Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

We’ve pivoted our Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum. We’re changing the order in which we teach the business model canvas and customer development to better-fit therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. “Customer Development” to test the hypotheses outside the building and.

Intellectual Property 286

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 286

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

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Today, I want to introduce you to a new concept for starting and growing successful companies: Lean Planning™. Before I dive too deeply into the Lean Planning methodology, it makes sense to talk about its history and where it comes from. Also, the “customer relationships” section didn’t seem to fit for many traditional businesses.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

It’s been fun watching a 20th Century entrepreneur learn new tricks as he builds his next startup, FindTheBest using Lean Methodology. Lean Start-up Connection: Business Model Canvas. By leaning on our technology, we knew we could build cheaply, we just didn’t know how cheaply. Here’s Kevin’s story to date.

Lean 298

Lean Agile Customer Development SEO 298

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

So the departments either didn’t have the capacity to pay or it would be an endless sales-cycle, where we would spend lots of time on the sales, but it still wouldn’t close. In the end the revenue simply wasn’t enough to make a sustainable business and so we had to switch gears once more (in today’s parlance that would be a “Pivot”).

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

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

The Startup Toolkit

DECEMBER 12, 2012

Slides from “ Lean startup intro (with no buzzwords) ” by robfitz. Lean gets bogged down in tactics & tools. This presentation is about what are, in my opinion, the big principles behind lean startup. Lean begins from there and helps us make it better. A few tools from lean startup.

Lean 54

Lean Startup Metrics Retention 54

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. What kind of objectives would a startup want or need for sales and marketing?

Customer Development 225

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 225

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

The last couple of years has also seen the huge initial success of Ycombinator, the Lean Startup and many other product driven approaches to going to market. Let’s take your revenue line. It should talk about how many customers you think you will acquire and how much you’ll charge for your product.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. How can established companies benefit from implementing Lean Startup? Of course, you can also continue the conversation by attending The Lean Startup Conference. What can Lean Startup do about this? They’ll jump in to answer in the coming days. (Of

Lean 167

Lean Silicon Valley Agile Cofounder 167

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. After twelve months Handspring’s revenue was $170 million. End result?

Customer Development 212

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 212

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 2, 2013

We talk a lot about Customer Development, but there’s nothing like seeing it in action to understand its power. But the big payoff came when their discussions with medical device customers revealed an entirely new way to think about pricing —potentially tripling their revenue. the Customer Life Time (CLT)).

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Customer Churn Rate Customer Development Lean 326

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And it was going to mention the two words that SuperMac marketing needed to live and breathe: revenue and profit. To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 267

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

There's a lot out there around Customer Development - read Steve Blank : Entrepreneurship as a Science – The Business Model/Customer Development Stack - Steve Blank , October 25, 2010 Checklists for Chaos, The Path to Success - Steve Blank , October 28, 2010 and reading about Lean, MVPs, etc. is a requirement.

Valuation 198

Valuation Revenue Pre-Money Valuation Early Stage 198

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. The Rise of the “Lean VC’s” – Consumer Internet Gets Funded. Lean VC’s are Different.

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Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 262

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. This week they were testing who the customer, user, payer for the product will be (and discovering if they have a multi-sided business model , one with both buyers and sellers.) Sales process: buyer/ user/ influencer etc.?

Customer 239

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 239

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

Silicon Valley 230

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 230

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

Everything a large company did, a startup should do – write a business plan; hire sales, marketing, engineering; spec all the product features on day one and build everything for a big first customer ship. The response was inevitably “great pipeline.” (Great pipeline means no real sales.). We now understand that’s wrong.

Restful 235

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 235

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. Step 1: Start with a lean plan. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. The business model.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

When a startup finds a repeatable sales process and steadily increasing revenue, its investors wants to harvest the rewards and build a culture of “execution.” 4) You don’t see any revenue gain past three years. 5) The customer’s needs don’t match your long term direction.

Customer 210

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 210

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Berkeley and NCIIA , Jerry Engel and I first offered the Lean LaunchPad Educators Class. The class was designed to teach educators (and the adjunct entrepreneurs that support them) the Lean LaunchPad approach (Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) for teaching entrepreneurship.

Delaware 302

Delaware Lean Entrepreneur Advisory Board 302

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Instead you will be getting your hands dirty talking to customers, partners, competitors, as you encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup actually works. General Marketing, Sales Funnel, etc.

Wiki 315

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 315

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. These two numbers have direct impact on revenue and financial health.

Vertical 154

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 154

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. Some sales guy who was too busy to take the meeting was probably retired in Maui on the commissions. Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story.

Silicon Valley 137

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 137

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Berkeley and NCIIA , Jerry Engel and I first offered the Lean LaunchPad Educators Class. The class was designed to teach educators (and the adjunct entrepreneurs that support them) the Lean LaunchPad approach (Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) for teaching entrepreneurship.

Delaware 194

Delaware Lean Entrepreneur Advisory Board 194

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2014

Smart companies will figure out how to educate their customers and communicate these changes. The Old Days – Waterfall Product Development. skip this part of you’re conversant in Waterfall and Lean.). In contrast to Waterfall development, Agile Development delivers incremental and iterative changes on an ongoing basis.

Continuous Deployment 331

Continuous Deployment Customer Agile Cloud 331

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

This makes sense in a company where your customers, channel and competition are known. And your revenue plan is something more than a hallucination. Yet year after year, decade after decade, VC’s would watch as no startup business plan survived first contact with customers. It takes a ton of face-face customer interactions.

Business Model 266

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 266

SVPG

NOVEMBER 22, 2013

But one of the real advantages from a product point of view is that there’s no legacy to drag along, there’s no revenue to preserve, and there’s no reputation to safeguard. However, once your product develops to the point that it can sustain a viable business (congratulations!) Protect Revenue and Brand.

Product 67

Product NDA Continuous Deployment Reputation 67

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

. • Repeatable: Startups may get orders that come from board members’ customer relationships or heroic, single-shot efforts of the CEO. These are great, but they are not repeatable by a sales organization. Does our product or service solve a customer problem (product-market fit)? How do we attract, keep and grow customers?

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 334

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Now its time to start to think seriously about how to find a repeatable and scalable sales process, how to position and market the product, and how to build a product development team that can turn an early product into a Whole Product. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 3, 2015

Hershey just bought Krave Jerky, a team in our 2011 Berkeley Lean LaunchPad class, for >$200 million. These new entrants disrupted their food categories by offering high quality proprietary recipes, outsourcing their manufacturing, and using their cash and resources on sales and marketing to build distribution and a differentiated brand.

North America 120

North America Lean Customer Development Distribution 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

Most of the time the darn customers don’t behave as you predicted. How Does Customer Development, Agile Development and Lean Startups Fit? The Customer Development process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model. When revenue, users, traffic, etc.,

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

They’ve found product/market fit (what products customers want to buy). They’ve learned the best distribution channel to get the product from their company to the customer. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.) and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. It needs the tools and processes pioneered in Lean Startups. What Does this Mean? What to Do?

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335