Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

When you look through the list , you’ll see big names that we’re very pleased we landed, epic companies we really want to hear from, and people we’re particularly excited to present because they have incredible stories to share--and you won’t hear them anyplace else. Aditya Agarwal has lived through startup hypergrowth--twice.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

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.

Lean 334

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 334

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Note to Chinese Communist party – the best name for your propaganda department should probably not be the “Propaganda Department.”). Turnover of employees in capital in Beijing is very high. Employees work here for a few months and are suddenly gone. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

China 327

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 327

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

HOF Capital has stitched together our workflow across Google Suite , Slack , Airtable , Asana , Copper , and some other tools (leveraging Zapier for basic 3rd party integration, in addition to custom development for certain other integrations). It seamlessly creates a deal folder (company name) in our Google Drive.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

HOF Capital has stitched together our workflow across Google Suite , Slack , Airtable , Asana , Copper , and some other tools (leveraging Zapier for basic 3rd party integration, in addition to custom development for certain other integrations). It seamlessly creates a deal folder (company name) in our Google Drive.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Note to Chinese Communist party – the best name for your propaganda department should probably not be the “Propaganda Department.”). Turnover of employees in capital in Beijing is very high. Employees work here for a few months and are suddenly gone. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

China 219

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 219

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

The key principles of customer development are: There are no facts inside the building so get the heck outside. You can test your hypotheses with a series of experiments with potential customers. Hello, my name is xx. or from employees who are worried whether they’ll have a job will not work.

Customer 419

Customer Business Model Restful Video 419

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 29, 2012

Over Saturday and Sunday teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas and building a minimal viable product. Now is a full-time employee that works for the operation, but that was a relatively recent circumstance: before he was hired, he volunteered his time. Discuss.

St. Louis 135

St. Louis Kansas City Norway Kansas 135

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Any customer who used the four critical color publishing applications was going to be blown away by how much better the SuperMac boards were. Tell Me How to Find You But having benchmarks in hand that showed us as the winner did us no good unless all our potential customers could see them.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 127

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

In theory when you went public, everyone’s shares were now tradable on the stock exchange, but usually the underwriters required a six month “lockup” when company insiders (employees and investors) couldn’t sell. We have in our partnership a gent by the name of Barry Fidelman who puts us all to shame with his intensity.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Department Mission Statements – What am I Supposed to Do Today It wasn’t that we somehow had inherited dumb employees. competitive analyses, channel and customer collateral (white papers, data sheets, product reviews), customer surveys, and market requirements documents. Titles are not the same as what your job is.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

And engaging customers in such ways is generally much less expensive than hiring costly employees or agencies. Here are some insights about finding and leveraging Rock Star customers: “Rock Stars” are not who you think they are. So who are your potential high-value Rock Star customers? Not necessarily.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

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

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Inbound interest for partnerships, for employment, for investment (increased) — you name it from small companies, small HVAC contractors to large companies like AT&T. whether that’s partners or employees that you bring on. And most importantly, you have your customers that you want to sell your product or service to.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

Your customers don’t. This makes them far more credible to other potential customers than agencies or internal employees. The company was having a noticeable customer retention issue several years ago. How about local customers ? Believably promote your product. It’s this simple: You’ve got something to sell.

Customer 168

Customer Social Media Retention Canada 168

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Staring at us in the board meeting were three term-sheets from brand name VC’s and an unexpected buy-out offer from Google. They used Customer and Agile development to search for a scalable and repeatable business model to become a large company. million companies with fewer than 100 employees make up 99.5% In the U.S.

Hockey Stick 299

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 299

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. At the same time, it’s a chance to expose some career State Department employees to Silicon Valley thinking.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. At the same time, it’s a chance to expose some career State Department employees to Silicon Valley thinking.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.)

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

For example: Dropbox, Reddit, and Birch Box, to name a few. Lean Startup Circle Boston – Meetup dedicated to the lean startup and customer development methodology. I’m listing instead companies that are A) under 100 employees AND B) adding >10 employees in the next 3 months. The Grand-daddy.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

By 1992 Research in Motion (RIM) had been in business for eight years, had 16 employees, sales of about $500,000 a year, and three or four business lines. The new device could hold names, email addresses, phone and fax numbers and incoming and outgoing messages. Filed under: Customer Development , Market Types.

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 276

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2016

Fast Company named Nina one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. Relationships with customers, it’s relationships with your employees, your investors, because when you buy something, there’s an expectation, there’s a back and forth. . We would say, “we’re looking at developing a new technology.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Michigan Detroit 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

And 30 years later I was teaching in a building named after him and never knew a thing about him. I ultimately answered that call, joining Sun Microsystems with a 3-digit employee number. Spooky Music Reading about Terman was like finding the missing link in my career. Play spooky music here. Thanks for connecting the historical dots!

Silicon Valley 203

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 203

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

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. Now, in some situations, this over-selling would lead to a secondary problem, namely, that customers would realize they had been duped and refuse to re-subscribe.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

ConversionXL

JULY 1, 2014

For example, if you wanted to use qualitative feedback to improve hiring practices, asking someone to rate the “Friendliness of Staff” on a scale of 1-5 wouldn’t tell you much about the personality attributes that lead to a positive customer experience. You can attach code names to those people.

Customer 76

Customer Design Software Review Lead Generation 76

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. That institution will touch many people in its life: customers, investors, employees, and everyone they touch as well.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

The key to successful integration of customer feedback is to make each kind of collection part of the regular company discipline of building and releasing products. Every two months, the company would have a big end-of-milestone meeting, with our Board of Directors, Business Advisory Board, and all employees present.

Advisory Board 151

Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 5, 2016

This is one area that small businesses have an advantage, as they often can devote more attention to each customer and extend appreciation that will make them want to keep coming back. Small business owners should spend time training their employees to express gratitude at each transaction.

Customer 100

Customer Distribution Government Agile 100

Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

And that he might want to think about aligning all his video and Internet products under that name. Achieving consensus about every corner case from each stakeholder in the room is something large companies with large revenues, shareholders and employees need to do. Customer Development.)

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 201

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

Things Change In 1956 Hewlett Packard (HP) was a 17-year old company with $20 million in test equipment sales with 900 employees. The remaining company kept the Hewlett Packard name and focussed on computers. I’ll show you the memo in a second. But first some background.) It was still a year away from its IPO. Agilent is a $5.8

Silicon Valley 186

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 186

Hearpreneur

JULY 30, 2016

The short answer was no and whilst many of the businesses present had a large technology component to their company, with custom developed software etc they could not present themselves as a tech company. All lending companies need to stop being so safe, so repeatable, so traditional and dare one say it male-oriented.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Entrepreneur CTO Hire 48

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

But we were cutting corners in the development methodology as well as in the code, in the name of increased speed. A new employee is more likely to make a mistake than an experienced one, but everyone makes mistakes. a is name, b is address, and c is tax percentage.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2016

We give out between $2 and $3 billion a year for these startups as 5,000 and 7,000 grants to small businesses doing everything from advance composite materials, space exploration, to IT, mobile security, you name it. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. The goal is help these companies take their tech. …It

Small Business Administration 120

Small Business Administration SBIR United States Entrepreneur 120

www.instigatorblog.com

MARCH 2, 2010

Pick Advisers Carefully Something I’ve noticed with Advisory Boards is that they’re often stockpiled with “big names&# – celebrities in their respective industries. But I suspect that’s often done for name brand and recognition. not the name recognition of your celebrity advisers. So deliver!&#

Advisory Board 40

Advisory Board Startup Cofounder Equity 40

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2016

We have some employees, and we never missed payroll and we’re trying to change the world right? Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. Kerry : Yes they are. After a year of persevering, it was tough. We’re living on 50 bucks a week, a family of five (with the business) in the basement of our home.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur North America Cofounder Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

He offered me money, and his name sort of helped me to raise money from other people. There is a ton of things I had to learn about lawyers, which I’ve hated every minute of… There are (also) challenges in the beginning like negotiating equity (how to split up stock) among your founders and with your employees and things like that.

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Silicon Valley New York 120

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

HOF Capital has stitched together our workflow across Google Suite , Slack , Airtable , Asana , Streak , and some other tools (leveraging Zapier for basic 3rd party integration, in addition to custom development for certain other integrations).

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60