Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

It took me 8 startups and 21 years to get it right, (and one can argue success was due to the Internet bubble rather then any brilliance.) No internet, no blogs, no books on startups, no entrepreneurship departments in universities, etc. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot.

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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

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. Welcome to the Internet bubble.) See part one for the first time it happened. Good stuff too.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 287

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Later he would leave for a few years to start the Computing Directorate at the National Science Foundation , help spec what became the Internet and then come back and run Ardent’s engineering.) A few days later Gordon became a founder.

North Carolina 133

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. I got my start programming on an old IBM XT; it was thanks to MUDs that I first discovered the internet. So much for timing. hope to hear from you.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

Present at the Creation It was early 1991 and Apple’s software development team was hard at work on QuickTime , the first multimedia framework for a computer. At the time no one (including Apple) knew exactly what consumers were going to do with multimedia, it was still pre-Internet. It was fun watching it happen.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Tell Me How to Find You But having benchmarks in hand that showed us as the winner did us no good unless all our potential customers could see them. Our first thought was to spread the news ourselves, perhaps in a press release or a “white paper,” (remember this was pre-Internet.)

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Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

MITX : Non-profit trade association hosting many events focused on digital marketing and internet business. Mass TLC Unconference: Large annual conference put on by the MA Technology Leadership Council. Lean Startup Circle Boston – Meetup dedicated to the lean startup and customer development methodology.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

My answer to that was to be part of the team whose whole is better that its individual parts as its mentioned in the article, a team leadership rather that a point leadership. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How can I remain effective. Very good and informative.

CTO 168

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 23, 2016

Though they’d never done a startup before, Stan and some of his co-workers saw an opportunity in the leadership change. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. . — Stan was an account manager at Blackstone Computing when the company was reorganized under a new CEO.

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Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur San Francisco 137

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2018

Much of the writing on startups focuses on two elements: finding product-market fit scaling the company once #1 is accomplished For product-market fit, we have a lot of source material to work with from the last decade: Steve Blank’s leadership on Customer Development , and Eric Ries’ on the Lean Startup ?—?along

Warrant 48

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 23, 2016

Though they’d never done a startup before, Stan and some of his co-workers saw an opportunity in the leadership change. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. . — Stan was an account manager at Blackstone Computing when the company was reorganized under a new CEO.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur San Francisco 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The leadership art is to balance the needs of the present with the needs of the future. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? My career has been full of " student body right " moments, where the whole team is suddenly forced to change direction.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

Here in Tampa, our biggest challenge is convincing the regions technology "leadership" that grassroots economic development is a good thing. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? I just emailed your article to him and recommended that he take your advice to heart.

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San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

We also learned that law is code , and that leadership was needed to build thriving communities in a digital age. When I was a kid, the way I logged onto the internet for the first time (to play MUDs, naturally) was through an open dial-up console at San Diego State University. No logins, no codes, just raw uncensored internet access.

Programming 143

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Telecom O2 learning to move at the speed of the internet 500 Startups and their accelerated feedback loops on what works, and what doesn't work in early-stage investing. PayPal, under the leadership of David Marcus and Bill Scott, re-defining and re-engineering itself by embracing Lean Startup to improve the product experience.

Lean 167

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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 271

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 271

Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

And that he might want to think about aligning all his video and Internet products under that name. Customer Development.) As we were plotting marketing strategy, I mentioned that the phrase “Speaking to the Big Dogs” might end up as his corporate brand. They are about forward motion, momentum and feedback loops (i.e.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 17, 2016

Prior to Worklife, Dave was a CEO coach, leadership trainer and culture consultant to some of Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing technology companies. Everybody doesn’t have hi-speed Internet. Dave Kashen is co-founder & CEO of Worklife , a Y Combinator -funded startup whose mission to have everyone love their job.

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

political leadership with a much bigger picture. They developed the National Intelligence Estimate – a series of reports which summarized their judgment about the size of the Russian threat. How big of a nuclear warhead could they carry (throw weight and yield)? Where were their production facilities? Reply Nelson A.

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rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

I’m a tech co-founder in internet startups and after you’ve co-founded a few ventures you definitely have a much more of an appreciation for what’s required to make a startup work at the technical level – it’s certainly not just a software engineer. Friday, August 20, 2010 Stephanie says: I can testify to this!

Technical Cofounder 42

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Our VP of Business Development had no problems getting meetings and fund raising was easy. The Digital Dream Team Way before the Internet phenomenon, we had created “Rocket Science the brand ” that was much bigger in size and importance than Rocket Science the company.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

A large number of these customers had mailed back their registration cards (this was pre-Internet) with their names, phone numbers, job titles, etc. So I asked the fatal question, “Has anyone ever looked at the customer registration cards? This was a company that had sold 15,000 graphics boards and monitors to consumers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 18, 2009

The Thought Leadership talks are awesome. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? J oe Mathes set a great example by sponsoring a ticket to the Boulder workshop out of sheer generosity. Thanks, Joe! Hope to see you soon! 3comments: Lincoln Nguyen said. Great talk tonight.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco DC Sweden Continuous Deployment 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Anybody with a sense of how the Internet works should have known that they couldn’t commit such open fraud on this scale and expect to get away with it. Keep them coming Reply William , on August 24, 2009 at 12:00 pm Said: I doubt this is TechCrunch’s first encounter with PR people lying. Instead, this is a culture clash.

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Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 215

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Think of the Microprocessor, Personal Computer, Internet, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Google, the iPhone. Customer Development There was nothing wrong about Rocket Science having a vision radically different than the conventional wisdom. Founders need to validate their vision in front of customers early and often.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , ESL , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , ESL « Convergent Technologies: War Story 1 – Selling with Sports Scores A Wilderness of Mirrors » 17 Responses Michael F. No internet, no blogs, no books [.] Thanks Steve, Great insight.

Agile 269

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

While both Stanford and MIT encouraged commercially oriented research and courted federal research contracts in the postwar years, MITs leadership focused on building relations with government agencies and seeking financial support from established electronics producers. What is customer development?

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link].

Social Media 105

Social Media Small Business Design Media 105

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 20, 2009

Does lean startup xlate into sustainable success where a fast feedback/iteration loop yields market leadership? Does it make sense to play the customer chase with investors as well? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? " Is there a direct, causative link?

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 68

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 24, 2012

Even though I learned a huge amount on marketing, leadership and business development, the whole thing was slowly eating me from inside. The only possible solution: the income had to come from the internet. Through connections I made on LinkedIn, I was able to land a job for a British internet television company.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

We might be a ways away from the reality of a Chief Engineer or Product Director role commonly in software development, but ultimately it's going to be a matter of getting the culture right so that people stick around long enough to develop not only the tactical skills, but also the honed instincts and senses.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

I want to especially recognize Vivek Wadhwa and Brad Feld for their leadership.) I want to especially recognize Vivek Wadhwa and Brad Feld for their leadership.) The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? This is a good thing. (I We have a lot of introspection to do.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Without requiring a lot of meetings, it changes the perspective of the team (and its leadership) from fire-fighting to prevention. Thats the ultimate task for the companys technology leadership. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Part-Time VPE 94

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

This requires deep customer and competitive knowledge. In an existing or resegmented market, this may include branding and product line extensions. In most markets, “first mover advantage&# is illusorily; fast followers often win.

Silicon Valley 149

Silicon Valley Product RSS Engineer 149