Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. He later co-founded and served as CTO of IMVU and then authored The Lean Startup. Listen to my entire chat with Eric: If you can’t hear the interview, click here. Taking My Class.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

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. Through advertising or direct sales, these sites harvest intent. Tech support is sales.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

Prior to his investing and advisory career, Evangelos spent 20+ years in high-technology industries, in executive roles spanning operations, marketing, sales and engineering. I presented them to our chief product officer and our CTO. Filed under: Customer Development. He was the CEO of two startups.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 120

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Find and engage customer advocates using a gamification platform that makes it interesting and enjoyable to advocate. Allow customers who identify themselves as promoters on surveys to immediately provide a recommendation on the spot. . This has resulted in dramatic increases in sales.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

And most importantly, you have your customers that you want to sell your product or service to. But it’s sales that really drive your progress with those three groups of people. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. Steve : Did you personally know about any of this? Nayeem : I didn’t, no.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. Some sales guy who was too busy to take the meeting was probably retired in Maui on the commissions. Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

The Startup Toolkit

AUGUST 29, 2012

If the founding team is non-technical and you can’t figure out whether you are being screwed by your developers or whether your potential new CTO is amazing, a tech advisor can help by joining you in interviews and reviewing commits. You’ll need to keep getting into sales meetings.

Technical Review 38

Technical Review CTO Hire Cap Table Software Review 38

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

“Everybody felt the burden of supporting all those transactions every day,&# says Pascal-Louis Perez, kaChing’s CTO. “We had to ignore them, because they weren’t our target audience – and were never likely to become customers.&# That all-hands lasted five minutes. Which is a nice story. says Rachleff.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

In an enterprise sales context, this is called a "repeatable and scalable sales process" - once you know how to do this, your company can graduate from early adopters and make an attempt at the mainstream. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Check your assumptions, what went wrong?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Hearpreneur

JULY 30, 2016

trillion in sales. I responded by saying attending an event like this was a good start and then asked him if his VC company was interested in interests outside of Technology and Medical. Share A census in 2012 found that 36% of all businesses were owned by women – a number which has steadily increased. Barra of General Motors, Lynn J.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Entrepreneur CTO Hire 48

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

There's a lot out there around Customer Development - read Steve Blank : Entrepreneurship as a Science – The Business Model/Customer Development Stack - Steve Blank , October 25, 2010 Checklists for Chaos, The Path to Success - Steve Blank , October 28, 2010 and reading about Lean, MVPs, etc. is a requirement.

Valuation 198

Valuation Revenue Pre-Money Valuation Early Stage 198

SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2011

This site aggregates and filters content from thought leaders who talk about topics such as Marketing , Sales , Design , Revenue , Hiring , Social Media , Business Models , Metrics , PR , Venture Capital , Angel Investors , Bootstrapping , Incubators , Agile and many others.

Intellectual Property 175

Intellectual Property Aggregator Startup IP 175

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 27, 2015

While I’m sure Ed Catmull doesn’t remember, when Pixar was a startup selling the Image Computer , their VP of Sales and Marketing brought me in to put together their marketing strategy. Oren Jacob , Pixar’s ex CTO has been teaching with us at Berkeley and Stanford and has been trying to point out this connection for years!).

Founder 120

Founder Lean Hawaii Incubator 120

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

August was a slow month in terms of traffic and I was away for a lot of the month, but there were some really great posts at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. m the f%*kin’ boss.”. While I sit here and rule. m king of a cow. And I’m king of a mule”. Yertle the Turtle. Final Thought.

Startup 191

Startup CTO Hire Cofounder Venture Capital 191

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

Whilst the average tech entrepreneur may lack some of the more business relationship, networking, and sales/marketing skills – they still need to have an entrepreneurial mindset, understand financial models, market factors, and how the business ultimately makes money. Business & Technology (18). Music Gear for Sale/Trade.

Technical Cofounder 42

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door. Later you will want to come back and create a proper sales forecast, cash flow forecast, and expense budget. The business model.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Hire a CTO or VP Engineering. A really good technology executive can notice problems like the ones Im talking about today and address them proactively. The trick is to hire a good one - I wrote a little about this in What does a startup CTO actually do? I would love to have an effective CTO or VP of Engineering to manage me.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

The Next Web

JANUARY 27, 2013

Especially because I could have used this time on marketing, sales and customer development, and actually helped our business move forward. Please note that you don’t need to become the CTO of your own company as a non-technical founder. I found this a real waste of time and energy.

Netherlands 159

Netherlands Technical Review Software Review Cofounder 159

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

500 Hats , February 1, 2010 When to Use Facebook Connect – Twitter Oauth – Google Friend Connect for Authentication? 500 Hats , February 1, 2010 When to Use Facebook Connect – Twitter Oauth – Google Friend Connect for Authentication? First Principles.

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Get Out of the Building As I got up to leave the room, the CEO said, “I want you out of the building talking to customers; find out who they are, how they work, and what we need to do to sell them lots of these new computers.” We know Ben W was the CTO. And he was smiling. My career as marketer had just begun. Carly Simon was right.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 271

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

" => I have not bothered to put up a landing page, survey to test customer demand, or done any customer development whatsoever. "Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life?" Developer, engineer, CTO, or technical co-founder? Rockstar v.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Everything Seth said is absolutely spot on, except I’d encourage founders to make sure they do some customer development (even in the consumer space) in parallel to cranking out the first product. Will be looking forward to seeing the next piece that you do. Andrew Holt I love these kinds of articles.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

Some great content around the intersection of startups and being a Startup CTO in June this year. This continues my series of posts: Top 30 Startup Posts in June 2010 Top 29 Startup Posts May 2010 Startup CTO Top 30 Posts for April 16 Great Startup Posts from March The following are the top items based on social signals.

Software Review 217

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Technical Review 217

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

are just emerging for business people (customer development, business model generation,). No startup will ever succeed without a persuasive and visionary sales leader. Spencer Fry • Nov 27, 2010 I guess i still need that sales guy. Colin Hayhurst , CTO co-founder then CEO of start-up b. and the latter on tech.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51