Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

What are they, how do they differ and what can startup do to take advantage of them? Paths to Liquidity: a quick history of the four waves of startup investing. Lean Startups/Back to Basics (2000-2010): No IPO’s, limited VC cash, lack of confidence and funding fuels “lean startup” era with limited M&A and even less IPO activity.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Don’t startups exist for the same reason? How does that stack up?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Having just retired from a career as an entrepreneur I had started thinking about why startups were different from large companies. 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.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

Paul Graham’s Startup Curve – avoid the “through of sorrow”! Growth Hacking isn’t viral marketing (although viral marketing is part of it). Growth Hacking isn’t viral marketing (although viral marketing is part of it). First Steps in Growth Hacking for Startups.

API 167

API Viral Startup Retention 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# A successful startup strives for this latter case. As soon as possible!&#

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

This model has not translated well to the world of social networking, because customers of social networks engage sites in a different way than customers of search engines. If you ask an expert in Facebook apps to come help build yours, youll usually hear the same advice: build your app for virality. Expo SF (May. .

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

At a high level, anything that drives virality should be free. To take your specific example about virality - why do we want to have more users sign up? I also work for a startup and we have been grappling with the same problem ever since we went public. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

Acqusition competition is how new apps get new customers. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. If your app has strong word-of-mouth or viral components, your retention drives new acquisition, and its not so important to have good placement in the store. Its like knowing the future.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join.

Viral 140

Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive. Those companies who have learned to build apps that optimize the viral loop dominate in every category where they compete. Not many customers ever browse the app directory or search for specific apps - they dont have to, they find out about apps by being invited by a friend.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

2010 – Sean Ellis, who currently runs Qualaroo , coins the term “growth hacking” in his article, Find a Growth Hacker for Your Startup. ” April, 2012 – Andrew Chen writes Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing , which goes viral (2.4K Andrew Chen , Uber : “Startups don’t need growth hackers – at first.

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

It’s Episode 3 my little “ Loveline for startups. ” Introduced a few months ago as an Austin event, I’m now doing this live audio advice column to the web, taking phone calls from startups around the country. My co-hosts were Bob Walsh and Patrick Foley , hosts of the well-known Startup Success Podcast.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Why Branding Is the Next Essential Startup Competency – [link]. Quora – [link].

Social Media 105

Social Media Small Business Design Media 105

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

When I work with startups on improving engagement, I really try to emphasize the importance of their most powerful lever: positioning. In most applications, most of the time, customers return to use the application not in response to a notification or event, but under their own volition. It only makes sense in certain situations.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

The first few changes, like a price change, may not require a lot of engineering effort. But they require coordination across departments – engineering, marketing, customers service. When registration is too easy, customers can get confused about what they are registering for.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem) Lean startups don’t optimize. Instead, we try to accelerate with respect to validated learning about customers. How can we do split-testing when we have only a pathetically small number of customers ?

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 2, 2012

These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Small Business and Startups: Slice & Dice Your Customer Service Data | crowdSPRING Blog - [link]. Is The Only Purpose of Customer Service To Change Feelings?

Social Media 93

Social Media Small Business Design Media 93

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

In a few cases, they are clearly smart people in a bad situation, and Ive written about their pain in The product managers lament and The engineering managers lament. Those who have the endurance are the ones that tend to lead teams and join startups, because you just cant be successful in a startup situation without empathy.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2016

The first two years of my startup were the most challenging years of my life; I just felt like a complete failure all the time. Most first-time entrepreneurs aren’t prepared for the challenges they will face building a startup, and yet they wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. Filed under: Customer Development.

Entrepreneur 260

Entrepreneur Cofounder San Francisco Campaign 260

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

As with many lean startup practices, its getting started thats the hard part. Still, my experience working with startups has been that too much time spent talking about advanced topics can lead to inaction. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , Test-driven development 3comments: Chris said. Step 2: start with just one test.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

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? Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. In fact, in most situations its a bad idea for startups to synchronize these events.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Many great engineers Ive worked with (especially the type I talked about in the hackers lament ) seem to think that if they get along well with someone in an interview, theyll be a good addition to the team. I experienced this when I was the engineering manager at a small company. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Either way, you would have been better off focusing your split-test on high level metrics that measure how much customers like your product as a whole. 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 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 5, 2014

Yesterday Kissmetrics blogged A recipe of viral features used by the fastest growing startups. It’s a good read for anybody who wants to increase the number of free customers they are getting. It’s engineered. In other words virality is science not art. In other words virality is science not art.

Viral 92

Viral Lean SEO Software 92

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

To give you a better idea of what entrepreneurs in this industry are thinking about during each phase of the startup process, I interviewed SaaS entrepreneurs from all over the world, including our own COO Noah Parsons. Eric Ries, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup, popularized this strategy for web applications.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2016

The first two years of my startup were the most challenging years of my life; I just felt like a complete failure all the time. Most first-time entrepreneurs aren’t prepared for the challenges they will face building a startup, and yet they wouldn’t trade the experience for anything. Filed under: Customer Development.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder San Francisco Campaign 120

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, December 6, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part three Those startups that manage to build a product people want have to deal with the consequences of that success. Having early customers means balancing the needs of your existing customers with the desire to find new ones.

San Francisco 74

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 74

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Non-Technical Co-Founders Co-Founders Technical Co-founders Finding Co-Founders Startups & "How Important Are Ideas?" " Web Development Startups Solo Founders I am a creative guy with a startup idea. Rockstar v.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

Editor's note : This is the second in a two-part excerpt from the book The Startup Owner’s Manual , a step-by-step how-to guide for entrepreneurs. In this excerpt, authors Steve Blank and Bob Dorf continue to explain the Customer Discovery Philosophy (see Part One, " Is Your Startup a Valid Vision or Just a Hallucination? ").

Customer 119

Customer Advisory Board Engineer Cofounder 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Or take a recent TechCrunch article about a startup I wont name: “X billion messages sent since June 2009.&# Is the company growing because of an amazing viral loop paired with a strong engagement loop? Or take a recent TechCrunch article about a startup I wont name: “X billion messages sent since June 2009.&#

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, December 7, 2008 Getting started with split-testing One of the startup founders I work with asked me a smart question recently, and I thought Id share it. Split-testing, like almost everything in a lean startup , requires judgment. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 132

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

It follows the journeys of innovators sharing what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. I-Corps teaches scientists and engineers how to get their technical ideas out of the lab and into the marketplace using the Lean Startup processes. How the U.S.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Washington Government 120