Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

Established businesses execute business models while startups search for them. Yet everyone – investors, entrepreneurs, academics — expected new startups to follow the same practices that worked for large companies – write a business plan, forecast 5-year sales projections and build the product without ever talking to customers.

Lean 221

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 221

Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2013

I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. It dawned on me that the plans were a symptom of a larger problem: we were executing business plans when we should first be searching for business models. So what would a search process for a business model look like? In 2003 U.C.

Lean 178

Lean Agile Customer Development Business Model 178

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. They learn from the results of each test, refine the hypothesis, and test again—all in search of a repeatable, scalable, and profitable business model.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

Forecasts can be based on a series of known conditions. We propose that corporations equipped for the challenges of the 21st century think of innovation as a sliding scale between execution and search. It only emerges after an intense business model design and search activity based on the customer development process.

Business Model 333

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 333

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

In contrast, startups search for a business model. (Or Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.) There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.)

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Ive forecasted the issues you have spoken of without entertaining the thoughts of solutions like you have. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Even though I havent performed the roll before and dont have the experience of any of the other posters, this hits home.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

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. Coalesce address the more general problem of searching through large data sets for best fits. But beyond that, not much.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

While it’s useful to be able to have a sales forecast and expense budget early on, it’s not something you need until you’ve validated your idea. Later you will want to come back and create a proper sales forecast, cash flow forecast, and expense budget. Circle back and create a more detailed forecast.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2012

Filed under: Customer Development , E.piphany , Marketing. A Match Made in Heaven. For the next several weeks, the entire E.piphany engineering department worked with Autodesk’s sales operation team to build a prototype using real Autodesk data. We needed a selling strategy that took all of this into account.

Forecast 290

Forecast Sales Matching Customer Development 290

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.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Companies that reliably fail to make their forecasted numbers are exceptionally prone to “management retooling.&# The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Certainly venture-backed startups don’t have this luxury – every business plan has a model in it.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

As you discover new information increase your search terms. The beginner’s forecasting method is to simply extrapolate current growth rates forward. Forecasting. He quickly realized that he could keep adding information to the columns in the third mapping pass as he read through the reports and web sites. New entrants?

Forecast 376

Forecast China Demand Web 376

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Get 18 months or more of cash (runway) in the business against a conservative forecast. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Act now, act with speed. Protect the vital core of the business.Use a scalpel to make strategic cuts. Use Google Apps.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

Talking about trends is more about trying to forecast the future, like a guru, sometimes it works, sometimes not. Google was not the first search engine, but it's the one that succeeded. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? About spot trends. all about luck.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

After all, when upper management has been told a project will succeed for 4 years, it is very hard for anyone in middle management to stand up and reverse this forecast. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Because five whys kept turning up a few key metrics that were hard to set static thresholds for, we even had a dynamic prediction algorithm that would make forecasts based on past data, and fire alerts if the metric ever went out of its normal bounds. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Up and Running

JULY 14, 2015

Don’t try and all the sudden add in search engine optimization and whatever else to the mix. You need to go out and do some customer development. Caroline: If I was an investor and a company told me that it takes too much time to sit in right down a budget and forecast, I would run. Right out of the gate.

Incubator 60

Incubator Email Startup Oregon 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

I wondered if business plans and 5-year forecasts were the right way to plan a startup. Experienced entrepreneurs kept finding that no business plan survived first contact with customers. So what would a search process for a business model look like? Berkeley asked me to teach a class in Customer Development.

Lean 317

Lean Georgia Michigan Business Model 317