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. To Order Outside of the U.S.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

New strategic direction in companies with loyal customers have different consequences then when you had no customers Acquiring new customers are a lot more expensive that converting existing ones. Let’s Fire Our Customers « Steve Blank (tags: product-management startup business) [.]

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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. Is there some defining factor that easily distinguishes the difference? make-or-break. Sounds like handspring.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Venture Capital | Tagged: Entrepreneurs « Customer Development Manifesto: Market Type (part 4) Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) » 16 Responses Jon Ziskind , on September 14, 2009 at 9:19 am Said: Steve – Great post and really great advice.

Silicon Valley 217

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. I hope we managed to teach our children compassion and charity for others. Families gather from across the country to spend time with each other and feast on a traditional turkey dinner. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 137

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

When I asked our trade show manager she looked at me like I was the house idiot and said, “Steve, don’t you know that my job is to set up our trade show booth?” But my favorite was when the public relations manager said, “we’re here to write press releases and answer the phone in case the press calls.” This is a big idea.

Silicon Valley 259

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I would learn a ton from Gordon for over a decade, not only about practical heuristics for managing complex engineering projects (i.e. 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.) Now In Print!

North Carolina 125

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

When the panicked manager of the magazine test lab would call under a last minute deadline, we would apologize profusely as we sent the cables over – with beer, pizza, and our product manager to help them through any testing “issues”. Getting B-52s through the Soviet Air Defense System Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential?

Silicon Valley 124

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Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

Our small training department had been without a manager for months and finding a replacement didn’t seem to be high on the VP of Sales list. Then it hit me – no one else wanted to be manager – what was the worst that could happen? I even had time to find a girlfriend who was a contractor to the company.

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

All we had to do was tell customers they could get video into their computer – and not promise anything else. But the rest of the management team really skeptical. When we saw our salespeople actually trying to steal the early boards to take home and show their kids, we knew we had a winner. Little did we know. Now In Print!

Video 164

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. In 1964, Bill Perry, the head of the lab, frustrated with GTE’s management, quit (GTE, a phone company had bought Sylvania in 1959.) And in the tradition of great startups, on the way out Perry took 6 of his best managers with him.

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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. I cover this in the Four Steps to the Epiphany.)

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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.

Sales 120

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

And that most of the post on trade shows was describing how to prepare and manage a physical presence in a trade show booth. What didn’t? Write it down and keep it in a tradeshow handbook for those who will follow. Go to trade shows like it matters. You are correct all channels, web or otherwise, need to generate awareness and leads.

Silicon Valley 128

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" I always assumed I wouldnt manage anybody. Being a manager didnt sound fun - deep down, who really wants to be held accountable for other peoples actions? So I wound up learning the discipline of managing other people.

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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. None of mine did.)

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. Do you know the archetype of their customers? Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan Foundation , the Sloan School of Management at MIT , the Sloan program at Stanford , and the Sloan/Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in New York. Sloan realized that the traditional centralized management structures (like General Motors had in 1920) were poor fits for the management of GM’s already diverse product lines.

Silicon Valley 156

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Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

We were happily brainstorming when one of his managers spoke up and said, “Well, the phrase ‘Big Dogs’ might not work because it might not translate well in our Mexican and Spanish markets.” Unlike large corporations, startup meetings are not about achieving consensus for every objection raised. Customer Development.)

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Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

If you can’t manage chaos and uncertainty, if you can’t bias yourself for action and if you wait around for someone else to tell you what to do, then your investors and competitors will make your decisions for you and you will run out of money and your company will die. It may not be for you. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 170

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Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that. However, for the Web 2.0

Vertical 128

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

That’s in stark contrast to the traditional Product Development Model where it’s expected a customer is already there and waiting and it’s simply a matter of [.] Reply Best books for the lean product managers — Justin Gibbs , on April 28, 2009 at 2:44 pm Said: [.] To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

Product Development 143

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

As one could imagine this was the last thing the supercomputer center management wanted to hear. Cray called two years ago and bought it back for parts for an unnamed customer still running one. I liked to fail fast, move on, and not look back. All their peers were buying Cray’s, and they wanted one as well. Now In Print!

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joel.is

NOVEMBER 30, 2012

Subscribe with RSS 2,164 subscribers. The maker/manager transition phase. Paul Graham has a fantastic article on the topic of scheduling work as a maker and as a manager , which I’ve drawn insights from and I know many others have too. I wanted to share my experience of dealing with the transition from maker to manager.

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

In hindsight it appeared clear that startups that survive the first few tough years do not follow the traditional product-centric launch model espoused by product managers or the venture capital community. Through trial and error, hiring and firing, successful startups all invented a parallel process to product development.

Silicon Valley 127

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2009

Worries from the garage One of the worries I hear from entrepreneurs (not just my students) is that Customer Development means getting out of the building and sharing what you are working on. I really don’t know how you managed to keep your cool in that situation. Once it almost mattered. This is about the time it didn’t.

Silicon Valley 149

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Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , SuperMac | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Early Stage Startup « Killing Innovation with Corner Cases and Consensus The Secret History of Silicon Valley Part VI: Every World War II Movie was Wrong » 7 Responses David , on April 23, 2009 at 8:58 am Said: Excellent!

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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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Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

Get yourself into the booth selection meetings and get to know the manager. Location, location, location A small booth is no excuse for being stuck in the corner. Don’t tell me “that’s where they put all the small booths.” I know that, so why do I need you? Call often and early and try to upgrade your location. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 178

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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

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

PS1- I run a small software startup in Brazil and just found out about Customer Development and your blog (I’ve been reading and listening to everything I can get my hands on online, like Venturehacks and Ries’ blog). What I thought would be a simple port is actually a major project I don’t have time to manage.

Silicon Valley 324

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Reply Business Ethics Training , on December 28, 2009 at 5:39 pm Said: For all of you who are supervisors and managers who may be reading this: It is not only important to do things right, but it is important to make sure that the right thing is done right. Do the right thing. It pays off in the end. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 124

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

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. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

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Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Just as I was getting settled into Zilog, the manager of the training department got fired. (I I was beginning to think that my hiring managers were related to red-shirted guys on Star Trek.) I quit a job as road manager, because it had meant that I was gone 9 months out of the year and my job was any waking minute.

Silicon Valley 175

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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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Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

It’s our hood alignment station,” the plant manager said proudly. One day, I was at the Ford Wixom auto assembly plant training my replacement and I was at met at the door by an irate plant manager. the manager followed us still yelling. These damn models weren’t designed right so we’re fixing them on the line.”

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