Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2012

Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or Customer Development there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. I want to tell you a story about how a team pivoted and succeeded by synchronizing product and customer development. Filed under: Customer Development.

San Jose 257

San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 257

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

But the best founders I know almost always operate as though they have much less money in the bank, and won’t scale burn until they are super confident in their product/market fit. The reason is that b2b fundraising is largely driven by data and metrics, and pre-seed dollars usually don’t get you to many meaningful data points.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 13, 2009 The Principles of Product Development Flow If youve ever wondered why agile or lean development techniques work, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen is the book for you.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2019

The class was unique in that it was 1) team-based, 2) experiential, 3) lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering). When we started this class, the concept of Lean (business models, customer development, agile, pivots, mvp’s) was new to everyone. Class Velocity/Depth.

Lean 251

Lean Business Model Balance Sheet Video 251

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 11, 2016

How to recognize when it’s time to pull the plug on your startup idea, and why founders can’t operate afford to operate in a vacuum were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Through that process, I lost a lot including some relationships with individuals, and I started to develop symptoms of acute anxiety. .

Columbus 246

Columbus Entrepreneur Ohio Cofounder 246

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

Gore , I’ve found two corporate strategy tools developed by other smart people helpful in bridging Lean Startups with Corporate Innovation. To move innovation faster, we now have 21 st century tools — Business Model Canvas , Customer Development , Agile Engineering – all adding up to a Lean Startup.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. Such direct experiences allows one to test critical “leap-of-faith” assumptions about what customers like and dislike.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 10, 2024

Salesforce, renowned for its robust customer relationship management (CRM) platform, serves as the nerve center for many businesses’ sales, marketing, and customer service operations.

SMS 124

SMS Customer Campaign Social Media 124

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 11, 2016

How to recognize when it’s time to pull the plug on your startup idea, and why founders can’t operate afford to operate in a vacuum were the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Through that process, I lost a lot including some relationships with individuals, and I started to develop symptoms of acute anxiety. .

Columbus 120

Columbus Entrepreneur Ohio Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Founders that learn are more successful : Startups that have helpful mentors, track metrics effectively, and learn from startup thought leaders raise 7x more money and have 3.5x Investors who provide hands-on help have little or no effect on the company’s operational performance. Startup Genome Report. better user growth.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

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). Third, the tools for customer discovery (videos, sample experiments, etc.)

Lean 435

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 435

ConversionXL

MARCH 4, 2020

You need to know how each tool operates. Don’t choose metrics that are similar but not the same. In most cases, fixing discrepancies requires some work by developers, analytics implementation specialists, or other experts. Every tool has its own methods for various metrics. Why does it happen? Image source ).

Analytics 88

Analytics IP Metrics Conversion 88

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Instead of encouraging entrepreneurs to focus on developing long and in-depth, static business plans, Tim advocated for a simpler approach: Define your business identity: What’s your value proposition to your customers? Determine your target market: You need to know and understand your customers.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2018

The stack consists of: Individual Innovation, Innovation Tools and Activities, Team-based Innovation and Operational Innovation. From the point of view of someone managing an engineering, manufacturing or operations organization, new, unplanned and unscheduled innovations are a distraction and a drag on existing resources.

Programming 322

Programming Incubator Leadership Silicon Valley 322

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

It wasn’t until I found the extremely obscure Lanchester Strategy for market share that I realized that these ratios had their basis in operations research and the Lanchester’s Laws.) Our company’s graphics boards were designed to speed up a key part of the Macintosh graphics operating system called QuickDraw.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 144

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. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet. Soundbites from potential customers are encouraging.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 2, 2013

to maximize the long-term value of those shares through solid financials, healthy SaaS metrics, and growing as fast as possible (but not faster). I’m responsible to the board and the shareholders (which in our case includes 100% of our employees!)

Cofounder 312

Cofounder Startup Founder Engineer 312

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Guide to Evaluating Startup Ideas - Tony Wright dot com , May 27, 2010 A great developer I once worked with was kvetching at lunch one day. They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. it’s about measuring online influence and I’m big on metrics as a key element of business planning; 2.) Innovative. Disruptive.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 31, 2015

Every year, our team conducts more than 500 customer development calls to understand what challenges the community is facing. ReadyTalk became interested in Lean Startup principles to develop new lines of business. One of their major initiatives is to launch marketing programs that engage customers in a fresh, new way.

Lean 60

Lean United States Fractional CTO Startup 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

In our case, we’re local in over 200 countries with operations in basically every city on the planet. For most big, established companies like us, our business models were developed years—even decades ago. in developing these new models. Using an alternative process including different systems and metrics is key.

Lean 327

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 327

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Venture Capitalists on your board developed the expertise to get your firm public as soon as possible using whatever it took including hype, spin, expand, and grab market share because the sooner you got your billion dollar market cap, the sooner the VC firm could sell their shares and distribute their profits. Warning sign? At best. ~

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

As a consequence, corporations used metrics like return on net assets (RONA), return on capital deployed, and internal rate of return (IRR) to measure efficiency. These metrics make it difficult for a company that wants to invest in long-term innovation. On the low-end, they undercut cost structures, resulting in customer migration.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. And the results weren’t the traditional PR metrics of number of articles or inches of ink. We were constantly creating metrics to see the effects of different PR messages, channels and audiences on end-user purchases.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. Creating a company-wide feedback loop that incorporates both customer development and agile development is a challenge.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

It’s a particularly popular strategy in the world of product development and is used to quickly and quantitatively test a product or a product feature. If you want to learn more about how to develop your own unique tone of voice, check out this article by branding expert Elicia Putnam. Brand to clarify your vision.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. For my first time, it was scalability problems and our operations team. why didnt operations get paged? How do you get started with five whys?

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

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. Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need. Filed under: Customer Development.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. They measure their success on metrics that reflect success in execution, and they reward execution.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Agile software development. Customer development. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. For customer development, start with Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany or take a look at his recent Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lecture.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Oops - there went several precious weeks of development effort down the drain. If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Eric -- This is a pretty interesting idea.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule. And what of the product development team? And yet, their investors are frustrated.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

(In fact, this crisis was at the heart of Steve Blank ’s original impetus to develop customer development as an alternative set of milestones to use for startups.) I have seen founders replaced because their style seemed too chaotic, even though what’s really happening is that they are operating at startup speed.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. I met one recently that is working on a really innovative product, and the stories I heard from their development team made me want to cringe.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2013

Problems arise when companies isolate areas of the business in what Eric refers to as “functional silos”—independently operating teams (design, engineering, marketing, legal, etc.) You have to go find your own customers to experiment with, you have your own brand, so you have to think like a Lean Startup.

Lean 167

Lean Silicon Valley Agile Cofounder 167

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations. Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations. For software, the easiest batch to see is code. I dont think so.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

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.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50