Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2020

Over time, I realized that was wrong – large companies executed known business models, while startups searched for them. Customer Development became one of the three parts of the Lean Startup as Eric Ries and Alexander Osterwalder provided the other two components (Agile Engineering and the business model canvas.)

Lean 428

Lean Business Model Government Agile 428

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

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

government is the leading payer for most of health care, and under ObamaCare the government’s role in reimbursing for medical technology will increase. Some startups in this field are actually beginning with Customer Development while others struggle with the classic execution versus search problem.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

government reengineered its approach to building weapons. In a major break from the past, where the military designed all its own weapons, 10,000 scientists and engineers from academia worked in civilian-run weapons labs (most headquartered in universities) in an organization called the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD).

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Kuwait 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. It’s time to ask why startup board governance has failed to keep pace with innovation. Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. Victor Hugo.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

Steve Blank

AUGUST 4, 2016

Department of State manages America’s relationships with 180 foreign governments, international organizations, and the people of other countries with 270 embassies, consulates, and other posts. diplomats, government officials, and all other personnel at home and abroad. Department of State is working on all of them. Support U.S.

Lean 160

Lean Government Agile Africa 160

Where to Play

MAY 28, 2019

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Lean 74

Lean Marketing Framework Business Model 74

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

Ajeet Singh , co-founder of ThoughtSpot , provider of search-driven analytics. Prior to Tachyus, Dakin co-founded OpenGov , a platform to share, visualize, and analyze government financial data. Before OpenGov, he built California Common Sense , the open data and government watchdog non-profit. Ajeet Singh.

Cofounder 274

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

Ajeet Singh , co-founder of ThoughtSpot , provider of search-driven analytics. Prior to Tachyus, Dakin co-founded OpenGov , a platform to share, visualize, and analyze government financial data. Before OpenGov, he built California Common Sense , the open data and government watchdog non-profit. Ajeet Singh.

Cofounder 274

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2012

While many government agencies use Technology Readiness Levels to measure a projects technical maturity, there are no standards around Business Maturity Levels. It doesn’t replace private capital with government funds. 2) Get the teams out of the building to test their hypotheses with prospective customers.

Lean 248

Lean Incubator Business Model Georgia 248

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2016

government is discovering that Lean innovation can help them serve the country better and faster. The Small Business Administration and the digital services agency 18F are trying to help entrepreneurs build successful companies and the 21st century digital government. And some of it could be in development.

Small Business Administration 120

Small Business Administration SBIR United States Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 26, 2016

They can do so because most have little legacy organizational baggage, no government overhead, some of the best software talent in the world, cheap manpower costs, no career risk when attempting new unproven feats and ultimately no fear of failure. Rapidly iterate technology to produce solutions while searching for product-market fit.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley North Korea Agile Lean 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model.

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

AUGUST 4, 2016

Department of State manages America’s relationships with 180 foreign governments, international organizations, and the people of other countries with 270 embassies, consulates, and other posts. diplomats, government officials, and all other personnel at home and abroad. Department of State is working on all of them. Support U.S.

Lean 120

Lean Government Agile Africa 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

China has essentially closed its internal search, media and social network software market to foreign companies who wouldn’t play with the government rules on the Great Firewall. Alibaba (commerce), Tencent (games/chat) and Baidu (search) all have market caps over $40 billion. Closed for You, Open For Us. Lessons Learned.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 267

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

The role of a founding CEO in a startup searching for a business model is radically different than a CEO building and growing a company. Do they “get&# Customer Development ? These VC’s are skilled in helping you search for the business model. Do They Get Customer Development? Lean Startups ?

Founder 231

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

It wasn’t that they didn’t want to pay, but for anything above a certain dollar amount, it had to be a committee decision, and Universities are a notoriously bad market to crack (probably second to the government). I tell these stories to lay the groundwork for what I am going to call Revenue Development.

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

government for funding. government doles out funds to connected entrepreneurs, it lacks an integrated strategy to deal with the lack of public market financing for critical growth industries. In either case Customer Development provides entrepreneurs with a methodology for being capital efficient. Yet while the U.S.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

As a formal method, the Lean Startup consists of three parts: The Business Model Canvas – to frame hypotheses, Customer Development – to test those hypotheses in front of customers, and Agile Engineering – to build Minimum Viable Products to maximize learning. Change Customer Relationships to Buy-in/Support.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

China has essentially closed its internal search, media and social network software market to foreign companies who wouldn’t play with the government rules on the Great Firewall. Alibaba (commerce), Tencent (games/chat) and Baidu (search) all have market caps over $40 billion. Closed for You, Open For Us. Lessons Learned.

Silicon Valley 159

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 159

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

It was a labor of love, and it meant we always had a real voice of the customer right there in the meeting with us. What we call “community management&# is actually governance. It is our obligation to govern well, but – as history has repeatedly shown – this is incredibly hard. It was absolutely worth it.

Advisory Board 151

Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

government fund and as Entrepreneur-In-Residence for the National Science Foundation. Think, for example, about the way we talk about sales and customer development and the idea of ‘getting out of the building.’ People search differently in different cultures. Here’s what they had to say.

Silicon Valley 168

Silicon Valley Lean Puerto Rico Japan 168

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

government backed venture firms and limited partnerships. In the real world a startup is about the search for a business model or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model. But by the early 1960?s Startups are not smaller versions of large companies.

Engineer 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 13, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the startup, it's time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. Here's how.

Silicon Valley 117

Silicon Valley Balance Sheet Metrics Early Stage 117

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

If your practice is not designed to cope with uncertainty, it has no place in a startup - even if your startup is located in government or enterprise. Use some customer development to find out. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What if its both of you?

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

LSC: Tell us about the customer development you did for your book: Alistair: We''ve been thrilled at how Lean Analytics seemed to resonate with founders. Unfortunately, as founders, we''re so enthusiastic, so governed by our reality distortion field, that we often run the experiment and then find the results we want.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

Within the week they were #6 in Google search results for “Stanford Admission Books.”. Amazingly it looked like the PersonalLibraries team had restarted the company and found a segment where customers wanted their product. We taught them theory, methodology, and practice using Customer Development and business model design.

South Dakota 217

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 217

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 19, 2009

We met a number of policy makers from the White House and State Department, and had a solid Startup2Startup all about government policy and entrepreneurship. In a previous post , I asked readers for suggested topics that the US government needs to know about startups and entrepreneurs, and got some really interesting responses.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Founder DC Washington 150

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

"Spy satellites produced far more raw information than the government's battalion of overworked analysts could handle. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The CIA relied so heavily on [these]. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2014

We didn’t know it at the time, but with that investment we had paid for front-row VIP seats to witness the origins of Customer Development and the Lean Startup. The Lean LaunchPad process is equally well-suited to areas like STEM education and government (e.g., fed labs, HHS). Filed under: Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

Maryland 272

Maryland Lean DC Virginia 272

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2009

g2s The very abbreviated version of Customer Development (channeling Steve Blank ). g2s The very abbreviated version of Customer Development (channeling Steve Blank ). Every bit as true for government as for enterprise - and even the two guys in a garage. Federal government should do nothing.

San Francisco 92

San Francisco DC Washington Lean 92

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2010

Our trip was bipartisan, bicameral, and bi-branches-of-government. Our trip was bipartisan, bicameral, and bi-branches-of-government. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco DC Washington Startup 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

It also causes them to miss the numerous other kinds of startups that appear in less-glamorous settings: inside enterprises, non-profits, and even governments. I prefer to take the most expansive possible definition of product, one that encompasses any source of value for a set of people who voluntarily choose to become customers.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

Im writing this post from an airplane headed to Washington DC, where Ill be presenting at the Government 2.0 Im especially curious to gauge the reaction of the civilian and military representatives of our government. Ive been in a few government-themed meetings recently, so I know some of the standard answers.

DC 90

DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90