Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

We were impressed when we found that they did the in-person interviews by hiring usertesting.com for $39 to set up test scenarios, gave the users specific tasks to accomplish with their minimum viable product, videotaped the customer interactions and summarized customer likes and dislikes.) Demand generation?

Customer 240

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 240

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. End result?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2012

Think about it: Companies hire people who come from outside the buyer’s world and don’t share his interests — employees, agencies, consultants, and the like — and expect them to persuade buyers to hand over their money. Build strong customer communities. But LEGO took a smarter approach. Basically, LEGO executives did the math.

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. Hiring VPs and execs with the right titles but the wrong skills leads to further trouble as high-powered sales and marketing people arrive on the payroll to execute the “plan.”

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. Your design or ad agencies can impress you with their awards, but if you’re not moving product or creating demand, you’ve missed the point.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

If there was any doubt among the teams about the value of what they’re learning, Blinken put it to rest with a compelling overview of how so many of today’s complex global problems – from stopping Ebola to monitoring cease-fires and improving food security – demand innovative, tech-based solutions.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

If there was any doubt among the teams about the value of what they’re learning, Blinken put it to rest with a compelling overview of how so many of today’s complex global problems – from stopping Ebola to monitoring cease-fires and improving food security – demand innovative, tech-based solutions.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter.

Internet 335

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. You dive deep into a customer development process, working closely with a few customers who feed you requirements and are willing to trial an imperfect product that is evolving quickly. 1) Enterprise Sales.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Now with customers and early revenue, it was out raising its first round of venture money. They used Customer and Agile development to search for a scalable and repeatable business model to become a large company. They hired a world-class team with co-founders and early employees who shared their vision.

Hockey Stick 299

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 299

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Unfortunately most startups learn this by going through the “Fire the first Sales VP&# drill: You start your company with a list of potential customers reading like a “who’s who&# of whatever vertical market you’re in (or the Fortune 1000 list.) Your board nods sagely at your target customer list.

Silicon Valley 143

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 143

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. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that. Lets see why.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. What is customer development?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

HOF Capital has stitched together our workflow across Google Suite , Slack , Airtable , Asana , Streak , and some other tools (leveraging Zapier for basic 3rd party integration, in addition to custom development for certain other integrations). Kushim , Totem , and VisibleVC focus on serving this need among VCs.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

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

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

As a consumer internet company with millions of customers, it may seem to have little relevancy for an enterprise software company with only a handful of potential customers, or a computer security company whose customers demand a rigorous audit before accepting a new release.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

The other revels in the world as we all know it will be someday: limitless distribution enabled by new technologies, the importance of collaborative filters, and on-demand availability of all content for end-users. What is the right revenue model? Gatekeepers are overloaded. In other words, what is the minimum viable product ?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

The goal was simple: validate demand or move on. For example, after looking at the broader market, we saw that a service that helps marketers scale their video content was in demand. This way, you can focus on business development, communications, and awareness to build a sales pipeline and “validate” early demand.

PR 120

PR B2B Lean Audience 120

Spencer Fry

APRIL 17, 2017

Without raising money, 1 of 2 situations would have fallen upon us: I would have had to dig deeper into my own pockets to continue to pay the contractor as well as hire others. I would have continued to scrape by with a product that was conceptually on point, but didn’t have the bells and whistles that customers expect nowadays.

Bootstrapping 63

Bootstrapping Cap Table Liquidation Preference Cofounder 63

www.instigatorblog.com

MARCH 2, 2010

Whether the Advisory Board is something your investors (or Board of Directors) demand or not, you should set one up anyway. As such, advisory board members will often become customers or help you find customers. As such, advisory board members will often become customers or help you find customers.

Advisory Board 40

Advisory Board Startup Cofounder Equity 40

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

You are here: Home » Hiring » Crazy! Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. I would focus on one product and set a goal to generate $1M in yearly revenue from it. Ability to hire top talent (A+ talent). you can hire for those.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

It’s important to note that system I’m about to explain evolved organically in response to new demands on the system and in response to post-mortems of failures. Nobody gets here overnight, but every step along the way has made us better developers. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

" paragraph have the heading "Training New Hires", above the "Returning to the meeting itself." oh, and on the book front, you'll be able to get all of my essays so far in ebook, print-on-demand, and kindle editions - coming soon. For instance, above the "Let’s imagine the ideal solution would."

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Steve Blank

MARCH 28, 2017

Unlike businesses, government organizations don’t sell products, and they don’t earn revenue. Industry needed to attract and hire qualified employees. We learned that technically qualified employees within industry were in such demand that the number one way to get qualified employees was to pilfer them from others.

Lean 120

Lean Kansas Government Afghanistan 120

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

Every marketing communication hire couldn’t wait to produce the next great ad or PR program. But without sales there is no revenue, and without revenue there is no company. All the strategic thinking in the world won’t make up for a missed revenue plan. Sales was the Sharp End of the Stick, and Marketing was the Stick

Silicon Valley 132

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 132

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. I don’t know any developers. In later posts I’m going to get into more detail on specific topics like hiring, raising money, what types of ideas have the potential to get big, finding your founders, and the like. recently hired Daniel Clemens as COO.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

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?" Unless the founding team has *competent* developers in these areas, the venture is doomed.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

It took us months to realize what we had done, and to eventually apologize and win back the trust of those customers wed alienated. The whole episode cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. In fact, it was the revenue trends that eventually alerted us to the magnitude of the problem.

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

You can argue that the DNA created by Microsoft's over emphasis on distribution (Steve) and development (Bill), has ultimately cost it $50bn or more in lost revenue, market share and market capitalization. Developers have worn the crown for the last 30 or more years in the technology industry - rightly.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2012

from box-office revenue. But the total movie industry revenue was $87 billion. After the VCR was introduced, studio revenues took off like a rocket. Ironically, it was Valenti’s skill in hobbling competitive innovation that negated any need for studios to develop agility, vision and technology leadership.

Silicon Valley 336

Silicon Valley Distribution Washington Channel 336

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

This single decision wound up costing the company significant revenue and over the course of several months sent its customer growth into decline. until I couldn't seem to find a way from getting away from all these nasty, vulgar teens (or people pretending to be teens) demanding explicit sex every time I went there.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158