Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

The reality for a regional investor is that you have to match the capital you raise to the deal/exit environment you are in. This experience has provided me a whole new set of pattern matching filters as an investor. Focus on capital efficient, scalable startups and founders. Valley-sized VC funds don’t work.

Early Stage 286

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 286

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. A Day in the Life of A Founder For those of you who’ve never started a company, let me assure you that it never happens like the pleasant articles you read in business magazines or in case studies.

Founder 297

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 297

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

founder paired with a mentor who had two operating companies in this space, who had developed and sold vertical market software to companies in this space, and had studied the field as an academic specialty. A match made in heaven? Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching. Customer Development Teaching'

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Vertical Agile Lean 224

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

This is often a tough concept for engineering founders who believe that if we just tell customers about the features that make their product faster, cheaper, etc. Founders ask me all the time whether they should hire a PR agency. Craft messages to match what your audience has already told you. they’ll win.).

Marketing 310

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 310

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

It was a lifelong lesson that taught me to never start a business where you hate your customers. You don’t want to do Customer Development with them. So you and your team need to feel comfortable being in this business with these customers. It never goes well. You don’t want to talk to them.

Cofounder 325

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 325

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

Each of the teams is assigned a mentor to match their domainv(Head of device R&D of Phillips, Genetech, Crescendo, CTO of UCSF, venture capitalists from Sofinnova, Burrill, Lightstone, M34, etc.). Only the Principal Investigators / founders have the authority and insight to pivot when their hypotheses are incorrect.

Lean 258

Lean Customer Business Model Customer Development 258

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

The Customer Development process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model , reducing customer and market risk. The first step of Customer Development is called Customer Discovery. outside the building and test them in front of customers.

Burn Rate 248

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 248

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. He was constantly in front of customers, listening, selling, installing and learning. What I saw reminded me of some of the best and worst things I did as a founder. If not your co-founders, someone outside the company.”.

Founder 316

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 316

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

Business models allow agile and opportunistic founders to keep score of the Pivots in their search for a repeatable business model. They’re a match for the “How to write a business plan” classes that are offered. Filed under: Customer Development Manifesto , Durant versus Sloan: Startups Verus Companies , Teaching.

Business Plan 312

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 312

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. I’m going to save that for a future blog post.

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

www.startuplessonslearned.com

MAY 4, 2012

Founders Dilemmas: Equity Splits. The following is an excerpt from HBS Professor Noam Wasserman’s new book, The Founders Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup. On average, the founders who keep the most control over their company make the least amount of money. Lessons Learned.

Equity 72

Equity Founder Technical Cofounder Cofounder 72

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

female founders. founder friday. Lessons learned from female founders and women entrepreneurs. Startup Quote: Wendy Tan White on Building a Successful Startup » FounderDating: How I Found My Co-Founder. Tweet By Elizabeth Knopf (Co-Founder & CEO, Sorced). Scoring Founder “Dates” On My Own.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

While it sounds simple , the Build Measure Learn approach to product development is a radical improvement over the traditional Waterfall model used throughout the 20 th century to build and ship products. Back then, an entrepreneur used a serial product development process that proceeded step-by-step with little if any customer feedback.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10 weeks. While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ), Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique. He runs H4X Labs.

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

www.kernelmag.com

MARCH 8, 2012

The Scene Developers Nailing that elusive technical co-founder. Just last week, start-up supremo Naval Ravikant of AngelList wrote how the “oversupply” of founders starting companies is making it harder to hire for the average startup. Are there any ‘Founders Dating’ events coming up?”. Thursday, 8 March 2012.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Coder 43

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Nick Kim , Crosscut’s Head of Platform, in his presentation at the 4th Annual VC Platform Summit, shared their Platform development methodology, which he viewed as an exercise in product development. For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. I have developed a founder curriculum on my blog.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2014

Kauffman launched Founders School - a new education series to help entrepreneurs develop their businesses during the startup stage by highlighting how startups are different from big companies. In January 2014 Part 1 of the “ Startups ” section of Founders School went online. 0:24: What is Customer Development?

Intellectual Property 328

Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development Acquisition 328

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Your product and company vision needs to match your appetite for funding. Funding challenges and other issues founders face in the early days of starting up were the focus of interviews with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern).

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Jeremy Johnson.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2023

Now at Imperial College Business School and Co-Founder of the Wicked Acceleration Labs , Cristobal and I wondered if we could combine the tenets of Lean (get out of the building, build MVPs, run experiments, move with speed and urgency) with the expanded toolset developed by researchers who work on Wicked problems and Systems’ Thinking.

Lean 294

Lean Chile Ukraine Spain 294

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Jeremy Johnson.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

The Founder’s New Insight Smart founders are never satisfied with simply executing their current business model, they are constantly observing, orienting and deciding whether their current business model can be made better. But the purpose of this post is what happens when a founder (or large company CEO) finds a better business model.

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

Company branding builds trust and an emotional connection between businesses and potential customers. Personal branding helps founders and executives establish credibility, which is crucial for launching successful businesses, especially if they start multiple companies. Custom development. WordPress DIY.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

View from Seed

DECEMBER 8, 2015

It’s often a good idea for founders to find a way to build something and get some early market validation before raising outside capital. Is there founder/market fit? How authentic is this idea to the founder’s experience? I’ll dig into this a bit further… Founder/Market Fit.

Product 120

Product Startup Early Stage Seed Capital 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 27, 2015

—– In a recent workshop with a large company focused on the Innovation@50x process, I mentioned that founders and intraprenuers operate more like artists than accountants – on day one they see something no one else does. I wondered what lessons Pixar, an animation studio, could have for founders. Like a startup founder.)

Founder 120

Founder Lean Hawaii Incubator 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ) Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. He runs H4X Labs.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

The reality is that most business plans don’t survive first contact with customers. Cases and plans are useful for teaching managers of process, not founders. Founders of startups (and new ventures inside existing companies) are searching for product/market fit and a repeatable and scalable business model. experiential.

Lean 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? And when do business planning and execution come into play?

Search 320

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

viniciusvacanti.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

Home About Contact Me How To Make It as a First-Time Entrepreneur Vinicius Vacanti Guide to Finding a Technical Co-Founder September 7, 2010 | View Comments Steve Job's Technical Co-Founder “I’ve got this HUGE idea. I just need to find a technical co-founder.&# I was in this situation and we barely escaped.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Ruby 43

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to listen to customers. It wasn’t that I didn’t have a smart VP of Marketing who was getting early feedback from customers and screaming that the games didn’t match the hype. I had outsourced customer feedback and ignored the input.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

They want to monetize the Twitter stream via contextual search matching. On the founder’s side it’s about taking money off of the table and / or having strategic reserves for big acquisitions. That said, the founder is Stewart Butterfield , who co-founded Flickr. How do founder get “liquidity&# (e.g.

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2019

Our keynote speaker was Palmer Luckey , founder of Oculus and the designer of the Oculus Rift. He’s now the CEO/founder of the AI-focussed defense contractor Anduril Industries. Followed by an 8-minute slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. Presentation Format. Team: Panacea.

Oakland 266

Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 266

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Its power is matched only by the amount of confusion that it causes, because its actually quite hard to do. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? It certainly took me many years to make sense of it. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

Lets Try to Make the World Match Our Spreadsheet. They told the CEO (who was the technical founder) that the sales team should focus on “other markets.” The founder was doing his best to try to explain that his vision today was the same as when he pitched the company to the VC’s and when they funded the company. What went wrong?

Revenue 230

Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 230

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Create a stream of translational entrepreneurship literature for practitioners (founders and VC’s.) . In research universities with entrepreneurship programs adjuncts are typically founders, VC’s or business executives. In exchange, I shared with him my feedback on whether the theory matched the practice and what theory was missing.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Lean Reputation Programming 142

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 21, 2011

by Richard Shapiro, founder and president of The Center For Client Retention ( www.tcfcr.com ). Providing exceptional customer service has long been seen as a competitive advantage. All of these changes actually underscore the importance of getting back to the basics of treating customers as individuals with unique needs.

Customer 154

Customer Retention Social Media Technical Review 154