Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

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.

Customer Development 264

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

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. Why does Salesforce SMS integration matter?

SMS 125

SMS Customer Campaign Social Media 125

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

I''ve been thinking a lot lately about scaling sales. . Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. How do I build a repeatable, scalable sales process that is like an industrial machine - not a crafts project? 1) Enterprise Sales.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. Starting in the 1950’s, Stanford’s engineering department became “outward facing” and developed a culture of spinouts and active faculty support and participation in the first wave of Silicon Valley startups. Seeing Is Believing. The Business Plan is Dead. Berkeley-wide.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

If you’re looking to dive deep on Lean Startup skills, our workshop sessions provide professional development at a serious bargain. In this workshop, Goto will take you through the application development process and shre behind-the-scenes techniques for rapid prototyping. We’ll talk about the cool site visits in a separate post.)

Lean 154

Lean Cofounder Analytics Startup 154

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2009

Gathering real-world feedback from customers is a core concept of Customer Development as well as the Lean Startup. When I asked him if he actually had personally left the building and talked to these potential customers, or even had gotten them on the phone, he sounded confused. But what information to collect?

Metrics 240

Metrics Customer Customer Development Lean 240

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 more likely to successfully scale with sales driven startups than with product centric startups. Startup Genome Report. Some of their key findings : 1.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2014

Kauffman just launched Founders School - a new education series to help entrepreneurs develop their businesses during the startup stage by highlighting how startups are different from big companies. 1:46: The Differences: Accounting, Engineering & Sales. 1:49: Use Customer Development to Test Your Hypotheses.

Founder 328

Founder Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 328

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. Two paragraphs, Five bullets. It didn’t take more.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a key lean startup concept.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

We knew from back-of-the-envelope calculations that I would need 3 times the combined marketing and sales budgets of the incumbents for a head-on assault. (I The 3:1 Lanchester Laws said I would need $60M in marketing and sales spending to win. If we tried to match them on their playing field we’d never catch up.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 144

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.” Little Indians and Big Indians At MIPS Computers , my second semiconductor company, I was the VP of Marketing and defacto head of Sales. Isn’t that what I was supposed to do?

Customer Development 280

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 280

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Metrics – Mine is Bigger Than Yours The first thing SuperMac needed to do was to change how our potential color desktop publishing customers viewed our products versus our competitors’ products. As hokey as it is, when confronted with uncertainty or unknowns, human beings like to be reassured by comparative metrics.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

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. Through advertising or direct sales, these sites harvest intent. They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. Innovative. Disruptive. We get it! I Be specific. Here’s why.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. Some sales guy who was too busy to take the meeting was probably retired in Maui on the commissions. Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story.

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 133

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. For a startup, having great sales DNA is a wonderful asset. They are closing orders.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 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. These founders specify, design, and build a fully featured product using classic product development methods without ever leaving their building. Focusing on the launch date.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

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. Focus on the output metrics of that part of the product, and you make the problem a lot more clear. This is not what I have in mind.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

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. Three months in, the burn is now at $70k/month. There is $350k left in the bank.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? The core idea behind customer development is that the assumptions you make about a target market are only guesses. Website Analysis.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

billion for a company with less than $50 million in sales. My own metric is that you need experience >= 1.5 The IPO Bubble – August 1995 – March 2000 In August 1995 Netscape went public, and the world of start ups turned upside down. On its first day of trading, Netscape stock closed at $58/share, valuing the company at $2.7

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

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

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

If you are following Customer Development , the answer is easy. Board meetings are about measuring progress measured against the hypotheses in Customer Discovery and Validation. Do the metrics show that the business model you’re creating will support the company you’re trying to become? Startup Metrics.

Balance Sheet 300

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 300

ConversionXL

JANUARY 31, 2014

note: If you’re a startup, you’ll want to use customer development questions for your page to resonate with future traffic). How To Identify Your Target Market & Make More Sales. Ask Peep about analytics, and he’ll tell you, “Metrics are there to provide actionable insight. image source. image source.

Analytics 134

Analytics Video Matching Conversion 134

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

In an enterprise sales context, this is called a "repeatable and scalable sales process" - once you know how to do this, your company can graduate from early adopters and make an attempt at the mainstream. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.) Lessons Learned.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

That’s because many of our reports feed us vanity metrics: numbers that make us look good but don’t really help make decisions. Yet even among those who have access to good actionable metrics, I’ve noticed a phenomenon that prevents taking maximum advantage of data. Too much of this data is non- actionable.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

An investor had few hard metrics other than the actual financials, and little technology to make the process scaleable. Over the past few decades, better metrics became available, and investors could take a more analytical, data-driven approach. is an AI bot which helps companies refine their sales pitch to VCs. VC Firm. $

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

ConversionXL

MARCH 28, 2014

In another study, Wistia dug into the visitor data for their own homepage video & found that roughly 30% of their video views came from prospective customers. ” The visitor/view metric is one you should only be competing against yourself on. ” metric for featured products & +28.0

Video 122

Video Software Review Cofounder Metrics 122

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 312

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 312

SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2011

This site aggregates and filters content from thought leaders who talk about topics such as Marketing , Sales , Design , Revenue , Hiring , Social Media , Business Models , Metrics , PR , Venture Capital , Angel Investors , Bootstrapping , Incubators , Agile and many others.

Intellectual Property 175

Intellectual Property Aggregator Startup IP 175

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Now its time to start to think seriously about how to find a repeatable and scalable sales process, how to position and market the product, and how to build a product development team that can turn an early product into a Whole Product. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

The Startup Toolkit

DECEMBER 12, 2012

And if you focus on those metrics, you will go out of business too soon. Cohort analytics and funnel metric (start with Pirate AARRR Metrics if you are new) are priceless once you have a website live. Customer Development and UX both have good tools for doing this.

Lean 54

Lean Startup Metrics Retention 54

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

Or depending on your metrics for success, get users, grow traffic, etc.). A business model diagram also shows how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. Your job as a founder is to quickly validate whether the model is correct by seeing if customers behave as your model predicts.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

In other words, how can we adapt the Business Model Canvas when the metrics of success for an organization is not revenue? Customer Relationships is changed to Buy-in/Support. Customer Segments Change to Beneficiaries. do we use to get the product/service from our company to the customer segments?” Lessons Learned.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

All successful media companies had at their heart a series of editors, producers, and agents tasked with discovering and developing new talent. Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it. Is that a lot? Is that good?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2010

Most competitive analyses are: 1) sales documents for investors and/or 2) an attempt to rationalize the founders assumptions. Get to work and add all of these for first customer ship.”. Product development salutes and gets to work building the product. Your competitive analysis must be around those metrics.

Customer Development 260

Customer Development Metrics Differentiation Engineer 260