Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. This engineering manager is a smart guy, and very experienced.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink. Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter?

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Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

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. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

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. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. They communicated this to product management who looked at all of the internal requirements we had generated (e.g. some came from our customer service, some were to improve performance / scalability from tech ops, some were bug fixes, etc.)

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Creators of new products in environments of extreme uncertainty, startups face enormous risks. Insufficient capital, over investment, and low sales are just some of the reasons leading to this sobering statistic. Not doing so would end up in wasteful innovations and features that customers do not want.

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Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

For decades startups were managed by pretending the company would follow a predictable path (revenue plan, scale, etc.) As we described in previous posts , startups fail on the day they’re founded if they are organized and managed like they are a small version of a large company. Albert Einstein. That’s the definition of insanity.

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Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, September 11, 2009 The cardinal sin of community management Once you have a product launched, you will the face the joys – and the despair – of a community that grows up around it. Most normal customers – even among early adopters - do not pay attention to the trolls.

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Community Management Lean Software Review 158

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

You take that money and invest a good portion of it in traditional sales and marketing efforts — including product developers, creative people, and salespeople, all of whom are paid to figure out what buyers want and to say good things about your company — in a quest to get even more customers. Close the sale.

Customer 168

Customer Social Media Retention Canada 168

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

After I retired, I began teaching Customer Development , a theory of how to reduce early stage risk in entrepreneurial ventures. Congratulations to all of you who actually managed to slog through it.). Raising Money Using Customer Development……… 47. Customer Development Manifesto.

Silicon Valley 202

Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 202

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 22, 2012

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff put it best when he said that even though every company knows customer references are important, most companies have a lax approach to actually managing them. Someone may hand him a list of prospective references who may or may not be happy customers, or strategically significant, or even profitable.

Programming 145

Programming Customer Social Media Advisory Board 145

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 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle. In the 20 th century startups I was part of, the time to build a first product release was measured in years as we turned out the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. Finally the board would fire the VP of sales.

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2022

To succeed they realized this isn’t simply coming up with one new product. The company had hired a leading management consulting firm that helped them select 15 critical areas of change the Tsunami Initiative was tasked to work on. It meant pivoting an entire company – and its culture. Are these the real problems?

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Framework Distribution Channel Leadership 389

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Talented product developers. Customer content and engagement built rapid growth in the success of Intel ’s social media and Web-based marketing efforts, increasing “customer contacts” by a factor of tenfold and overall page views by 100x. This has resulted in dramatic increases in sales. Highly trained salespeople.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. ———– Whether your venture is a new pizza parlor or the hottest new software product, beware: These nine flawed assumptions are toxic.

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Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

This second kind of seed financing can be a double-edged sword for the entrepreneur and company if not very carefully managed. Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited. At month six, one of the early hires leaves, a developer who turns out wasn’t a good fit.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

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.” I’ll add I’m particularly curious about how founders recognize that point at which they need to exit / fire the old customers.

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2014

The Lockheed Skunk Works led by Kelly Johnson was responsible for its Advanced Development Projects – everything from the P-80 , the first U.S. Skunk works differed from advanced research groups in that they were more than just product development groups. Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan Customer Development'

Channel 286

Channel Customer Development Distribution Restful 286

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 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. What happened?

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2010

Management in the Transition. The good news is this team found a business model, product/market fit and a repeatable sales model. What lies ahead, however, is a different set of challenges: finding the new set of mainstream customers on the other side of the chasm and managing the sales growth curve.

Agile 120

Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

They made other assumptions about the type of sales channel, partnerships and revenue model they would need. And they rolled all of this up into a set of financial forecasts with a “size of market” forecast from brand name management consulting firms that said they’d have 42 million customers by 2002. Lessons Learned.

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Business Plan Customer Business Model Customer Development 335

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

To shed some light, I talked with kaChing , a destination that enables individual investors to find outstanding money managers to manage their money. kaChing launched a virtual portfolio management game on Facebook in January 2008 and a similar version shortly thereafter on kaChing.com.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2012

When he studied the numbers, Benioff found that 80 percent of the prospects who attended such events wound up becoming customers themselves — in effect, an 80 percent close rate. Cultivate customer sales and marketing people. But no one has to spend a dime training a customer to build a trusting relationship with your prospects.

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 1, 2018

Even large multi-national companies talk to their trusted customers about new ideas to get validation and or ideas for product development. Customer Development. Customers should be the core of your business – without them, you may have a great idea, but it’s not a business.

Stealth 198

Stealth Partner Developer Networking 198

ConversionXL

JULY 3, 2014

Fueled by data driven research that map out the who behind the buying decisions of your products or services, customer personas can help inform everything from more effective copy to product development. The UK based customer experience management firm, Thunderhead.com, conducted a similar study of U.S.

Customer 133

Customer Analytics Conversion Lead Generation 133

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. existing enterprises are establishing corporate innovation groups. StageGate Process.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Check your assumptions, what went wrong?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

In an enterprise sales context, this is called a "repeatable and scalable sales process" - once you know how to do this, your company can graduate from early adopters and make an attempt at the mainstream. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage. The biggest source of waste in new product development is building something that nobody wants. Leverage product development with open source and third parties.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

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.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. They’ve figured out the revenue model (subscription, license, direct sale, etc.)

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

And while its true that metrics sometimes can lead to a better product, in my experience just as often they had led to no insight whatsoever, like fancy reports that nobody reads or after-the-fact rationalizations (with graphs!) We set sales targets from day one, $300 the first month. Labels: product development 4comments: Doug said.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98