Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

He hired an operating exec as the CEO a few years ago. No,” my friend replied, sadly shaking his head, “the rest of the board said it sounded like a good idea.”. Filed under: Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. Making the wrong choice can crater your company. This is worth a brawl at the board meeting.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

While the last post was titled “ You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When They Offer You a Job “, this post should probably be titled, “You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When You Offer Them a Job.&# These hires were definitely not your standard marketing types.

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Oh, and we had no installed customer base. I had hired the VP of marketing from a potential software partner who was responsible to get all this 3 rd party software on our computer. The rest of the progress report sounded just like this. In reality we hadn’t gotten any closer to our goal than the day we hired him.

Silicon Valley 324

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 324

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Sea Turtles and VPN – the connections to the rest of the world. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. It usually doesn’t end well.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Sea Turtles and VPN – the connections to the rest of the world. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. It usually doesn’t end well.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Instead of focusing on “technical specs&# like the rest of the category, we are redefining to Information Delivery as the category with time/cost to Actionable Info as the metric, which is something we can compete on very well. Reply Dave Goulden , on March 26, 2009 at 11:04 pm Said: I love the redefinition of the market.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

If that’s you, by all means hire a VP of Sales with a great rolodex and call on established mainstream companies – and ignore the rest of this post. Look for some “ skunk works &# project where the product developers are actively seeking alternatives to their own engineering organization.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

If any of the answers are “Yes,” then hire them a bit later as an early employee. What sets them apart from the rest of the team is that they can project a fearless reality distortion field that they use to recruit, fund raise, pivot and position the company. Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career/Culture.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Advisory Board Customer Development Leadership 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

I was glad to see him but it was clear over coffee that he was struggling with his first hiring failure. I’ve been running our company, cycling through Customer Discovery and Validation and the board suggested that I was running out of bandwidth and needed some help in closing our initial orders. Yeah, and they were great.

Startup 312

Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 312

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

It was an educational mission to tell the story of who our customers were (and by inference who all the graphics board customers were) and why the current reviews of these graphics boards weren’t adequately measuring what was important to this large market. Theoretically, that’s why I hired them.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

Now the company is in crisis mode because the rest of the organization (product development, marketing, etc.) Business Model Design and Customer Development Stack. The alternative to the traditional product introduction process is the Business Model Design and Customer Development Stack. No one gets fired.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Read the rest of The Five Whys for Start-Ups. Read the rest of The Five Whys for Start-Ups. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ▼ June (3) What is a startup? Applied to a start-up, heres how it works. You can view previous essays in this series here: Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science?

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

Read the rest of The Startups Rules of Speed - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review. Read the rest of The Startups Rules of Speed - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? This is the speed-up-or-slow-down moment.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

If there was any doubt among the teams about the value of what they’re learning, Blinken put it to rest with a compelling overview of how so many of today’s complex global problems – from stopping Ebola to monitoring cease-fires and improving food security – demand innovative, tech-based solutions.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

If there was any doubt among the teams about the value of what they’re learning, Blinken put it to rest with a compelling overview of how so many of today’s complex global problems – from stopping Ebola to monitoring cease-fires and improving food security – demand innovative, tech-based solutions.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

We hired an interior designer and a great facilities person to manage the process. Reply Jerry Ji , on May 15, 2009 at 4:56 pm Said: When my startup starts hiring, I’ll make “The Four Steps to the Epiphany&# a prerequisite reading for every interviewer. Lessons Learned N ew buildings are a distraction.

Silicon Valley 205

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 205

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

Luckily for the rest of us, he was able to find his path to a green card, and now employs 24 Americans in West Lafayette, Indiana. Read the rest of The New Startup Arms Race at Huffington Post. Luckily for the rest of us, he was able to find his path to a green card, and now employs 24 Americans in West Lafayette, Indiana.

San Francisco 121

San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 14, 2012

The class was designed to teach educators (and the entrepreneurs that support them) the Lean LaunchPad approach (Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) for teaching entrepreneurship. Align and train mentors to embrace customer development. and I had to pull them back when we met in class.

Developer 300

Developer Arizona Lean Business Model 300

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

Read the rest at The Conversation - Harvard Business Review. Read the rest at The Conversation - Harvard Business Review. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 119

San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

You can read the rest of his posts on his blog : Introduction , Part 1 , Part 2.) When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. You can read the rest of his posts on his blog : Introduction , Part 1 , Part 2.) We all owe him our thanks for persevering.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. What is customer development?

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

It’s been thirty years, but every once an awhile I still wonder what happened to the rest of their lives. He spoke at the Founder Institute last week, and his advice was to not hire a PR agency until there were so many inbound requests that you can’t handle them yourself. It’s his job to introduce new startups to the world.

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

And it hires very smart people from the best schools. BTW, by the standards mentioned in the Times article, the following people would never have been interviewed or hired at Google. College Dropouts - Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison These guys realized that customers don’t ask for your transcript. I love Google.

Silicon Valley 327

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 327

Spencer Fry

FEBRUARY 13, 2023

When considering our product development process and track record, however, I simply don’t see the value in the work that they would bring to our team that a developer, designer, or head of product can’t drive themselves. Don’t be so quick to hire a PM for every 2-3 developers that join your team.

Product 72

Product Wiki Developer Hiring 72

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

but rest assured they would be. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Alas, they arent published in a dead-tree medium yet, so I cant say something like "they are the essential reference on my bookcase." No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 30, 2008 Assessing fit with the Wisdom of Crowds When I wrote earlier about how to conduct a good technical interview , I had only a few things to say about how to assess if the candidate fits in with the team, including this: This responsibility falls squarely to the hiring manager.

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Previous experience of investing in software companies that hire direct sales organizations and take years to build the product using waterfall development doesn’t translate to expertise in Consumer Internet startups. The test is, ask them how they differ in their investing philosophy from the rest of their firm.). Lean Angels.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Read the rest here. Read the rest here. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? For a little while, the team can resort to the last defense of entrepreneurs in trouble: the promised hockey-stick. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 4, 2019

In most cases, the user will prefer to set-up business-related applications, data, and storage on their servers for better security and control while the rest of the business information is left under the care of the cloud service provider. Oracle aims to help customers develop their operations and enhance their experience with the cloud.

Cloud 82

Cloud Artificial Inteligence Matching Hosting 82

Steve Blank

MAY 13, 2010

They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. Hmm, I asked, “Can you go back to the beginning and tell me about your Customer Discovery process? The rest of his story was mostly a blur. Customer Development is the process of how you get out of the building and search for the model. Here’s why.

Founder 199

Founder Cofounder Business Model Customer Development 199

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. The opportunity was just mind-bogglingly huge.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

ConversionXL

JULY 1, 2014

In the rest of this article we’re going to be concentrating on qualitative data, more specifically getting it through qualitative surveys. The post Everything You Need To Know About Designing Valuable Customer Surveys appeared first on ConversionXL. They are both very valuable, just what you get from each is different.

Customer 76

Customer Design Software Review Lead Generation 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

And the rest is history: Google Maps was a huge success. After all, how would Craig Newmark’s life (and the rest of ours, too) be different today if he had waited to build something with a high-quality design before starting his famous list? And the rest is history: Google Maps was a huge success. Ship it.&# Ship it.&#

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Even if SJ has some unique "process" that enables him to come up with killer products (I suspect he is just wired differently from most people and probably has no real idea of how he does it to a point where it is teachable), that doesn't mean that the Lean Startup/Steve Blank's ideas etc have less of a value for the rest of us.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

.&# In 2002 I became exposed to the idea of “agile software development&# and subsequently was a first round investor in Rally Software which is now the market leader in Agile application lifecycle management software. Read the rest. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2016

While finding product-market fit is important, getting the rest of the business model right is the difference between and a great demo and a great business. We did a lot of talking to customers, trying to understand who really had the need. That helped us develop a product. . Do we hire 50 sales people?

Cofounder 120

Cofounder DC Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 120