

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 176

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. The first class was an introduction to the concepts of business model design and customer development. The Adventure Begins.

Lean 304

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 304

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

As an agenda for each meeting, I suggest: – How can we most add value, in addition to helping with financing? Similarly, customer introductions are invaluable in the early days, but become less valuable once a company has a fully-formed go to market function.”. Customer Development. Organize events in your vertical.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

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. As a result, the standard product development model is not only useless, it is dangerous.

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

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

MAY 9, 2017

Continuous innovation requires the imagination and courage to challenge the initial hypotheses of your current business model (channel, cost, customers, products, supply chain, etc.) A company developing software would have to buy computers and license software from other companies and hire the staff to run and maintain it.

Restful 243

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 243

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Here’s the punchline: if you run your company as if you have closed a VC equity financing round even though you actually closed a convertible debt round, you’ll be in much better shape when it comes time to raise your Series A financing. Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

To move innovation faster, we now have 21 st century tools — Business Model Canvas , Customer Development , Agile Engineering – all adding up to a Lean Startup. Innovation and improvement occurs in Horizon 1 on process, procedures, costs, etc. Fast forward to today. In Horizon 2 a company extends its core business.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

It’s not just about a logo or a tagline; it’s the experience you promise your customers. Develop a marketing strategy that leverages both digital and traditional channels. Content marketing, social media, and email campaigns can be cost-effective ways to engage your audience and build brand awareness.

Intellectual Property 158

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 158

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

They accomplished their goal, but at a huge, unanticipated cost: the processes and committees they designed ended up strangling innovation. The framework has the team talking not just to potential customers but also with regulators, and people responsible for legal, policy, finance, support. There’s a much better way.

Incubator 317

Incubator Curation Engineer Government 317

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

He took out an ad in the Yellow Pages (it was the early 80′s, pre Internet), which cost him $1,000 / month for a half-page ad. That gave Google a huge cost advantage. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

Second, the leaders of these companies tended to be those who excelled at finance, supply chain or production. All of Intel’s resources – fabs, manufacturing strategies, and most importantly executive mindset — were geared towards large, expensive x86 processors, not low-cost mobile cores of someone else’s design.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

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. How would that change my company strategy?

Vertical 162

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 162

The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 21, 2020

Such as ensuring their companies are properly insured, that they have a separate current account for business finances and that they are up to date with the legalities of their business. You are ready to expand when: You know the lifetime value of your customer and the cost of acquiring a new customer.

Startup 156

Startup Acquisition Business Model Finance 156

View from Seed

DECEMBER 8, 2015

(If you’re interested in learning more, I lay out some thoughts about this and other helpful resources for avoiding pitfalls and executing best practices for startup customer development in this post. ). The other consideration around PMF is the cost and time that will be required to really show demonstrable PMF.

Product 120

Product Startup Early Stage Seed Capital 120

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Managewith.us - Collaborative Task Manager Mavenlink - manage project communications, documents, schedules, budgets, payments Industrial Logic – Agile eLearning Misc Office Help Google Apps – cloud mail server, calendar, docs, etc.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

in developing these new models. We believe that using the customer development process to monetize these assets through new business models can create huge competitive advantage and more speed to market for us and other big companies. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development.

Lean 329

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 329

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

Cost pressures are unrelenting in every sector, with pressure on prices and margins continuing to increase. Recently, the financing of innovation in medical devices has collapsed even further with most Class III devices simply unfundable. Exits have remained within about the same, while the cost and time to exit have doubled.

Startup 300

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 300

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. This is a big idea. Corporate KPI’s, Policy and Procedures: Innovation Killers.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

How do we finance the company, etc. An early indication that you’ve found the right business model is when you believe the cost of getting customers will be less than the revenues the customers will generate. If you are following Customer Development , the answer is easy. Customer Acquisition.

Balance Sheet 304

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 304

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Instead you will be getting your hands dirty talking to customers, partners, competitors, as you encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup actually works. Get real costs from suppliers.

Wiki 316

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 316

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2010

This includes 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 can work with other companies or partners to implement your business. Accounting Basics and Multi-stage Finance.

Intellectual Property 257

Intellectual Property Business Model Customer Development Distribution 257

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.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

He welcomed us by screaming, “Do you know how much it costs every minute this line is down.&# Founding a company is a sheer act of will and tenacity in the face of immense skepticism from everyone – investors, customers, friends, etc. the manager followed us still yelling. And that’s just to get started.

Founder 310

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 310

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 30, 2014

Why Are They Referring New Customers Completely Unprompted? One on one interviews, surveys, and other customer development techniques can help to reveal this. The reason for this gap was twofold: The majority of happy clients weren’t comfortable having conversations with their friends about finances.

Programming 107

Programming Marketing Analytics Portfolio 107

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2016

She and her team ran a successful Kickstarter campaign, went through the Techstars Boulder 2015 accelerator program, and recently closed a $3 million financing round with The Foundry Group. . We naively thought we would have a viral campaign, but it took us 4 months to create and cost us $25,000. Filed under: Customer Development.

Entrepreneur 265

Entrepreneur Cofounder San Francisco Campaign 265

Steve Blank

MAY 10, 2011

These diagrams are the visual representation of the how and the what a team learned in the class – how they tested their hypotheses by getting out of the building using the Customer Development process and what they learned about each part of their business model. What Surprised Us? Much more on this in subsequent blog posts.).

Lean 285

Lean Business Model Agile Customer Development 285

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? Rob Carter on finance. Since then, I’ve had to pay a grand total of $4.88 The Talent Squeeze.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Coder 43

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 125

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. So I have a question for you, Jason.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Over time, they have found a formula for acquiring, qualifying, and selling customers in the market segments they have targeted. They know how much it costs to bring in a customer and they know how much money they can expect to make on each one. Our cost to acquire a customer on AdWords was only a few cents.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2020

The folks over at Website Setup published a study where they mentioned some average costs: “Building a good custom website could easily cost $2000 (on the low end). There are currently dozens and dozens of website building platforms with different costs, tools, usability, skill level, and ratings.

SMS 134

SMS Campaign PR Sales 134

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. We didnt think wed able to compete with that.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

Answer: The most cost effective wavelength is 800-900nm ~ $20/watt. Final question: Is the improved absorption efficiency worth the extra cost? Veritas , building a low cost wind turbine for cities. Our lecture covered Key Resources and Cost Structure. What are the key financials metrics for costs in your business model?

South Dakota 232

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 232

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Customer service. tells you how much adwords cost. easy business finance software. hire low-cost international engineering talent. YCombinator Series AA Equity Financing Documents. Codeacademy. Lean Methodology Sources. Steve Blank. SW Courses. Part 1- Intro.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53