Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. Instead we ended up with poorly written documents that looked like ransom notes.

Agile 332

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 332

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Founders assumed they understood customer problems/needs, wrote engineering requirements documents, designed the product, implemented /built the hardware/software, verified that it worked by testing it, and then introduced the product to customers in a formal coming out called first customer ship.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

What you’re holding in your hand is a revolutionary document. A smaller number of companies have become proficient at the next step— incubation —rigorously testing new business concepts, using the lean start-up methods of Customer Development, Agile Engineering, and Business Model design. Here it is in its entirety.

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

A business plan is the execution document that large companies write when planning product-line extensions where customer, market and product features are known. Filed under: Customer Development Manifesto , Durant versus Sloan: Startups Verus Companies , Teaching. Business Plan Versus Business Models.

Business Plan 312

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 312

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), now largely replaced by Facebook and Twitter.

CTO Hire 252

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 252

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Product people are often messy, hate paperwork and prefer to spend their time creating stuff rather than documenting it. People who manage processes are not the same people as those who create product. Over time as organizations grow, they become risk averse.

Government 315

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 315

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), now largely replaced by Facebook and Twitter.

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

Whether it’s managing your supply chain or automating customer service, look for ways to optimise every aspect of your operations. PDF to Word conversion tools can be a lifesaver for managing documents efficiently. They allow you to easily edit, share, and collaborate on documents without the need for multiple software solutions.

Intellectual Property 131

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 131

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

So, definition: when I talk about a business plan I’m not talking about a 40-page Word document outlining your market approach. That died with waterfall software development. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small?

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

These don’t require coding skills—they’re usually visual templates that are easy to use but don’t allow for great customization (that would require technical skills). Custom development. This means hiring/contracting a freelance web developer or an agency to design and develop your site from start to finish.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), now largely replaced by Facebook and Twitter.

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

My first company launched in 1999 and we were offering a SaaS document management in the cloud (we were called ASPs back then). I didn’t have first-hand experience in document management systems other than as a user and nobody had SaaS experience – the market was too new. I’ll always point out when I am.).

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Evangelism marketing is an advanced form of word of mouth marketing (WOMM), now largely replaced by Facebook and Twitter.

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

I know that this all seems obvious now with the movements started by Steven Blank ( Four Steps of Epiphany ) with the whole Customer Development processes / Lean Startup movements also popularized by people like Eric Ries. Customers had requested that we build out a more robust solution than our current product had.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? And when do business planning and execution come into play?

Search 320

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

The business plan is a wonderful document for organizing and planning for existing companies to launch follow-on products. In an existing corporation, the business plan is the execution document for sustaining innovation. Business Plan vs. Business Model + Customer Development. It what winners do.

Business Model 263

Business Model Customer Development Utah Lean 263

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 19, 2017

As documented by Reichheld Frederick and W. Quality Comes to Services” a company’s most loyal customers are also its most profitable. Define persona preferences for general and specific sites, platform usage and brand preferences. This can be useful in email marketing. Reward loyalty. Earl Sasser, Jr.,

Software Review 114

Software Review Technical Review Retention Channel 114

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 9, 2013

Call the client and talk him through the documents in real time so he can ask questions and you can correct misconceptions. Professionalisms customer development customer relationship management customer service managing customers Tom Panaggio' But don’t include a long, convoluted explanation in the email.

Customer 155

Customer Technical Review Florida Cofounder 155

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2014

Launched by Robert Adams in 1989, this $30 million fund grew to over $200 million in the next 7 years, as it launched companies like Documentum and Document Sciences out of Xerox’s fabled Palo Alto Research Center. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development.

Startup 327

Startup Lean Business Model Russia 327

ConversionXL

MARCH 4, 2020

This can involve default experiment/variant dimensions, custom dimensions, and custom events. Most testing tools provide guidelines for building Google Analytics segments in the part of their documentation that covers their Google Analytics integration. This way, you can check that no other live experiment has GA12 in its name.

Analytics 88

Analytics IP Metrics Conversion 88

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

In this book, you’ll get step-by-step advice on how to align strategy, tactics, milestones, and assumptions, without having to worry about creating a business plan document. Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy. Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth.

Startup 80

Startup Venture Capital Lean Angel Investor 80

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 2, 2010

They’re an albatross if they perform as they do in a large company, and believe that they “own&# customer interaction, feedback to engineering and authoring market requirements documents. In a startup they will be part of the Customer Development team. Filed under: Customer Development.

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Management Product San Francisco 261

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2015

Reetu’s current startup idea came out of her experience of documenting her daughter’s achievements for a school application. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. There’s no electricity card. I can focus on my career, my job, my business idea if I have one. If you can’t hear the clip, click here. .

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur India Maryland 120

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 13, 2011

Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology detailed in his book, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany." steve blank in finland sept 2011 View more documents from steve blank. 9-to-5 Venture Capital.

Finland 158

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 158

Steve Blank

MARCH 14, 2012

Curriculum = business model canvas + customer development. Relentless customer visits (10-20 a week). On-line journal to document their customer discovery narrative. Weekly critiques of team customer discovery progress. Students apply as preformed teams. Minimal lecture, maximum experiential immersion.

Lean 248

Lean Business Model Customer Development China 248

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

competitive analyses, channel and customer collateral (white papers, data sheets, product reviews), customer surveys, and market requirements documents. We will accomplish this through demand-creation activities (advertising, PR, tradeshows, seminars, web sites, etc.), on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

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). Do This: Use customer development techniques found in this post to build a profile of your ideal buyer personas. What are you using our product for? Do you consider any alternatives?

Analytics 134

Analytics Video Matching Conversion 134

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

One of the ways our VC’s kept track of our progress was by taking a monthly look at three financial documents: Income Statement, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow Statement. These financial documents were worse than useless for helping us understand how well we were (or weren’t) doing. Filed under: Customer Development , Durant versus Sloan.

Balance Sheet 298

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 298

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

In the past both hardware and software were engineered using Waterfall development, a process that moves through new product development one-step-at-a-time. Marketing delivers a “requirements” document to engineering. Then engineering develops a functional specification and designs the product.

Continuous Deployment 329

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 329

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2013

Prism provides the NSA with access to data on the servers of Microsoft, Google, Facebook , etc, extracting audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents, etc. Filed under: Customer Development , Secret History of Silicon Valley. Customer Development Secret History of Silicon Valley'

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley Russia Security Customer Development 335

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

They take things like unit testing, design documents and code reviews more seriously than any other company Ive even heard about. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? ScienceDaily: Corporate culture is most important.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

Then summarize it in a brief – a one, max two-page document that you hand to prospective PR agencies. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Marketing , Teaching. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Marketing Teaching' What worked, what didn’t, etc.

PR 314

PR China Lean Channel 314

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 4, 2012

In each case, the business plans were big, long, serious documents that had only a minor semblance to actual business that got created. Rather than write long exhaustive documents, entrepreneurs can rapidly prototype their product and get immediate user and market feedback. Is Your Business Plan A Roadmap Or A Historical Document?

Business Plan 193

Business Plan Lean Cofounder Venture Capital 193

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 15, 2011

Our Lean LaunchPad class teaches scientists and engineers that starting a company is another research project that can be solved by an iterative process of hypotheses testing and experimentation built around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. And I am definitely enjoying it.”.

Silicon Valley 242

Silicon Valley Lean Business Model Customer Development 242

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2010

Most competitive analyses are: 1) sales documents for investors and/or 2) an attempt to rationalize the founders assumptions. In most startups the competitive analysis feature comparison ends up morphing into the Marketing Requirements Document that gets handed to engineering. Get to work and add all of these for first customer ship.”.

Customer Development 259

Customer Development Metrics Differentiation Engineer 259