Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. The rest is worth reading as well. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. steve Am I a Founder?

Cofounder 223

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 223

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

They had this great architecture, and Apple had figured out to get movies into their own computers for a demo, but for the rest of us there was no physical device that allowed an average consumer to plug a video camera or VCR into and get video into a Mac. But the rest of the management team really skeptical. Little did we know.

Video 168

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. startups ignore the rest of the world until they scale in their own country. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

The rest of the progress report sounded just like this. PS1- I run a small software startup in Brazil and just found out about Customer Development and your blog (I’ve been reading and listening to everything I can get my hands on online, like Venturehacks and Ries’ blog). Me: How are we doing on the Nastran port?

Silicon Valley 327

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 327

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

The design was actually a negative drag on selling anything off a retail shelf. From grumbling skeptics, they all became packaging design converts. And for sure they were never going to win any design awards. So we not only sent everyone through packaging school, we also brought the packaging design in-house.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Next, we needed to focus our messages away from technology and onto what the customers told us they needed – performance solutions for four key publishing applications. Our company’s graphics boards were designed to speed up a key part of the Macintosh graphics operating system called QuickDraw. Very much in addition to the text.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 144

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

In the Fall of 2008, the credit crisis wiped out mergers and acquisitions as a path to liquidity as M&A collapsed with the rest of the market. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. The formula for exits was a variation of the formula they used in the Internet bubble, morphing into: brand, hype and sell the company. So what’s left?

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. A-12 OXCART CIA Spyplane ESL found other ways to stay very close to its customers. could design and produce, and a good part of it was coming from Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley 176

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 176

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

You can imagine the rest of the conversation; my sounding reluctant to let our own tests outside our building, the magazines begging us to let them have them, and finally a deal gets struck where we let the benchmarks out to the test labs of these magazines under their own name “The Potrero Benchmark Suite” without attribution to us.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

Designing the Perfect Building Once the commitment to fix everything wrong was in place, we were off and running on the design phase. We hired an interior designer and a great facilities person to manage the process. The exec staff started meeting about the design of the new building. I was great at “office wars.”)

Silicon Valley 212

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

It wasn’t a lack of competence or skill in her job; it was just that as far as she was concerned, her job had no connection to the rest of marketing, our customers or our ultimate success as a company. “We Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. We need your decision now because we are about to spend $50,000 on new collateral.”

Silicon Valley 192

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 192

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

A great vacation with my wife wasn’t going to make up for being AWOL from home the rest of the year. Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Tips for Startups « Am I a Founder? The Adventure of a Lifetime. Everything else flows from that.

Entrepreneur 282

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

It’s been thirty years, but every once an awhile I still wonder what happened to the rest of their lives. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. By the time I came back to the United States, he was gone from the company. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 191

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 191

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

And the rest of the advice on this blog is irrelevant. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. And even if you did it’s the wrong focus, and time spent for a startup 2. If winning $5-10K is your goal, you’re not a scalable startup, just a small business. Blog at WordPress.com.

Business Plan 143

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 143

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

These damn models weren’t designed right so we’re fixing them on the line.” Therefore I’m not sure what to make of the rest of their conclusions. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. It’s our hood alignment station,” the plant manager said proudly. Let me know what you think. Comments and brickbats welcomed.

Founder 302

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 302

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2009

Our receptionists’ desk was built on the wing of a WWII P-51 fighter plane, and the rest of the office décor matched. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. All that is, except for our lobby, as our offices were on the 4 th floor. When you got off the elevator, you faced a non descript corporate-looking set of walls. .

Silicon Valley 130

Silicon Valley San Francisco RSS Vertical 130

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

But, as any startup can tell you, this opens up a tremendous set of opportunities for the rest of us. But for the rest of us, who create content because we care passionately about having an impact on the world, we need to rethink the process by which we do it. Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and what.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2009

The ESL equipment were racks of the latest semiconductors designed into a system so complicated that the mean-time-between-failure was measured in days. Before leaving California, the engineers gave me a course in this specialized receiver design. I was in between the two thinking of this movie scene. (At It shunned publicity.

Silicon Valley 273

Silicon Valley RSS California Washington 273

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

And you’d like me to do my talk on Customer Development and startups?” “No, we’re the other CIA.” Since it was the military and I was a lowly airman (I was outranked by the rest of the entire air force), the answer I got was, “Don’t you know there’s a war on? It gave me a sense of purpose for the rest of the war.

Silicon Valley 253

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Venture Capital 253

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

A+ in one or two courses every semester and mediocre in the rest. From the king of customer development, Steve Blank: [.] Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. You don’t get grades for having resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition and tenacity. You just get successful. in school.

Silicon Valley 329

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 329

Steve Blank

MARCH 28, 2009

Soviet Air Defense – PVO Strany The B-52s had to get through a massive Soviet air defense system that had been built and evolved over two decades and was designed to shoot down manned bombers. All of this designed to make the plane if not invisible to Soviet radar, at least really difficult to lock onto and shoot down.

Silicon Valley 202

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Michigan 202

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

My way of explaining our support and service role to the marketing department was that: Sales is the sharp end of the stick, and marketing at best, is the stick. But while the sales team works for commission, the rest of the employees have equity (stock) in the company. No one was confused after that. Who’s on the Sharp End?

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 127

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If you think you are going to offend your customers or embarrass your engineering organization, get out of the marketing department. Design your graphics, pre-show promotion, literature and show directory advertising around your focused message and theme. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 185

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

Our president picked up on the momentum and asked me what I needed from the rest of the exec team to fix this debacle. I replied: “This is really important for our success as company and I’m really at a loss why customers didn’t respond the way we expected. It was so out of character, people were shocked. True? .&#

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Durant Versus Sloan – Part 1 « Steve Blank steveblank.com/2009/10/01/durant-versus-sloan-part-1 – view page – cached + Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) + Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40? Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Gary Hoover Reply Michael F. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 161

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Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

Now we could give customers lower price boards without Engineering spending 12 months to design new ones.) This requires deep customer and competitive knowledge. However, the mistake would be to confuse the interest in consumer facing companies with mass interest in the rest of corporate America. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 136

Silicon Valley Product RSS Engineer 136

Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2009

Family Rules My wife and I agreed to a few rules upfront and made up the rest as went along. The trips gave them a sense that the rest of the country and the world was not Silicon Valley and that their lives were not the norm. My ideas about Customer Development started evolving around these concepts. Never miss an event.

Entrepreneur 332

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development 332

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

We already have some competitors in the vertical and while there is no point in trying to hide the actual idea, there are differences in the way we implement stuff that can get us an advantage over the competition. >> Instead you will literally have to hire guards to keep the desperate customers from knocking down your door.

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41