Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Underwriters who would offer the stock to the public typically asked for a young company to show five consecutive quarters of profits. Perhaps in direct proportion to the number of “freemium” and “eyeballs” web deals funded.) To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

During the first few weeks I asked each of my department heads what they did for marketing and the company. When I asked our trade show manager she looked at me like I was the house idiot and said, “Steve, don’t you know that my job is to set up our trade show booth?” If so, which one? If not, why am I doing it?”

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

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. Perhaps you can determine whether a product is new by asking customers to name the competition.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Ignore This Post The same caveat applies as in the first post; If you’re selling via the web, and trade shows seem hopelessly anachronistic, ignore this post. Someone from your company has to be designated the official competitive intelligence officer for this show. this may be a useful read. One of them is a loser.

Silicon Valley 136

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 136

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. Ive tried hard not to live up (or down?) to those stereotypes, but its not easy.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

andrewchenblog.com

MARCH 10, 2010

Coupled with A/B testing, customer development, and thinking through business problems in a scientific, hypothesis-driven way, you end up with a powerful cocktail of techniques to build a modern startup in the most iterative way possible. However, there’s the other side of the coin, which is the product design.

Technical Review 47

Technical Review Design Las Vegas Product 47

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.”

Customer Development 284

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 284

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.”

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 206

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. (You can use static methods like Monte Carlo simulation, or dynamic methods using continuous or discrete simulation.) However, for the Web 2.0

Vertical 137

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 137

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. Ask them what they thought of your company/product before/after the show.

Silicon Valley 203

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 203

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Struggling with one of her classes my daughter had assured us that she was asking for help – and was reporting on her progress (or lack of it). She had sent several emails to the resource center asking for help. All good, and all part of the “when you’re stuck, ask for help” heuristic we taught our kids.

Silicon Valley 331

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 331

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

And throughout my career as an entrepreneur I kept asking questions of my VC investors and friends; Where did entrepreneurship come from? Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. How did Silicon Valley start?

Silicon Valley 297

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 297

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

And the kinds of failures that do get airtime are usually failures to adequately plan, anticipate, or design in advance. In fact, I rely on readers and attendees to ask me the hard questions that challenge me to root out and eradicate these errors. You are the “hits&# that websites crave, the followers and the RSS subscribers.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean PR Metrics 167

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

If you’re a startup raising money or just want to see your name online, there’s not a better blog on the web. Tell Me it Isn’t True One of the other wives asked, “Well what would your friends in the commune think of you now that your husband is working for intelligence agencies x and y?&# To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 210

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

If you’re are a startup founder or an early employee, there may come a time in your relationship that your significant other/spouse will ask you the “ what’s more important? When she asked it, I had to stand there and actually think about it. And when I answered, it was “my job.” We both then realized our marriage was over.

Entrepreneur 291

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 291

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Since there was very little documentation my time was split between the design engineers who built the system and the test and deployment team getting the system ready to go overseas. Two weeks before the class was over the head of the deployment team asked, “Steve are you single?&# You’re Hired, You’re Fired.

Agile 265

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 265

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

Hacker News new | comments | ask | jobs | submit login Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice. He chose to build an engine with the entire eight cylinders cast in one block, and instructed his engineers to produce a design for the engine. Ideas are worthless when theyre another spin on a web 2.0 Shocking, I know.

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

conversionxl.com

FEBRUARY 4, 2014

What follows is a list of resources that can be applied specifically to landing page optimization, found here on ConversionXL & from other great websites around the web. note: If you’re a startup, you’ll want to use customer development questions for your page to resonate with future traffic).

Analytics 98

Analytics Software Review Conversion Video 98

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 20, 2009

Ill share an excerpt and then Id like to ask, once again, for your help. Heres the excerpt: Today’s high-tech entrepreneurs have at their command more than just the ability to invent new technologies — they have mastered the discipline and the methodology required to harness those technologies in order to serve customers.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 68

Aymeric Gaurat-Apelli

JULY 1, 2010

Google Forms Simply go to [link] and select “Create new” / “Form” and you will be presented with a very good form designer. Depending on which page the user is in, you can choose to ask some specific questions to better understand your user. I found VWO very easy to use with their user friendly designer.

Lean 38

Lean Customer Ruby Startup 38

Aymeric Gaurat-Apelli

JULY 1, 2010

Google Forms Simply go to [link] and select “Create new” / “Form” and you will be presented with a very good form designer. Depending on which page the user is in, you can choose to ask some specific questions to better understand your user. I found VWO very easy to use with their user friendly designer.

Lean 32

Lean Customer Ruby Startup 32

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

There’s a great quote that I love that goes “Ask not if you’re worthy of your goals, ask instead, are your goals worthy of your life?”. Ask [link] – you don’t need to be in the valley. Ask your existing users this question via a survey. When you start making $$$, no one will ask or care where you went to school.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Steve Blank , January 25, 2010 10 Tips for Adding Game Mechanics to a Non-Gaming Service - ReadWriteStart , September 21, 2010 Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own. - First Principles.

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2009

I think the Volt open source platform could be managed through a Web 2.0-like I think the Volt open source platform could be managed through a Web 2.0-like Also, people successful with their designs could be able to earn some royalties, if they decide to do so! with the auto bailout. with the auto bailout. improvement system.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Open Source RSS California 120

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Useful blogs and links for startups Click Here ————– 2.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Amazon Web Services. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Customer service. Design/Front End: Twitter Bootstrap : Include this in your website, and you are half finished. LiveRoad : A Great IDE for design is very helpful. Web Tools: Hereâ??s Firebase : Are all your developers front-end engineers?

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53