Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. First Movers” didn’t understand customer problems or the product features that solved those problems (what we now call product-market fit).

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 12, 2014

We realized that past K-12 Entrepreneurial classes taught students “the lemonade stand” version of how to start a company: 1) come up with an idea, 2) execute the idea, 3) do the accounting (revenue, costs, etc.). These two startups served as the students’ introduction to customer development methodology.

Lean 334

Lean Customer Development Startup Silicon Valley 334

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. “Customer Development” to test the hypotheses outside the building and. Customer Segments change over time. I-Corps @ NIH Lecture Order Details.

Intellectual Property 283

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 283

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

Activities define the unique expertise your company needs to deliver the value proposition, customers, channels, customer relationships and/or revenue. (If For example, if you’re building a mobile app, then the key activities are: app software development, user interface design and demand creation skills.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 5, 2014

It’s often said that you shouldn’t talk about price during customer development interviews. ” How many times have you heard someone agree that “it would be great if someone did X,” but when show them someone did do X, but it costs $39.99, they don’t buy? Again, like shared hosting companies.)

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

In all of these new product and cost-focused new trends, a big problem has emerged that all of these movements have not addressed. Let’s take your revenue line. It should talk about how many customers you think you will acquire and how much you’ll charge for your product. Short answer: absofuckinglutely.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Steve Blank

AUGUST 21, 2013

In the real world a big pivot in life sciences far down the road of development is a very bad sign due to huge sunk costs. The course is free to UCSF, Berkeley, and Stanford students; $100 for pre-revenue startups; and $300 for industry. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Science and Industrial Policy Teaching'

SBIR 316

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 316

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2016

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. Learn how these disjointed sources of materials affect your supply chain costs and cause potential delays.

Management 145

Management Forecast Los Angeles San Francisco 145

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

On places like Facebook, where the CPM (cost to reach 1,000) is the cheapest of any ad network ever: Source. Simple brand awareness ads can reach thousands of people a day, costing you nothing more than a few quarters that can be recouped from your couch. Custom development. WordPress DIY. The list goes on and on.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

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 300

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 300

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 13, 2024

We’ll sell them the CDROM drives as well.” (The Kodak CDROM drives were the size of professional audio equipment and depending on the model, costing $600-$1000 in today’s dollars.) (And Marketing and capital expenses (new factory, high R&D expense) were predicated on consumer-scale sales. So what’s the lesson for Apple?

Search 265

Search Marketing Forecast Burn Rate 265

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. After twelve months Handspring’s revenue was $170 million. They never understood Market Type. End result?

Customer Development 203

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 203

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Also, the benefit of raising a pre-seed from great partners probably outweighs the cost. I’d keep the dilution really low at that stage, and focus on very cheap customer development tactics or even a hybrid services model to test out your initial hypothesis without requiring meaningful outside funding.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

They are: value proposition, product/service the company offers (along with its benefits to customers). customer segments, such as users and payers or moms or teens. distribution channels to reach customers and offer them the value proposition. customer relationships to create demand. The same is true in a Lean Startup.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

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. Customers require consistent care and investment.

Customer 170

Customer Technical Review Florida Cofounder 170

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 2, 2013

We talk a lot about Customer Development, but there’s nothing like seeing it in action to understand its power. But the big payoff came when their discussions with medical device customers revealed an entirely new way to think about pricing —potentially tripling their revenue. the Customer Life Time (CLT)).

Customer 324

Customer Churn Rate Customer Development Lean 324

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

Then, consider how you’ll reach your customers and what kind of relationship you want to build with them. Revenue streams are another critical component of your business model. It’s not just about a logo or a tagline; it’s the experience you promise your customers.

Intellectual Property 158

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 158

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 333

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 333

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

APRIL 4, 2011

Each side of a market has it’s own Value Proposition, Customer Segment and Revenue Model.) They learned that one their core customer hypothesis about their buyers, “startups would want to buy computing capacity on a “spot market” was wrong. Agora was in a classic two-sided market (having both buyers and sellers.

Customer 236

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 236

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 11, 2019

At NextView we invest across the spectrum of seed stage companies so roughly 1/3rd of the companies we invest in are pre-product, roughly 1/3rd are post-product but pre-revenue, and perhaps 1/3rd have some very early revenue. You’re obviously not showing charts of user growth, number of customers, or revenue.

Seed Stage 149

Seed Stage B2B Seed Capital Revenue 149

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2014

A pivot may mean you changed your customer segment, your channel, revenue model/pricing, resources, activities, costs, partners, customer acquisition – lots of other things than just the product. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development.

Business Model 331

Business Model Lean Customer Development Channel 331

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

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

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And it was going to mention the two words that SuperMac marketing needed to live and breathe: revenue and profit. If marketing can’t deliver the 40,000 leads what else can we do for sales to still achieve our revenue and profitability?”) They understood the mission intent was our corporate revenue and profit goals.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 19, 2013

Part 4: This Will Save us Years – Customer Discovery in Medical Devices. Part 5: Value proposition and customer segments in Life Sciences. Part 7: Revenue Streams in Life Sciences. Part 8: When Customers Make You Smarter –Customer Discovery in Digital Health. Richard Caro was their mentor.

Lean 253

Lean Customer Development Video Distribution 253

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.

Customer 415

Customer Business Model Restful Video 415

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. Trip 1 to China to understand manufacturing landscape, potential partners and rough cost of goods. With 317 million people the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

SVPG

NOVEMBER 22, 2013

But one of the real advantages from a product point of view is that there’s no legacy to drag along, there’s no revenue to preserve, and there’s no reputation to safeguard. However, once your product develops to the point that it can sustain a viable business (congratulations!) Protect Revenue and Brand.

Product 67

Product NDA Continuous Deployment Reputation 67

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2013

Part 4: This Will Save us Years – Customer Discovery in Medical Devices. Part 5: Value proposition and customer segments in Life Sciences. Part 7: Revenue Streams in Life Sciences. Part 8: When Customers Make You Smarter –Customer Discovery in Digital Health. Lessons Learned.

Lean 243

Lean Customer Development IP Agile 243

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 312

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 312

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. They’re also focusing on developing relationships with and getting buy-in from key partners like the Red Cross and other NGOs.

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. They’re also focusing on developing relationships with and getting buy-in from key partners like the Red Cross and other NGOs.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

In other words, how can we adapt the Business Model Canvas when the metrics of success for an organization is not revenue? Unlike an org chart, which describes how a company executes to deliver known products to known customers, the business model canvas illustrates the search for the unknowns that most new ventures face.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

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. These two numbers have direct impact on revenue and financial health.

Vertical 147

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 147

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

I had been confused for years why I had to update an income statement each board meeting that said zero for 18 months before we had any revenue. As a founder you are testing a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? If you are following Customer Development , the answer is easy.

Balance Sheet 300

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 300