Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

Each sale requires us to handhold the customer and takes way too long to close. A few investors suggested he add new product features, others suggested firing the VP of Sales. Finally, when everyone else had their turn, the grey-haired VC turned to the founder and said, “If you do what we tell you to do and fail, we’ll fire you.

Business Model 332

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 332

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2014

Kauffman just 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. After weeks honing the script and days of filming, I’m honored to present the “ Startups ” section of Founders School.

Founder 327

Founder Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 327

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. VP of Sales – “Sure.”

Burn Rate 248

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 248

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

In both cases, the founder and I brainstormed on ways to shift the product in order to get closer to what I perceived as something that would be great. Neither had done enough customer validation to be able to say the second line that Tristan suggested. Customer Validation 101. Would the consumer one get traction and be viral?

Customer 227

Customer Fractional CTO Viral Lean 227

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

We think teaching teams a formal methodology around the Lean Framework (Business Model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) is a natural evolution of how successful incubators/accelerators will build startups. The next customer segment we tried was startup founders. Technology in search of a market.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

For example: Mitch Kapor was a founder of Lotus. He’s a founder of Andreessen Horowitz, which has backed Facebook, Skype, Jawbone, and dozens of other companies whose products you use. And the whole site was developed in just 9 weeks. Now he’s a leader in social impact investing and equality in education.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Chief Brand Officer. Chief Diversity Officer.

CTO Hire 252

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 252

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

You can’t be an effective founder or in the C-suite of a startup if you don’t hold any. Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development. And he proceeded to lay out a fairly complex and innovative sales and marketing strategy for our next 18 months. What do you think?”

Business Model 305

Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 305

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.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

JULY 24, 2012

The VC’s suggested I should spend a day at Onyx Software, an early pioneer in Sales Automation in Seattle. Their VP of Sales was about 6’ 3” and seemed to be almost as wide. But in that one day I had learned a lot about sales automation that would shape my thinking when we founded Epiphany. I Know A Great Customer.

Seattle 259

Seattle Cofounder Engineer Sales 259

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Chief Brand Officer. Chief Diversity Officer.

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

When it comes to making money online, business and personal branding are huge drivers of sales and influence. Company branding builds trust and an emotional connection between businesses and potential customers. And according to Forbes, brand loyalty is a big driver in closing sales and selling online. Custom development.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

The email continued, &# The problem I’m working on is that many founders are either making uninformed decisions or inefficiently learning the new skills they need. The solution I’m exploring is a just in time learning methodology that accelerates founders’ learning curve by aggregating relevant content, peers and mentors.&#.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Tags: entreprneur executive titles startup founder business.

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink. Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter?

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

I''ve been thinking a lot lately about scaling sales. . Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. How do I build a repeatable, scalable sales process that is like an industrial machine - not a crafts project? 1) Enterprise Sales.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Jon Sebastiani , founder and CEO of KRAVE Jerky , a company that got its start in my class at Berkeley back in 2011 and was recently acquired by Hershey. Taking My Class.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They looked at their watches, gave our sales guy a quizzical look and left.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales). What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Chief Brand Officer. Chief Diversity Officer.

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 10, 2012

Spoiler: You can’t hire out sales because in the early days it’s about learning, not selling, and hired guns can’t bring back bad news. At their peak, Groupon sales reps made 1250 calls per week to close 4 sales[1]. The problem is, early stage sales isn’t about making money.

Hiring 51

Hiring Founder Viral Early Stage 51

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

In this workshop, Fraser, Founder/CEO of LUXr and Klein, Director of Product & UX at One Jackson will offer practical techniques for getting and using customer feedback. You’ll learn how to enhance your current process to include iterative usability testing cycles and how to verify development requirements before you code.

Lean 154

Lean Cofounder Analytics Startup 154

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

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

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 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. Evangelos Simoudis’ is the founder and managing director of Synapse Partners. If you can’t hear the clip, click here. He was the CEO of two startups.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

So if you’re the founder of a startup, you may want to consider who you take money from. Is Your VC Founder Friendly? Do they “get&# Customer Development ? How many of their founders are still with their company? How many of their founders are still with their company? Do They Get Customer Development?

Founder 231

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

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

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

product that barely worked, no sales organization (except tech support, which often works better anyway ), and I just hoped they’d run a credit card. Maybe you worked there or a co-founder or investor has some juice). make for not putting customer development before writing code. I had a $39.95

Customer 231

Customer Software Review IP Technical Review 231

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

But founders need to know how to ask for their advice and when to ignore it. Startup Insights From Paul English, Co-Founder of Kayak - OnStartups , May 10, 2010 I’m just wrapping up several weeks of attending conferences across both coasts. Through advertising or direct sales, these sites harvest intent. It says what?!”).

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

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

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 17, 2021

It wasn’t so many years ago that starting a new e-commerce business on the Internet was a complex custom development project, usually costing a million dollars or more. Social media facilitates marketing and sales. A programmer can build a new smartphone app for a few thousand dollars.

Cost 405

Cost Entrepreneur Burn Rate Social Media 405

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Insufficient capital, over investment, and low sales are just some of the reasons leading to this sobering statistic. Enter “ The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses “, a New York Times bestseller by founder of IMVU (creator of 3D avatars) Eric Ries.

Lean 183

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 183

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

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

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). Will Zell , co-founder and CEO of Nikola Labs wireless power company.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120