Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth. In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Whats striking about these stories, if you get past the PR hype, are two very important themes: These prodigies were self-taught, and had a fundamental fascination with technology from a very young age. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject. It was a management problem. We had been outsourcing an important part of our demand creation strategy – packaging – to an outside agency without having the expertise to judge or manage the results.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a key lean startup concept. The idea of leverage is simple: for every ounce of effort your product development team puts into your product, find ways to magnify that effort by getting many other people to invest along with you.

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners. What didn’t? Go to trade shows like it matters.

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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.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

In a startup, these channels of communication are critical to understand for advertising, launch and PR purposes. But beyond the obvious, its also important to know where customers go to get answers to pressing questions. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

And so, the concept for a digital PR service was born. Using my existing skills and resources (including an old domain name), I tested a productized digital PR offer. About 18 months later, we pivoted our messaging to evolve beyond digital PR. These days, many agencies start as a lean operation. Image source ).

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

The host is seemingly-omniscient Michael Krasny who somehow manages to ask in-depth questions on every conceivable topic. Maybe it's just the obsessive engineer part of myself, but pretty soon I found myself managing my schedule so that I could listen to Forum on my commute both ways. FM or 89.3

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, February 24, 2009 The lean startup at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Image by Jessica_Mah via Flickr Last week I had the opportunity to lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at Haas, which is always a great learning experience - for me at least! Nice talk, thanks for sharing.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

I reminded her that all the Lean tools she learned in class–Customer Discovery, business model and value proposition canvases– contained her answer. Potential customers such as gamers who like to play specific types of games? Founders ask me all the time whether they should hire a PR agency. Here’s how.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

The higher the vanity ratio, the more effective the PR. It helps companies with PR. This is also why I get so outraged when people treat Lean Startup like a religion. You can test theories like Lean Startup in your own practice, and discover if they deliver the outcomes they predict – and you can do it in small batches.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

This "success theater" is occasionally useful for PR or getting through a tough board meeting. This "success theater" is occasionally useful for PR or getting through a tough board meeting. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Dont forget to leave a comment.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 17, 2010

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. Do your customers really read TechCrunch? Do some Customer Development instead. Spend your time with renewable sources of customers and iterate.

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Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

The Message Sitting around a conference room table brainstorming messages that might resonate with customers, or worse having a PR agency doing that for you, is a firing offense in a small company. You should be brainstorming messages with current and potential customers. I know that, so why do I need you?

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

General managers of divisons are compensated on division P&L not long term innovation. You cannot say it is the people (owners, manager or workers). Steven Blank: Managers need to be more entrepreneurial. CEO’s and the executive staff are watching the corporate bottom line and earnings per share.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

This is completely analogous to the situation elsewhere on the internet, where launching a new website, product, or service with PR is getting harder and harder. Customers and prospects are overwhelmed by the number of media and companies clamoring for their attention. Acqusition competition is how new apps get new customers.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

While I love TechCrunch, the post and the quote about the PR agency (“one PR firm has discovered a dynamite strategy, throw ethics out the window&# ) left me wondering; how do PR agencies interact with TechCrunch and other blog and review sites? Is this behavior an outlier or is it the norm in the PR industry?

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Engineers are offenders in this category too, but so is any gender-segregated activity, like an all-female PR or marketing team. And yet, when I suggest this practice to hiring managers and recruiters alike, they rarely do it. I already advocate cross-functional teams as part of the lean startup methodology.

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Step 1: Start with a lean plan. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods. Introducing Lean Planning: How to Plan Less and Grow Faster. How to Write a Traditional Business Plan.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

I managed to be envious of dozens of other companies, founders, and colleagues who seemed to be having tremendous success but later turned out to be a mirage. We go to mixers, buy fancy offices, focus on PR, and try to one-up each other. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

about the earliest days of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, it’s worth checking out this post from serial entrepreneur Steve Blank. There was a big flap in the press when Secretary of State John Foster Dulles refused to permit Nikita Khrushchev to bring a captured gondola and tour the USA to show what the Government was playing over Russia.

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Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. era&# , but really interested in your take on these “free&# models through the prism of Customer Development. We all know how that ends up.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

In lean times, it’s most important to focus on cutting costs in ways that speed you up, not slow you down. Journalists, PR firms, investors, and the public at large love a scrappy come-from-behind story about two guys in a garage who figured out how to take down Goliath. What counts as an iteration?

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

That’s a mouthful to say that our sales people didn’t sell our products directly to a customer. Instead they managed rep firms (independent sales companies that carried multiple, non-competing products) that called on computer resellers that sold to the customers. I’m sure the CEO thought I was crazy.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem) Lean startups don’t optimize. Instead, we try to accelerate with respect to validated learning about customers. and for which customer? That’s the local maximum. That’s right.

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Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

However the VC’s are managing a portfolio while you, the entrepreneur are managing one company – yours. Customer Development There was nothing wrong about Rocket Science having a vision radically different than the conventional wisdom. Rocket Science was just another one of those companies (with better PR).

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

And when you look at the tools that we use, I mean we’ve made so many technological advances, but really to manage a meeting there’s not a practical tool available. We use email; we use Word; we use task manager; we use a file sharing tool. They are so happy that they finally have a tool to manage their business.

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crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

Lean Business: Capacity Management, Overhead, and Your Business – [link]. Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Crowdsourced Workforces Rising | Xconomy – [link].

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Even worse, entrepreneurs are faced with a constant barrage of vanity metrics from competitors and other companies engaged in PR. That’s what you pay PR firms for: to get an article written that is entirely factual and yet still provides positive spin for your company. The PR firm helpfully left out that context.)

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ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

And it’s a combined product management and technical function, to boost an already positive growth curve into something even bigger.” (via PR and publicity drive attention…to drive sales. It is simply getting customers. Conducted Customer Development. Established a Customer Success philosophy.

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ReadWriteStart

MARCH 27, 2011

Steve Blank, author of Four Steps to Epiphany , has helped formulate the thinking behind the Lean Startup methodology , together with Eric Ries. He observed that most startups that succeed aren't lean: their goal is to have an exit rather than a scalable business. This is lean development without any customer development.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 20, 2011

The next couple of days are going to be amazing, as the Lean Startup community converges on San Francisco. As a reminder, the first 200 people to show up will get one of the very first copies of the Lean Startup Book , a pre-publication printed galley. Product management and customer development, KISSmetrics.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

You could try and drive home that positioning with an expensive PR campaign, superbowl ads, and whatnot. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science?

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Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

Every marketing communication hire couldn’t wait to produce the next great ad or PR program. In an early stage startup, instead of sales being up front, the point departments are likely to be product development and customer development. Very useful way to think about “Management By Objectives.&#

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market-by-numbers.com

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Market By Numbers on Twitter | Entries RSS | Comments RSS Market By Numbers High-Tech Marketing and Customer Development Home What is Customer Development? Customer Development Help Affordable Customer Development Support! link] about 1 hour ago from Quora RT @marksbertrand : like lean?

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