Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I’ve seen the Valley grow from Sunnyvale to Santa Clara to today where it stretches from San Jose to South of Market in San Francisco. I’ve watched the Valley go from Microwave Valley – to Defense Valley – to Silicon Valley to Internet Valley. So how did this happen? Where is it going?

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

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.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Starting in the 1950’s, Stanford’s engineering department became “outward facing” and developed a culture of spinouts and active faculty support and participation in the first wave of Silicon Valley startups. At the same time Berkeley was also developing Cold War weapons systems. See the presentation here.).

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Most entrepreneurs today don’t remember the Dot-Com bubble of 1995 or the Dot-Com crash that followed in 2000. The mantra of “ first mover advantage ,” the idea that winners are the ones who are the first entrants in their market, became the conventional wisdom of investors in Silicon Valley.“ And it may work.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

After I retired, I began teaching Customer Development , a theory of how to reduce early stage risk in entrepreneurial ventures. As a pun on my last company as an entrepreneur, E.piphany, I called the book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Raising Money Using Customer Development……… 47.

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Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 202

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? Extra Lucrative Conversion Advice.

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Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. Here’s what the product development diagram looks like from a sales perspective.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

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Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. But at times it’s why entrepreneurs can sink their own companies. More on this in later posts.)

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on?

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Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

This product development diagram had become part of the DNA of Silicon Valley. That’s in stark contrast to the traditional Product Development Model where it’s expected a customer is already there and waiting and it’s simply a matter of [.]

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Next, you have to deal with the daily crisis of product development and acquiring early customers. And here’s where life gets really interesting, as the reality of product development and customer input collide, the facts change so rapidly that the original well-thought-out business plan becomes irrelevant.

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Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 297

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Market Risk vs. 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. Am I in a company with “invention risk?

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

In exchange, these VCs/companies get early looks at new deal flow and offer aspiring entrepreneurs feedback and advice on their business plan. At a university business plan competition, for the first time they can swim in the sea of expertise that we/I take for granted in the middle of Silicon Valley.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Customers walk, patients sue, and people vote. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Is this behavior an outlier or is it the norm in the PR industry? Or is it just someones end of innocence ? Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

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Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Its easy to take Silicon Valley for granted. But theres no denying the level of support for entrepreneurs that we enjoy. Ive written a little bit about the origins of Silicon Valley because I think its important for us to understand how we got here in order to make sure we preserve what is best about our community.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

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Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

AgileZen – project management visually see and interact with your work Kanbanery – Simple online team or personal kanban board LeanKit Kanban – Great for visualizing work of product development Kanban Pad – “Nice and lean” and free online Kanban tool Banana Scrum – A tool simple as Scrum itself.

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Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 2, 2008 Paul Graham on fundraising I have found no better primer on the current realities of starting a new technology company in a startup hub like Silicon Valley than Paul Grahams essays. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, November 11, 2008 Where did Silicon Valley come from? I think the absolute best reading on this subject is a book called Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee Saxenian. And what were they doing beforehand?

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Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Id like to call special attention to Kurt Carr s perspective (lets hope he finishes his five-part series): Now that I’m back in Ohio (I was one of the token foreigners in a room full of Silicon Valley residents), I have found myself reliving and rethinking much of what I saw there. We all owe him our thanks for persevering.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. Its not enough just to build a product with great features - you have to figure out if there is a market for it. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. This speeds up the Ideas-Code-Data feedback loop. Excellent ideas!

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Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Without conscious process design, product development teams turn lines of code written into momentum in a certain direction. This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development. As far as I know, there are no products that are immune from the technology life cycle adoption curve.

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San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Eighty some pages later I realized that a) I had some great war stories as a good marketeer and failed CEO, b) I’d have to pay my wife and kids to read them, c) the three of them were probably the entire total available market, and d) when I looked at what I had done and what other entrepreneurs had done at their startups, that there was a pattern.

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Redemption Silicon Valley RSS California 126

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

Unintended Lessons « Steve Blank steveblank.com/2009/09/28/unintended-lessons – view page – cached + Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) + Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40? Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.

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North Carolina Silicon Valley RSS Connecticut 143

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. What is customer development?

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Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: Five Whys Where did Silicon Valley come from?

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Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

By 1931, with the combination of superior financial management and a astute brand and product line strategy, GM had 43% market share to Ford’s 20% – a lead it never relinquished. This time in what would become Silicon Valley. The guy who replaced him invented the idea of the modern corporation.

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Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Bring your questions.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Through trial and error, hiring and firing, successful startups all invented a parallel process to product development. In particular, the winners invent and live by a process of customer learning and discovery. It’s a process that doesn’t exist in large companies with existing customers and markets.

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Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 127

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Heres what I do know: The future strength of our economy depends on its ability to create, support, and sustain entrepreneurs. (If If you are somehow not convinced of this point, Ill let Fareed Zakaria explain ) We know who the next generation of entrepreneurs are going to be. Nerds are not entrepreneurs. They are nerds.

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Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. Still, a startup product development team is a service organization. Were there to serve customers direclty, as well as all of the other functions of the company.

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San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, December 7, 2008 The hackers lament One of the thrilling parts of working and writing in Silicon Valley is the incredible variety of people Ive had the chance to meet. At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization.

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Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94