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Raising Money Using Customer Development

Steve Blank

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

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Hacking for Defense @ Stanford 2021 Lessons Learned Presentations

Steve Blank

Unlike traditional demo days or Shark Tanks which are, “Here’s how smart I am, and isn’t this a great product, please give me money,” a Lessons Learned presentation tells the story of a team’s 10-week journey and hard-won learning and discovery. . – while simultaneously building a series of minimal viable products. He runs H4X Labs.

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Hacking for Defense @ Stanford – Weeks 8 and 9

Steve Blank

Four decades ago my first job in Silicon Valley was with ESL, the first company to combine computers and signals intelligence. The founder of this 1964 Silicon Valley startup was Bill Perry. Demo of final MVP. His work at ESL made him one of the 10 founders of National Reconnaissance. It’s a ton of work.

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Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 2: They Raised Money With My.

Steve Blank

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. He continued: “I’d like to convince my boss so our company can be your first customer.”

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SuperMac War Story 10: The Video Spigot « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

But Apple had planned to announce and demo QuickTime without a way to get video into the Mac. Something Profound Engineering gave us a demo of the prototype board and software and asked, “Do you guys think we can sell a few of these boards?” We must have made them play the demo twenty times. My first IPO at Convergent.

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Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters – Part 2

Steve Blank

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.

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Hacking for Defense @ Stanford 2020 Lesson Learned Presentations

Steve Blank

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.

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