Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2022

How do they connect with a new generation of customers who had no brand loyalty? How to they use the new distribution channels competitors have adopted? How do they make these transitions without alienating and losing their existing customers, distribution channels and partners? Are these the real problems?

Framework 397

Framework Distribution Channel Leadership 397

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

JULY 22, 2010

Startup CEO’s can’t delegate sales and expect it to happen. Customer Validation needs to have the CEO actively involved. Here’s an example in a direct sales channel. Customer Development Diagnostics over Lunch. It certainly sounded like he had done a great job of Customer Discovery. Sales Process.

Forecast 276

Forecast Sales Customer Customer Development 276

The Next Web

DECEMBER 30, 2012

How to Build a Startup (EP245) by Steve Blank: You’ll learn the key steps of the Customer Development process. How to identify and engage the first customers for your product, and how to gather, evaluate and use their feedback to make your product, marketing and business model far stronger.

Artificial Inteligence 156

Artificial Inteligence Founder Private Equity Ruby 156

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2014

They had direct interaction with customers and controlled a sales channel which allowed them to negotiate their own deals with customers. Skunk works had control over their sales channel and had direct customer feedback. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development.

Channel 292

Channel Customer Development Distribution Restful 292

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Customer 424

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 424

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

———— T o: Marketing Department From: Steve Subject: Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters Generating Leads Ownership If your company is going to a show to generate leads, then sales owns the show. This is worthy of an open and honest discussion with sales up front. And inviting to the booth/dinner/private demo.

Silicon Valley 136

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 136

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

to understand distribution channel landscape, potential partners and rough cost of customer acquisition. sales office. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development. Business Model versus Business Plan Customer Development' Trip 2 to the U.S. Trip 4 to the U.S. Establish U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2012

From sources that the studios at one time claimed would put them out of business: Pay-per view TV, cable and satellite channels, video rentals, DVD sales, online subscriptions and digital downloads. 1940’s – movie studios had to divest their distribution channel – they owned over 50% of the movie theaters in the U.S. The reality?

Silicon Valley 336

Silicon Valley Distribution Washington Channel 336

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

billion for a company with less than $50 million in sales. 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 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2010

To get to this Transition stage, the company needed passionate visionaries who can articulate a compelling vision, agile enough to learn and discover in real time, resilient enough to deal with countless failures, and responsive enough to capitalize on what they learned in order to secure early customers. What’s Next.

Agile 120

Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

These new entrants disrupted their food categories by offering high quality proprietary recipes, outsourcing their manufacturing, and using their cash and resources on sales and marketing to build distribution and a differentiated brand. And not just any customer; it was from one of the largest supermarket chains in the U.S.

North America 120

North America Lean Customer Development Distribution 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2014

The good news is that corporations have access to resources and capabilities that most startups can only dream of , whether it is free cash flow, a strong brand, a vibrant supply chain, strong distribution, a skilled sales force, and so on. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development.

Startup 330

Startup Business Model Lean Russia 330

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

So the departments either didn’t have the capacity to pay or it would be an endless sales-cycle, where we would spend lots of time on the sales, but it still wouldn’t close. I tell these stories to lay the groundwork for what I am going to call Revenue Development. In a nutshell, Product Development is about building something.

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

A business model diagram also shows how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. As a founder you start out with: 1) a vision of a product with a set of features, 2) a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? The Pivot.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

For a startup, having great sales DNA is a wonderful asset. The problem stems from selling each customer a custom one-time product. This is the magic of sales: by learning about each customer in-depth, they can convince each of them that this product would solve serious problems. They are closing orders.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 269

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

One is explaining the world as it used to work: the importance of gatekeepers, the scarcity implied by limited distribution, and the resulting quality bar that the industry is so proud of. Mostly it is the time and expense required to create the means of distribution for that industry. It’s just taking some longer than others.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Reply steveblank , on September 16, 2009 at 7:00 pm said: Greg, The Google Group “Lean Startup Circle&# at [link] is a wonderful repository of Customer Development/Lean Startup success and failure. It’s more reference material. Thus, these pages. I’ll add more as time goes on.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

As a founder you are testing a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? What’s the distribution channel? If you are following Customer Development , the answer is easy. Dave McClure’s AARRR Model is one illustration of the web sales pipeline. Total Page Views.

Balance Sheet 304

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 304

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

But these VC’s aren’t Lean because they fund startups with web-based distribution models. It’s because the startups are doing something very new that make them “Lean&# : These startups embrace customer and agile development that Eric Ries has been evangelizing.

Lean 263

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 263

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

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

However, in catching up with the VP of Sales of Ardent last night, I was reminded one of the few times I did return for closure. We had support from the scientists and researchers who had bought one of our machines and were beginning to see that distributed computing would ultimately triumph, but bureaucracy marched on, and we lost the bid.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 210

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

The cost of creating new companies is falling rapidly, and access to markets, distribution, and information is within the reach of anyone with an Internet connection. These companies produced over $52 billion dollars in sales in 2005, and employed 450,000 workers that year.

San Francisco 121

San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

As a formal method, the Lean Startup consists of three parts: The Business Model Canvas – to frame hypotheses, Customer Development – to test those hypotheses in front of customers, and Agile Engineering – to build Minimum Viable Products to maximize learning. Distribution Channel changes to Deployment.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

They were interested in the tools and new distribution medium kaChing provided. kaChing says they had the fortitude to make quick decisions and stay the course not just because they’d observed how people were using the marketplace, but also because they’d spoken with hundreds of potential and past customers. says Rachleff.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door. Later you will want to come back and create a proper sales forecast, cash flow forecast, and expense budget. The business model.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

So we tried to craft a strategy that would give us the product development leverage we needed to serve all customers. We combined three tactics: extensive use of free software, an open platform for user-generated content, and leveraged distribution channels. Leveraged distribution channels.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

They’ve found product/market fit (what products customers want to buy). They’ve learned the best distribution channel to get the product from their company to the customer. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.) and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 5, 2016

By Jay DesMarteau, head of small business and government banking distribution for TD Bank. In fact, the National Retail Federation states that the months of November and December alone may account for 30 percent of a retailer’s annual sales. Jay DesMarteau is the head of small business and government banking distribution for TD Bank.

Customer 100

Customer Distribution Government Agile 100

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 125

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2010

Students formed teams, came up with a business idea then talked to customers, vendors and sales channel partners to validate their business model. Each week the students had to submit a two-page analysis of the presenting company’s business model, distribution channels, demand creation activities, and engineering.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley Business Model Customer Development Engineer 127

Steve Blank

MARCH 15, 2011

By now the nine teams in our Stanford Lean LaunchPad Class were formed, In the four days between team formation and this class session we tasked them to: Write down their initial hypotheses for the 9 components of their company’s business model (who are the customers? what distribution channel? what’s the product? Stay tuned.

Business Model 238

Business Model Nebraska Peru Germany 238

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Some of the conversations went like this: Startup 1 Entrepreneur -“I’m competing against Company x and have been following the Customer Development process and I’ve talked to lots of customers.” Do you know have they distribute their product? Do you know the archetype of their customers? This is easy to test.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 206

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

After quitting my job and starting Sorced , I spent a few months validating my business concept by creating the product mockups and doing customer development. It’s the same process as sales and dating, and I know how to do both, well, at least sales… So, how hard can this be? However, I needed to actually build it!

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47