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. ” Big companies can buy it without much consideration, but small companies need to understand the value, so you might need sales material to convince them, and a demo. You will be compared to alternatives and weighed.

Bootstrapping 294

Bootstrapping Technical Review B2C Sales Cycle 294

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Hackathons and incubators are helpful in getting product teams focused and result in great demos, but you’re left still not knowing whether you have something beneficiaries/stakeholders/users want nor do you know what it takes to deploy the solution to the field. In Slide 2 the team made progress on developing their MVP.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

Steve Blank

JULY 24, 2012

Do you have it your demo room showing it to potential customers?” Filed under: Customer Development , E.piphany , Marketing. Instead of being welcomed by the whole Onyx exec staff, this time a clearly uncomfortable product manager met me. Well how do like our integrated system?” And by the way where is it?

Seattle 259

Seattle Cofounder Engineer Sales 259

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

And inviting to the booth/dinner/private demo. General Comments for both Awareness and Lead Generation Demo’s I don’t care how small the booth or trade show is, do a canned demo every 20 to 30 minutes regardless of whether anyone is at your booth or not. Demo’s are the heart of the booth. One of them is a loser.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

And I got to experience a type of customer buying behavior I had never seen before – the Novelty Effect. Present at the Creation It was early 1991 and Apple’s software development team was hard at work on QuickTime , the first multimedia framework for a computer. We must have made them play the demo twenty times.

Video 164

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

Unlike traditional demo days or Shark Tanks which are, “here’s how smart I am, please give me money,” a Lessons Learned presentation tells the teams’ stories of a 10-week journey of hard-won learning and discovery. This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

A decade later, I began to teach the foundations of Lean, first at UC Berkeley (Customer Development) and then at Stanford using cases and business plans. Lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering). Let’s Teach Lean Via Experiential Learning. experiential.

Lean 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. The Investment Readiness Level makes the stages of development for the business very tangible.

Sacramento 306

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 306

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious.

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 11, 2011

To give a little context, I asked two of the other judges - Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits (co-authors of the excellent Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development ) - to add a bit of commentary. Great use of airbnb for their source of customer development won them 'Best #CustDev Award." Make that never.

New York City 161

New York City New York Lean SMS 161

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

To promote innovation inside the NGA, they’ve staffed an Enterprise Innovation Office (EIO) to coach, educate and advise the entire agency, from core leadership to the operational edges, with methods and concepts of validated learning through rapid experimentation and customer development. And the winners get to go Stage 2.

Lean 177

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 177

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

To promote innovation inside the NGA, they’ve staffed an Enterprise Innovation Office (EIO) to coach, educate and advise the entire agency, from core leadership to the operational edges, with methods and concepts of validated learning through rapid experimentation and customer development. And the winners get to go Stage 2.

Lean 177

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 177

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

One of them used to be a lead developer at [insert hot consumer tech company here]. Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited. Soundbites from potential customers are encouraging. At month six, one of the early hires leaves, a developer who turns out wasn’t a good fit.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 29, 2012

Over Saturday and Sunday teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas and building a minimal viable product. On Sunday evening teams demo their prototypes and receive valuable feedback from a panel of experts.

St. Louis 135

St. Louis Kansas City Norway Kansas 135

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2013

This was our version of Demo Day – we call it “Lessons Learned” Day. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Life Sciences , National Science Foundation , Teaching. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Life Sciences National Science Foundation Teaching' Gastro.org 2013 Education Meeting.

Lean 251

Lean Customer Development Business Model Channel 251

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2019

Unlike traditional demo days or Shark Tanks which are “here’s how smart I am, please give me money,” a Lessons Learned presentation tells a story of a journey of hard-won learning and discovery. Followed by an 8-minute slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. Team: Panacea.

Oakland 266

Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 266

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2011

Bob had taken to heart the business model canvas and Customer Development lessons. After graduating he put together a prototype and had quickly marched through Customer Discovery , iterating his product with the help of CIOs and Fortune 1000 IT departments. Bob started hiring second rate developers.

Customer Development 330

Customer Development Cofounder Later Stage Software 330

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The goal is to have split-testing be a continuous part of our development process, so much so that it is considered a completely routine part of developing a new feature. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.) Therefore we developed a class to teach students how to think about all the parts of building a business, not just the product. to optimize this search. What’s Different About the Class?

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2013

It’s curriculum is built on a framework of business model design, customer development and agile engineering – and its emphasis on evidence, Lessons Learned versus demos, makes it the worlds most advanced accelerator. It’s success is measured not only by the technologies that leave the labs, but how many U.S.

Lean 262

Lean Washington Incubator Agile 262

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

Rising to the occasion Jon and the team got out of the building and went to the Sonoma County Fair and Wine and other food festivals, and spoke to 50 customers. They ran 10 in-store demos, which got them talking to 100s of more customers. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching.

North America 120

North America Lean Customer Development Distribution 120

Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2015

Customer Development for us meant a lot of hard-won learnings. The endless emails we received describing the exact need we had uncovered were the powerful validation of the customer development approach. Dig deep into your customer psychology and test lo-fidelity minimum viable products, before trying to build anything.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Lean Customer Development Startup 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

In today’s language of Customer Development , RIM positioned the Blackberry as a segment of an existing market – pager users who needed two-way communication. Recording video on magnetic tape was developed in the mid 1950’s by Ampex, and had evolved into a consumer-friendly cassette by the late 1960’s. You got it.

Hockey Stick 271

Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 271

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Turns out, they were incredibly well-credentialed graduate students who had, in fact, developed some interesting new robotics technology. Most important slide: live demo Prototype product Key questions: what will it take to ship a working product? But you wouldnt have known that from their pitch.) whats the launch plan?

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

So without further delay: Large Tech Meetups: Web Innovators Group : Quarterly Demo-Style meetup in Cambridge draws over 1000 members of the startup community each time. Lean Startup Circle Boston – Meetup dedicated to the lean startup and customer development methodology. Entrepreneurial Development Firms.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. The process they use to guide their search is customer development. They would: Blog their Customer Development progress as a narrative. There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

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 Relationships is changed to Buy-in/Support.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Steve Blank

MAY 16, 2016

Minimal viable products are being demo’d to sponsors and sponsors are reacting to what the teams are learning. Understanding how to measure mission achievement/success for each beneficiary is the difference between a demo and a deployed solution. In those case revenue will become an additional metric. Hill in Virginia.

San Diego 142

San Diego Metrics Indonesia Silicon Valley 142

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 15, 2012

Over Saturday and Sunday, teams will focus on customer development, validating their ideas, practicing LEAN Startup Methodologies and building a minimal viable product. - On Sunday evening, teams will demo their prototypes and receive valuable feedback from a panel of experts.

Singapore 162

Singapore Colorado Startup Lean 162

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

The life sciences community is still warming-up to the value of customer development in the early stages of building new ventures”, says David Schonthal , MATTER Co-founder and Clinical Assistant Professor of entrepreneurship & innovation at the Kellogg School of Management.

San Diego 261

San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 261

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

The class will be a version of the Lean LaunchPad class we developed in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program , (the entrepreneurship center at Stanford’s School of Engineering). They’ll explore the best way to deliver the product to customers, the resources required, as well as competing technologies. What Took You So Long.

Engineer 278

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 278

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2011

Week 3 of the class and our teams in our Stanford Lean LaunchPad class were hard at work using Customer Development to get out of the classroom and test the first key hypotheses of their business model: The Value Proposition. Next week each team test their Customer Segment hypotheses (who are their customers/users/decision makers, etc.)

Cloud 228

Cloud Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 228

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 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

Have a loud product demo; give away pieces of candy; hire a masseuse and offer free back rubs. Key Influencers Does the company have press/industry analysts scheduled for demos? Does the company have demos or dinners/lunch scheduled for key industry influencers? Is the company hosting/co-sponsoring some event?

Silicon Valley 178

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 178

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2016

While finding product-market fit is important, getting the rest of the business model right is the difference between and a great demo and a great business. That helped us develop a product. . We found customers who said, “Yeah, this is a real problem,” developed a product, they said, “Yeah, we dig it.”

Cofounder 120

Cofounder DC Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 120

ConversionXL

MARCH 28, 2014

Also, always do qualitative research & conduct customer development interviews to help your script address as many pain points as possible. The One Page Guide To Demo Video Scripts (Simplifilm). We quickly get away from the written page and the script, and we really develop the movie in storyboards.

Video 122

Video Software Review Cofounder Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

Each of Salesforce''s software teams was expected to complete a new software demo every 30 days, but every engineer was free to move to a new team without getting permission, which encouraged leaders to treat people well. What’s customer development?) Where else can you learn online this fall? What’s the story with pivots?).

Lean 165

Lean San Francisco Cofounder Hosting 165