Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

Lean 259

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 259

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Following is his advice to early stage entrepreneurs for creating structure in their company. So, I’ll explain my reasoning through the story of ASC, a fictitious company that has a combination of characteristics I’ve seen across a number of early stage companies. Soundbites from potential customers are encouraging.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Computer hardware companies were faced with their customers asking for low-cost (relatively) desktop computers they had no experience in building. Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.)

Technology 142

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. It bears repeating: an early-stage startup must focus on making one customer group excited by a mission-aligned product.

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Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend. Our vision was that just as the PC was revolutionizing the business market, we were going to do the same for scientists and engineers.

North Carolina 129

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 129

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. — An experienced team made all the difference to 2U finding success, Jeremy said: We had a phenomenal early group of people that were brought together to try to address the problem.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 145

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention. In these markets it’s all about customer/market risk.

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 159

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

My colleagues Sebastian Soler , Steven Greenberg and I recently launched a new online community, PEVCTech.com , exclusively for PE/VC investors; engineers who work at PE/VC funds; and other technologists who specialize in working on this problem. The Pocket Negotiator is very early-stage attempt to aid in the negotiating process itself. .

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. I was hired as a training instructor to teach microprocessor system design for the existing Z-80 family and to write a new course for Zilog’s soon to be launched 16-bit processor, the Z-8000. VP of Sales? Wait a minute. where am I?

Silicon Valley 195

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 195

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. — An experienced team made all the difference to 2U finding success, Jeremy said: We had a phenomenal early group of people that were brought together to try to address the problem.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Strong support from serial founders, engineers, and other specialized resources that are particularly relevant to the earliest days of a company can overcome that hurdle and (in theory at least) yield companies that otherwise wouldn’t be built. HappyFunCorp employs 80 engineers and product architects. Our model at Casual Corp.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Video Games At SuperMac , Peter Barrett was the witty and creative 24-year old Australian engineer who had designed several of our most successful products, culminating with the software for the Video Spigot. I remember thinking, “What a disappointment one of the smartest engineers I know and he is going to waste his time making games.”

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies. Provide early seed capital, and be the ones to make those introductions. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 2, 2012

Using mTurk to interview 100 customers (in 4 hours) | Customer Development Labs - [link]. A startup’s first hires: What to look for | Fortune - [link]. Lessons from a top Angel Investor: Fabrice Grinda talks about his 100 early-stage investments – [link]. What’s The Most Difficult CEO Skill?

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 93

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? But all things are never equal.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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. Consequently, I either needed a tech co-founder or to pay someone to develop the product. Given those criteria, where are the watering holes to find these engineers?

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

It required hearing customers say it over and over again for us to take a serious look, and eventually to realize that social networking was core to our business. Later, when the company was much larger, we had everyone on our engineering team agree to sit in on one usability test every month. Dont confuse passion with volume.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. What is customer development?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

I thought a good place to start was with the origins of the idea that "software design" should be considered a discipline in its own right, on par with computer science, software engineering, and computer programming. Great engineers see it and smile. This is called set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE). [1]

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2016

She is an Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Cooper Union. Nina has a bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the Cooper Union, a master’s in Bioelectrical Engineering from MIT, a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, and an MBA from Columbia University. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Michigan Detroit 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

And it hires very smart people from the best schools. BTW, by the standards mentioned in the Times article, the following people would never have been interviewed or hired at Google. College Dropouts - Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison These guys realized that customers don’t ask for your transcript. I love Google.

Silicon Valley 332

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 332

www.instigatorblog.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Changing Equity Structures for Early Startup Employees Tweet Recently someone asked me for advice on how much equity they should give to their early employees. His company had just closed an early round of funding and he wanted to cement the employee relationships. But I also told him that I though the numbers were wrong. .&#

Equity 41

Equity Employee Startup Vesting 41

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? This is the usual reason given for a marketing launch, but for most early stage startups, its a failure. Do some Customer Development instead.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

A discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The event will include a talk from Eric on The Lean Startup over dinner, followed by moderated table discussion and then final Q&A with Eric.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. With that information in hand, Engineering estimates delivery dates and development costs.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 268

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. So I have a question for you, Jason.

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Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

Unfortunately, they are disinterested in doing the hard work to help early stage entrepreneurs and companies. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Telecom O2 learning to move at the speed of the internet 500 Startups and their accelerated feedback loops on what works, and what doesn't work in early-stage investing. PayPal, under the leadership of David Marcus and Bill Scott, re-defining and re-engineering itself by embracing Lean Startup to improve the product experience.

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Lean Entrepreneur Agile San Francisco 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

Many founders dont like to hear that visionary customers are as smart, maybe even more so, than they are. Startups need to spend time with these customers. In fact, early stage companies shouldnt be able to get time from anyone else - who else would be crazy enough to try an truly innovative new product?

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

I think this idea is particularly appealing to those of us from an engineering background. In other words, we want to use the spreadsheet to quantify our progress using the most important unit: validated learning about customers. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

VC Cafe covers early stage Israeli and European tech & mobile startups. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Firebase : Are all your developers front-end engineers? Google Custom Search Engine. Google App Engine. Search Engine Optimization Tools. VC & Startup Resources.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

It is right that Google and Facebook pride themselves on being engineering organizations (note - so did Microsoft). It is interesting to see the emphasis that both Twitter and Quora have put on product design, not just engineering. are just emerging for business people (customer development, business model generation,).

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. Noah Parsons says, “Start collecting contact information for interested, prospective customers.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. I don’t know any developers. Then, forget everything else, VCs included, and just build.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

He is also an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Columbia Business School , and an angel investor hailed as one of New York City’s top 100 early-stage investors. There’s more interest on the business school students and engineer students than there’s ever been. I’m seeing it in real time.

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Silicon Valley New York 120

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

He , Srikanth Narayan , Ben Werdmuller von Elgg , Jo Vi Ko , Justin Lee , Giovanni Tardini , David de Weerdt , Vineet Thanedar , Ryan Brideau , Jonathan Meiri , Rob Weedn , Krzysztof Kowalczyk , Greg Pilling , Kevin Leland , Parham Michael Ossareh , Dan Loewenherz , Mary Specht , Engin Erdo?an "I am a creative guy with a startup idea."

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

You are here: Home » Hiring » Crazy! Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. If you’re looking for a designer, engineer, or biz marketing guy – go to meetups / conferences that those people would go to. you can hire for those.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44