Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 6, 2014

The concepts in my Lean LaunchPad curriculum can be taught in a variety of classes–as an introduction to entrepreneurship all the way to a graduate level “ capstone class.”. Our Lean LaunchPad class requires student teams to get out of the building and talk to 10-15 customers a week while they’re building the product.

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Lean Customer Development Business Model Email 279

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. VCs and Angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). Chief Risk Officer.

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.”. It’s time to update Build, Measure, Learn to what we now know is the best way to build Lean startups. Here’s how.

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Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2013

The Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship curriculum has caught fire. Ten years ago I started thinking about why startups are different from existing companies. I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. Berkeley asked me to teach a class in Customer Development at Haas business school.

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Lean Agile Customer Development Business Model 288

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. VCs and angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). Chief Risk Officer.

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. VCs and Angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). Chief Risk Officer.

CTO Hire 252

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 252

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 3, 2009 Lean Startup fbFund wrap-up Last week I had a real blast meeting with the companies at the fbFund incubator at Palo Alto. The Lean Startup fbFund Edition View more documents from Eric Ries. Yet, I think this definition is too important to leave out.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

By definition, before they had a chance to fully buy into the idea and the team). With hindsight we should have had “proof of concepts” tested in a corporate center (think ‘pop-up incubator’) where they would do extensive Customer Discovery. Developing a program to generate new ideas is the easy part.

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Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 267

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

Reading lists are dime a dozen, but reading lists that focus on rapid-growth startup businesses? It’s the ultimate startup guide if you’re looking for systematic business growth and guidance on what not to do. The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses.

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Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

In every startup I did, every new course I created, and everything I’ve taught, the phrase “make every day count” took on new meaning when I knew how many were left. When I retired after 21 years working in 8 startups, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the business school at the University of California Berkeley.

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Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 222

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, May 14, 2009 The Lean Startup Workshop - now an OReilly Master Class My rate of posting has been much lower lately, and this is mostly due to preparations for the upcoming Lean Startup Workshop on May 29. I have a lot of good news to report on this front.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2013

The Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship curriculum has caught fire. Ten years ago I started thinking about why startups are different from existing companies. I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. Berkeley asked me to teach a class in Customer Development at Haas business school.

Lean 180

Lean Agile Customer Development Business Model 180

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? We lack a consistent and clear definition of the job. But I dont think most startups really have a need for someone to do that on a full time basis. What does your Chief Technology Officer do all day? Massive proprietary databases?

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2012

We’ve taught our Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship class at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and the National Science Foundation in 8 week, 10 week and 12 week versions. We decided to find out what was the Minimum Viable Product for our Lean LaunchPad class. We were going to teach the Lean LaunchPad class in 5-days.

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Lean Business Model Customer Development New York 259

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, August 26, 2009 Building a new startup hub Last week, I had a unique opportunity to spend some time in Boulder at the behest of TechStars. It was a great experience to see a relatively new startup hub in action - and thriving. Their model looks like a key ingredient in the startup brew there.

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San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. VCs and Angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. Image via Wikimedia Commons. Chief Brand Officer.

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CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

And that narrow definition of entrepreneurship doesn’t count all of the managers inside established companies who are effectively engaged in the same process of building an internal startup (see What is a startup? for my more expansive definition). Let’s start with the startup personality attributes.

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San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. We were excited by the response at last year’s Lean Startup Conference to Diane Tavenner’s eye-opening talk on her experience implementing Lean Startup methods at Summit Public Schools, the California charter for which she is CEO and co-founder.

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Lean New York City Startup San Francisco 164

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2014

Kauffman just launched Founders School - a new education series to help entrepreneurs develop their businesses during the startup stage by highlighting how startups are different from big companies. “ Startups” introduction is here. Module 1, What We Know About Startups. 1:53: Types of Startups.

Founder 328

Founder Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 328

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 246

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. The last couple of years has also seen the huge initial success of Ycombinator, the Lean Startup and many other product driven approaches to going to market. Short answer: absofuckinglutely.

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Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2014

Since the Pivot is one of the core concepts of the Lean Startup I was puzzled. A pivot is a fundamental insight of the Lean Startup. What was lacking in the article was a clear definition of a Pivot. Definition: “A pivot is a substantive change to one or more of the 9 business model canvas components.”.

Business Model 331

Business Model Lean Customer Development Channel 331

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. While that’s not true, it is a fact that entrepreneurs only have one word for “startup.”

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 203

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Of all the tactics I have advocated as part of the lean startup , none has provoked as many extreme reactions as continuous deployment , a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. First, continuous deployment separates out two different definitions of the terms “release.&#

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

These hires were definitely not your standard marketing types. Back in the 1960’s and 70’s no sane MBA’s would work for a Silicon Valley startup.) While MBA’s have a ton of useful skills, what they don’t have is what most marketing departments lack – customer insight.

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 205

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? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Don’t startups exist for the same reason? How does that stack up?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

I hope to show why lean and agile techniques actually reduce the negative impacts of technical debt and increase our ability to take advantage of its positive effects. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. The goal of their startup in this stage becomes “getting funded.”

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 20, 2012

This post was co-written by Eric Ries and Sarah Milstein, co-hosts of The Lean Startup Conference. On December 4 at The Lean Startup Conference, three of New York's top UX designers will lead a workshop we're really excited about, Lean Startup in the Enterprise. Lean teams cannot be micromanaged.

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Lean New York City Cofounder New York 160

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, June 5, 2009 It’s a startup, not a spreadsheet Some people, when they start to realize the power of using data to inform their decisions, become obsessed with optimization. Unfortunately, most decisions that confront startups lack a definitive right answer. But this is wrong, too.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

This tendency is a two edged sword: by iterating strategy a startup can dramatically improve the size and trajectory of the company, but at times this process can be the bane of venture investors (and why they have prematurely grey hair.)

Customer 201

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 201

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

The “Startup Owner’s Manual” goes On Press Tuesday 2/14. Two years in the making and literally ten years in development, I’m proud to announce that my new book, The Startup Owners Manual , goes onto the printing press next Tuesday. and finally it teaches a “new math” for startups: “metrics that matter.”.

Entrepreneur 291

Entrepreneur Lean Business Model Customer Development 291

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

Everyone knows what a startup is for – don’t they? In this post we’re going to offer a new definition of why startups exist : a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. But What Does a Business Model Have to Do With My Startup? Winston Churchill. A Business Model.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? And when do business planning and execution come into play?

Search 322

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 322

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

The Lean Startup is a process for turning ideas into commercial ventures. Its premise is that startups begin with a series of untested hypotheses. They succeed by getting out of the building, testing those hypotheses and learning by iterating and refining minimal viable products in front of potential customers.

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Entrepreneur Framework Lean Customer Development 335