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. Heads down on product, they say.

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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. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

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David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Nick Kim , Crosscut’s Head of Platform, in his presentation at the 4th Annual VC Platform Summit, shared their Platform development methodology, which he viewed as an exercise in product development. For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. Customer Development.

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The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 10, 2012

Spoiler: You can’t hire out sales because in the early days it’s about learning, not selling, and hired guns can’t bring back bad news. Your sales roadmap[2] is a asset built up over time which undergoes the same innovation & refinement of a tech product. The founders have to do the early sales.

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David Teten

MARCH 28, 2012

The company teams they work with are usually highly motivated entrepreneurs trying to engage in extensive product and customer development efforts for a product they don’t typically have a full vision of, for a customer whose needs are opaque, and for a use case which is ambiguous.

Portfolio 144

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products.

Technology 141

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 141

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

. — 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. You might look at it and say, “In some ways, that team is overkill for an early-stage company. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

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Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Markets with Customer/Market Risk are those where the unknown is whether customers will adopt the product. is whether there is a customer and market for the product as spec’d. In these markets it’s all about customer/market risk. Based on this insight, I updated my earlier diagram to look like this. (The

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Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Successful pinball companies didn’t hire Hollywood talent. Meanwhile our company was pouring an enormous amount of dollars into building tools and video compression technology, while also hiring a lot of high-priced Hollywood talent like art directors, and script and story editors. I know what’s great and what’s not.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

. — 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. You might look at it and say, “In some ways, that team is overkill for an early-stage company. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

I’ve talked with a number of software development shops who are eager to get into the business of cofounding companies, i.e., getting product revenue and equity instead of just consulting revenue. If we believe in founders enough, we should believe in their potential more than what they could be paying us to build the product.

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Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

In venture capital in particular, early-stage companies are often operating in frontier industries, where the rules are unpredictable and conventional analytic frameworks may be misleading. To measure product usage and traction over time, we use tools like Alexa , AppAnnie and Google Analytics. are using AngelMob.co

Private Equity 60

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crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 2, 2012

How Customers evaluate your product | StartupCFO – [link]. Using mTurk to interview 100 customers (in 4 hours) | Customer Development Labs - [link]. To Successfully Launch A Product, You Have To Tell A Compelling Story | TechCrunch - [link]. Is The Only Purpose of Customer Service To Change Feelings?

Social Media 93

Social Media Small Business Design Media 93

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Burnout can turn productive employees into emotional zombies and destroy careers. Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. Two Jobs at Once When I was hired at Zilog part of the deal was that I could consult for the first six months for my last employer, ESL.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. 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.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 267

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. How could it go wrong? Little did I know. Now he wanted to go off start his own company.

Silicon Valley 120

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Hunter Walker

FEBRUARY 20, 2021

That said, there are three types of advisors that I don’t see as commonly utilized by early stage startups — at least the ones we’re not advising. I’m a big proponent of startups hiring talented high-ceiling people who are earlier in their careers and haven’t necessarily yet done the job they’re being recruited for.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

A Phone Call After I left MIPS Computers I was in New York tagging along with a friend (a computer architect whose products at Apple a decade later would change the shape of personal computing) who was consulting for a voice recognition startup. It would be the company where I actually earned the title. We’re building a supercomputer.”

North Carolina 128

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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? What’s going on?

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

I was glad to see him but it was clear over coffee that he was struggling with his first hiring failure. I’ve been running our company, cycling through Customer Discovery and Validation and the board suggested that I was running out of bandwidth and needed some help in closing our initial orders. selling a known product to.

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Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 316

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.

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San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

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?

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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? Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. Do some Customer Development instead. Help you raise money.

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San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

What startup stage do they typically invest in? Do they “get&# Customer Development ? What Startup Stage Do they Invest In? Certain VC’s like the new class of Super-Angels and small VC funds specialize in the early stage of a startup where you are searching for a business model. Lean Startups ?

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Send PDF versions of brochures and product sheets as soon as you get back to the office. Have enough dead-tree brochures and product sheets on hand before the show so you can snail-mail out the information after you emailed it. Everyone should be articulate and agile in describing and demoing the products.) What didn’t?

Silicon Valley 132

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

In the very early days, the trick is to find anyone at all who can understand you when you are talking about your product. In our first year at IMVU, we thought we were building a 3D avatar chat product. As product people, we thought of competition in terms of features. But the early customers all compared it to MySpace.

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San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

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. You might as well hire an outsourced team.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

Steve Blank

MAY 13, 2010

They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. Customer Development is the process of how you get out of the building and search for the model. Customer Development is designed so that you the founder(s) gather first hand experience about customer and market needs. Here’s why.

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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

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

One of the topics that raised heated debate was whether I had conflated technical design with product design , because I made the admittedly counter-intuitive claim that sometimes good technical design actually leads to increased technical debt. The argument itself got me thinking a lot about design and its role in building products.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

At IMVU, we were terrified by how early we shipped (and charged for) our first product. Despite that, we were able to establish credibility, because we used those early numbers to demonstrate that our customers were getting real value from our product and, more importantly, that we understood how to build more of it.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

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.

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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. How to move from a free to a paid product without losing all your users. Jason: get into customer development and it’s a big waste.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

If you don’t value your product neither will your customers. In the early days of building Qualtrics, Ryan tried giving the product away to entice customers to use it. — Finding early customers for Qualtrics was difficult, Ryan says. No one used it when we gave it away for free.

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Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 148

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

benjaminjoffe : early adopters of buggy product are visionary customers, sometimes smarter than founders! goap #ericries InvisibleGaijin : #goap #leanstartup Eric Ries talks about importance of "visionary customers" in startup success. Startups need to spend time with these customers.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2016

A tech entrepreneur and inventor, Brandon McNaughton was entrepreneur in residence for Detroit Innovate , an early-stage venture fund. what matters more is the … the customer’s problem. … I think the epiphany was when we closed down Life Magnetics …It was hard to find that right product-market fit.

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Michigan Detroit 120