Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

This article previously appeared in the Harvard Business Review. The type of disruption most companies and government agencies are facing is a once-in-every-few-centuries event. Disruption today is more than just changes in technology, or channel, or competitors – it’s all of them, all at once.

Government 320

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 320

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, June 2, 2010 The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business Review) I continue my series for Harvard Business Review with the Lean Startup technique called Five Whys. Five Whys has its origins in the Toyota Production System. Applied to a start-up, heres how it works. Speed up or slow down?

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

Summer is always the time when large numbers of new participants in the tech ecosystem arrive and start to get their bearings. It’s also surprisingly difficult for students to get plugged-in to everything that is happening in the local tech ecosystem. Next major event? No agenda, just come by and talk tech at Voltage.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Organize events in your vertical. Particularly when events are all virtual, this is an easy and low-cost way to build trusted relationships with the leaders in your space. I recommend building a strong internal tech stack, to handle the deluge of requests for help you’ll get from companies as you scale. Customer Development.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

VCs tout themselves as frontier technology investors, but most are using the same infrastructure tools they have used for the past 20+ years: Excel and recent college grads searching Google. According to Knowledge.VC , under 5% of US VCs have a full-time team member focused on technology. . But we’re doing it slowly.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc. It is the key to “customer development” that Steve Blank talks about.

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 19, 2017

Among many other strategies employed by e-retailers, improving the customer experience seems to carry a significant weight in increasing revenues. Here are some of the practical and creative ways to improve your customer’s online experience: 1. Engage your customers. Earl Sasser, Jr.,

Software Review 133

Software Review Technical Review Retention Channel 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

We did our best to keep the runtime of the tests short (10 minutes was our target), and we always treated a failing test as a serious event (generally, you couldnt check in at all if a test was failing). Notice that none of those five reasons deals with TDD or automated testing, which have changed the game. Do you have a bug database?

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2012

Instead, buyers are checking out product and service information in their own way, often through the Internet, their social network, or just plain word-of-mouth or customer reviews. It’s a myth that social networks and their technologies are creating new approaches to marketing. Cultivate customer sales and marketing people.

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

I was the junior guy on a project team; I was called in to do some technical due diligence for reasons that were obscure to me, because the team already had much more senior engineers assigned to it. As a technical fix, it was brilliant. I remember one such meeting vividly. So they react in two ways.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

The Startup Magazine

JANUARY 10, 2020

Technology is becoming more and more important with each passing year, there is an impending construction worker shortage, and more construction companies are opting for green construction practices in an effort to appease customers and do their part to save the planet.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Green Government Developer 84

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

I am grateful to everyone who helped make this event a success, especially my co-organizers Charles Hudson and David Sachs. And a special thanks is due to all of our presenters, panelists, and mentors. When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 15, 2008 The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time Split-testing is a core lean startup discipline, and its one of those rare topics that comes up just as often in a technical context as in a business-oriented one when Im talking to startups. First of all, why split-test?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 29, 2012

The idea is to bring together a group of people, many of whom have never set eyes on each other before, to form new ventures, many of which are tech-related. Over Saturday and Sunday teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas and building a minimal viable product.

St. Louis 135

St. Louis Kansas City Norway Kansas 135

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Two studies have shown that only about 10 percent of promoters actually refer profitable new customers. Some of the most creative technology coming out of Silicon Valley is designed to do exactly that. Find and engage customer advocates using a gamification platform that makes it interesting and enjoyable to advocate.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

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?

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Hearpreneur

JULY 30, 2016

I am a session singer and producer, and I wish clients and peers would give me more of an opportunity to work in the technical side of the business (such as mixing and editing). I feel like sometimes females aren’t typically seen as tech-savvy in this industry, and that we belong on stage instead of behind the scenes.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Entrepreneur CTO Hire 48

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Heres my diagnosis of his problem: He has some automated tests, but his team doesnt have a continuous integration server or practice TDD. And has the tension goes down, it will be easier to get the whole team (including the MBAs) to embrace TDD and other good practices as further refinements. I'm a die hard believer in TDD.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Previously she was Co-Founder and CEO of SNAZZ, a cloud-based event management platform. Access to the corporate investor’s ecosystem can open up great opportunities from technology validation to customer and partner development. It can help develop applications for the startup’s technology in its early days.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 8, 2009 Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and whats changed since then) My recent article on technical debt and its positive uses generated a fair bit of controversy. It had a pretty good technical design. That "good design" turned out to be technical debt, after all.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now A great checklist of techniques and tools for making your development more agile, written from a Rail perspective.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2010

Recent economic events, technological change, and the rapid diffusion of information about the old models have combined to help us all realize just how important entrepreneurship is - and just how little we really know about it. The SF Meetup now has over five hundred members, and has spawned many other meetup events.

Lean 146

Lean San Francisco Wiki Startup 146

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

for Harvard Business Review) Im excited to have just published the first of several articles on entrepreneurship for the Harvard Business Review online. The Conversation - Harvard Business Review For most of us, the phrase management science conjures up a decidedly non-entrepreneurial image, and for good reason.

San Francisco 119

San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2014

It’s Not A Conversion Problem, It’s A Customer Development Problem. Think About Customer Experience, Not Just Conversion Optimization. All of this relationship and partnership building is all focused on getting the company in front of the right customers in the most creative, and useful way possible.

Developer 104

Developer API Cofounder New Jersey 104

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. It’s harder to remember that we have no perpetual rights to them, they aren’t our due, but they’re gifts. The size of the story grows directly proportional to the number of years removed from the event.)

Silicon Valley 152

Silicon Valley Turkey United States RSS 152

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, January 15, 2010 Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Harvard Business Review) The next part in the series I am writing for Harvard Business Review is online. They are long-term bets on the development of a new line of business, a new technology platform, or the creation of a new market.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 11, 2011

I have written previously about how powerful the these events are as a teaching tool for Lean Startup principles. To give a little context, I asked two of the other judges - Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits (co-authors of the excellent Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development ) - to add a bit of commentary.

New York City 161

New York City New York Lean SMS 161

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2015

I delivered newspapers at night … for the Las Vegas Review Journal. … We tried apps, we tried different technologies, we tried different formats, and nothing really worked. I had this event where we had four people come, and I got in the car and I remember saying to myself, “What a freaking waste of time.”

Las Vegas 120

Las Vegas Entrepreneur Cofounder Nevada 120

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

The other revels in the world as we all know it will be someday: limitless distribution enabled by new technologies, the importance of collaborative filters, and on-demand availability of all content for end-users. But the same technologies that make life difficult for traditional marketers also offer them unprecedented new opportunities.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Playing with new technologies. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers. One approach to the issue you bring up that's worked for us is to set an initial due date that’s overly aggressive, and expect that we’ll probably blow through it (while suspending disbelief as much as possible).

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

And the odds in your favor are even higher, as most of your peers wouldn’t even get into the game due to some unspoken belief that in a meritocracy, good things will come to those who wait. While MBA’s have a ton of useful skills, what they don’t have is what most marketing departments lack – customer insight.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

They take things like unit testing, design documents and code reviews more seriously than any other company Ive even heard about. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Lo, my 1032 subscribers, who are you?

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Pitching the idea to the President of Stanford, Terman enthusiastically said, “In the event of all-out war , Stanford would become one of the giant electronic research centers…&# (A bit optimistic about the outcome perhaps, given that both the U.S. Stanford had a Customer Development loop going on inside their own lab.

Silicon Valley 155

Silicon Valley RSS California Government 155

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. The United States is now a debtor nation to China and that the bill is about to come due. These are probably the two sites where I've posted the most reviews. One out of ten of Americans are out of work.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 22, 2012

There’s so much more that customer advocates can do to grow your business. And with advances in technology and social media — along with the current boom in personal and professional communities — those who adopt customer reference programs must think much more broadly about the forms advocacy can take.

Programming 145

Programming Customer Social Media Advisory Board 145

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

And do your customer development. Im also excited to share two long-form reviews from actual attendees. leanstartup dinner Boulder full of useful info that I want to apply [echo @roger_tee ] ultimateboy : #leanstartup was the most invigorating event Ive ever attended. Hes that good. I was really overwhelmed this time.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 19, 2013

You can configure event tracking for Google Analytics, but it won’t provide the level of insight that user session replay videos do. One of our customers has an online resume building service. Talk to your customers or prospects. You have only 10 customers? No customers at all? You need to talk to people.

Conversion 124

Conversion Framework Technical Review Analytics 124