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. Perhaps you can determine whether a product is new by asking customers to name the competition.

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Lean 334

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 334

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

We learned this weekend that it was named after his East Hampton home. We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc. I’m going to save that for a future blog post.

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 9, 2013

And then, of course, other business owners stay aloof from customers for a different, more instinctual reason: In a digital age dominated by email and computer screens, they simply don’t know how to interact with customers face-to-face and avoid doing so at all costs. Yes, it’s true that customers aren’t always convenient.

Customer 170

Customer Technical Review Florida Cofounder 170

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Similarly, customer introductions are invaluable in the early days, but become less valuable once a company has a fully-formed go to market function.”. Then, pluck the low-hanging fruit: easy, low-cost, and highly scalable infrastructure. Customer Development. In-house, brand-name guru. Is the service scaleable?

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

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

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

So when Google started pushing AdSense (ads for affiliate or 3rd party sites) they had a HUGE cost advantage. it seems that Twitter should have the same Google-like cost advantage. Finally, I HATE the name. My bet: within 18 months they will change the name and go multi-stream. So if TweetPhoto (bad name, again.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

Optimising Your Operations Efficiency is the name of the game when it comes to operations. Whether it’s managing your supply chain or automating customer service, look for ways to optimise every aspect of your operations. It’s not just about a logo or a tagline; it’s the experience you promise your customers.

Intellectual Property 153

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 153

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

We had endless arguments internally about what features it should include, how the avatars should look, and how much it should cost. Finally the day came, we unleashed the landing page, emailed our existing customers, and started advertising online. Just load them all in and choose a low cost-per-click. Setup a simple website.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 6, 2020

However, if we give them equipment that fails to keep up with the threat or state of the art, our warfighters bear a cost (ultimately with their lives) that they and the nation will pay. The first, the transition from buying a small number of exquisite systems versus large number of low-cost systems. They ended up buying 187.

Technology 423

Technology Afghanistan Iraq Vietnam 423

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers. Business customers were starting to ask for “office automation solutions” – word processing, spreadsheets, graphing software on a desktop. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

If you can harness the knowledge, natural enthusiasm, and peer influence of your very best customers — I call them “Rock Star” customers — they’ll market, sell, and help develop breakthrough products for your firm better than your internal resources can do, and often at a fraction of the cost. Not necessarily.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

Finally to have a better chance of a viable enterprise, they need to test all the other hypotheses in their business/mission model (pricing, demand creation, revenue, costs, etc.). The key principles of customer development are: There are no facts inside the building so get the heck outside. Hello, my name is xx.

Customer 419

Customer Business Model Restful Video 419

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 29, 2012

Over Saturday and Sunday teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas and building a minimal viable product. The weekends aren't free: the cost is less than $100 but that covers all your meals and a chance to rub keyboards with other smart folks in your city who are interested in building something new and exciting.

St. Louis 135

St. Louis Kansas City Norway Kansas 135

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. Not their own name, or any other identifying information. If you can’t see the presentation click here.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. Not their own name, or any other identifying information. If you can’t see the presentation click here.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Imagine a chart that’s 300 lines long for each component and you have to strategize when you’re going to buy this component and how far in advance you need to purchase it in order to get the price you need to get your cost of goods sold low enough that you’re going to make money on this thing. . Orders increased.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

competitive analyses, channel and customer collateral (white papers, data sheets, product reviews), customer surveys, and market requirements documents. It will cost you your job.” We will accomplish this through demand-creation activities (advertising, PR, tradeshows, seminars, web sites, etc.), That kind of accountable.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2013

After a particularly embarrassing math bug in 1994 that cost Intel $475 million, the company decided to fix the problem by allowing it’s microprocessors to load fixes automatically when your computer starts. Yet the one company’s name that hasn’t come up as part of the surveillance network is Intel. The Dog That Never Barked.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley Russia Security Customer Development 335

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. You may know it by its final name. But to get video to fit and playback on the computers of the era, they needed to compress it. But you probably never heard of ReelTime.

Video 184

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 184

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. Gorbachev, now the Soviet Premier, had to grapple with the spiraling cost of military systems that weren’t amortized by consumer purchases. If you’re an entrepreneur, ESL is the most important company you’ve never heard of.

Silicon Valley 194

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 194

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. What did you discover from customers?

Wiki 316

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 316

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2016

. — Partner disagreements and a lack of planning killed Michael’s beach volleyball bar venture, but he doesn’t consider it a failure: It cost me about $80,000, but the way I look at that is it was tuition money. It cost me what it cost me to learn what I learned, and I used that, and moved into the next deal, Quick Set Concrete.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Fort Worth America Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

As a formal method, the Lean Startup consists of three parts: The Business Model Canvas – to frame hypotheses, Customer Development – to test those hypotheses in front of customers, and Agile Engineering – to build Minimum Viable Products to maximize learning. Customer Segments is changed to Beneficiaries.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. I want to talk specifics, and when you come right down to it, most technology startups dont have a very interesting cost structure.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

Microsoft has perfected the art of finding and engaging with local “MVP” (Most Valuable Professional) customers who play a central role. Excel,” who runs a website by that name, which on some days attracts more visitors than Microsoft’s own Excel page! Companies often say that ‘customers are our best assets. An example is “Mr.

Customer 168

Customer Social Media Retention Canada 168

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

Describing your product as “new and “never been done before” instead of “we’re just like those others guys, but better” could cost your company billions. The new device could hold names, email addresses, phone and fax numbers and incoming and outgoing messages. Filed under: Customer Development , Market Types.

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 276

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This is the magic of sales: by learning about each customer in-depth, they can convince each of them that this product would solve serious problems. Now, in some situations, this over-selling would lead to a secondary problem, namely, that customers would realize they had been duped and refuse to re-subscribe.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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. What happened to him? Who was he?

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 179

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

And 30 years later I was teaching in a building named after him and never knew a thing about him. In all the Germans had over 7,500 radars dedicated to tracking and killing the allied bombers. Each allied bombing mission lost 2-20% of their planes. Bomber crews had to fly 25 missions to go home. Play spooky music here.

Silicon Valley 203

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 203

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. For a specific startup this list is probably a few hundred names.

Internet 335

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future. How costly is a failure?

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

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

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 269

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 269

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

An existing market is one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. Startup 2 Entrepreneur -“I’m competing against Company x and we are going to offer a lower-cost, web-based version. Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 206

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 9, 2018

Fill in the market spaces with the names of the companies that are representative players in each of the adjacent markets. You and your board need to be in sync about the costs and risks of entering these markets. To illustrate this they drew these adjacent markets as a cloud surrounding their company. Strategy diagram.

Marketing 325

Marketing Startup Government SEC 325

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.” Do you mean the Culinary Institute of America?

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Venture Capital 267