Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2009

Gathering real-world feedback from customers is a core concept of Customer Development as well as the Lean Startup. When I asked him if he actually had personally left the building and talked to these potential customers, or even had gotten them on the phone, he sounded confused. But what information to collect?

Metrics 242

Metrics Customer Customer Development Lean 242

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.

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

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 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

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. They measure their success on metrics that reflect success in execution, and they reward execution.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

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. Yet without direct and continuous customer contact, it’s unknown whether the features will hold any appeal to customers. Executing on a sales and marketing plan.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

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 143

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 143

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

I had been confused for years why I had to update an income statement each board meeting that said zero for 18 months before we had any revenue. As a founder you are testing a series of hypotheses about all the pieces of the business model: Who are the customers/users? If you are following Customer Development , the answer is easy.

Balance Sheet 304

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 304

ConversionXL

JANUARY 31, 2014

note: If you’re a startup, you’ll want to use customer development questions for your page to resonate with future traffic). How To Identify Your Target Market & Make More Sales. Ask Peep about analytics, and he’ll tell you, “Metrics are there to provide actionable insight. image source. image source.

Analytics 134

Analytics Video Matching Conversion 134

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

An investor had few hard metrics other than the actual financials, and little technology to make the process scaleable. Over the past few decades, better metrics became available, and investors could take a more analytical, data-driven approach. is an AI bot which helps companies refine their sales pitch to VCs. Pitchbot.vc

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

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 found product/market fit (what products customers want to buy). and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

In other words, how can we adapt the Business Model Canvas when the metrics of success for an organization is not revenue? Unlike an org chart, which describes how a company executes to deliver known products to known customers, the business model canvas illustrates the search for the unknowns that most new ventures face.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

The Startup Toolkit

DECEMBER 12, 2012

The 2nd big principle is that people will judge you by traffic and revenue unless you tell them otherwise. And if you focus on those metrics, you will go out of business too soon. Cohort analytics and funnel metric (start with Pirate AARRR Metrics if you are new) are priceless once you have a website live.

Lean 54

Lean Startup Metrics Retention 54

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 316

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 316

SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2011

This site aggregates and filters content from thought leaders who talk about topics such as Marketing , Sales , Design , Revenue , Hiring , Social Media , Business Models , Metrics , PR , Venture Capital , Angel Investors , Bootstrapping , Incubators , Agile and many others.

Intellectual Property 175

Intellectual Property Aggregator Startup IP 175

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

Or depending on your metrics for success, get users, grow traffic, etc.). A business model diagram also shows how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. Your job as a founder is to quickly validate whether the model is correct by seeing if customers behave as your model predicts.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 2, 2020

Like many young SaaS startups, we had no shortage of marketing and sales data, but it wasn’t easy to comprehend. It wasn’t until we began creating custom dashboards to visualize our data that everything started to click. . The stage in which a customer makes a purchase. Other metrics to monitor.

Churn Rate 78

Churn Rate Analytics Retention SQL 78

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

JUNE 15, 2010

Do they “get&# Customer Development ? They understand that now’s not the time to hire a senior VP of Sales to start to scale the sales force or to look for a finance department to create income statements that say zero each month. Do They Get Customer Development? Is Your VC Founder Friendly?

Founder 232

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 232

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. What is the right revenue model? Is that a lot? Is that good?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

I took a deep breath and asked, “Ok, if you were, what percentage of your sales do you think these markets would be in 5 years?” “I guess less than 5%,” was the answer. Achieving consensus about every corner case from each stakeholder in the room is something large companies with large revenues, shareholders and employees need to do.

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 201

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. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. The Recommended Sales Forecasting Method. The business model.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

It requires separating the product launch from the marketing launch (see Dont Launch ) as well as other staple Lean Startup tactics: minimum viable product, split-testing, customer development and the pivot. Third, SlideShare started holding sales calls with large companies to learn what would prompt them to buy the enterprise version.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

Some businesses have basically zero risk around their revenue model. If you are a sales-driven company, this is where you figure out your roadmap. You shift from qualitative feedback (customer development) to quantitative feedback (metrics). We were selling licenses for $20k and losing money on every sale.

Startup 55

Startup Business Model Retention Acquisition 55

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Not just about expenses, about increasing revenue. Make sure for planned revenues you have "leading indicators" to know if you will hit it. Over-communicate with employees, investors, customers. This can take the form of a traditional sales pipeline or a registration-activation-revenue chart.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

NOVEMBER 21, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. There are things you can get for sales force if you use salesforce.com. The fact that you didn’t even mention sales force is interesting.

Widget 204

Widget Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 204

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Also, the “customer relationships” section didn’t seem to fit for many traditional businesses. Finally, while the Business Model Canvas asks for a basic list of expenses and revenue streams, it doesn’t help entrepreneurs determine if their company is truely financially viable. Do startups have a manual?

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

. “Growth hackers have a passion for tracking and moving a metric. Without metrics or data, a growth hacker can feel out of place and uncomfortably exposed. This strong bias towards data drives a growth hacker away from vanity metrics towards metrics that will make or break the business.” ” Creativity.

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2013

You cannot draw a direct line to reducing waste or improving revenues or cutting costs…whereas the cross-functional teams, you can tie it to a performance metric that has a direct result in the corporate objectives. With sales and marketing experiments, often you pick low-hanging fruit in the millions of dollars very, very quickly.

Lean 167

Lean Silicon Valley Agile Cofounder 167

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. Building Metrics / Usage Reports / KPI 3. Product/Metrics (70%/30% time) * Get your product activation (sign-up + meaningful action) to 60% * then, Get your product retention to 20% weekly. Why do I do it?

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

They have many, many man-years of development and customer development in them. And I really believe I can do, on the sales part, so much more if I have additional people. Jason: That’s true in engineering; it’s true in sales; it’s true in marketing. Edwin: There are a million others. Edwin: Yes.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

www.rocketwatcher.com

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

Rocket Watcher Product Marketing for Startups Product Marketing for Startups About Speaking Contact Email Posts Startups Product Marketing Messaging Social Media Commentary Uncategorized Marketing Metrics 101 for B2B Startups 13. Rocket watcher b2b marketing metrics View more presentations from April Dunford.

B2B 42

B2B Metrics Marketing Startup 42

conversionxl.com

FEBRUARY 4, 2014

note: If you’re a startup, you’ll want to use customer development questions for your page to resonate with future traffic). How To Identify Your Target Market & Make More Sales. Ask Peep about analytics, and he’ll tell you, “Metrics are there to provide actionable insight. image source. image source.

Analytics 98

Analytics Software Review Conversion Video 98

ConversionXL

AUGUST 28, 2014

Peep has also said that “conversion” on it’s own is a silly metric, if you have a variation that shows 90% off full price, of course the variation will “win” but if it does not result in extra revenue, than the metric on it’s own is b t. For more on understanding customer behavior: Is Emotion Necessary To Make More Sales.

Analytics 104

Analytics Conversion Lean Metrics 104

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2019

The class was unique in that it was 1) team-based, 2) experiential, 3) lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering). When we started this class, the concept of Lean (business models, customer development, agile, pivots, mvp’s) was new to everyone. Class Velocity/Depth.

Lean 254

Lean Business Model Balance Sheet Video 254

grasshopperherder.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

I think it’s difficult, if not impossible, to value a pre-revenue company with any reasonable accuracy. The company did have some revenue and paying users, but not enough to make any judgement on the company’s future prospects. Unseen Metrics. The company with all the revenue is Company C. Valuations.

Sweat Equity 41

Sweat Equity Equity Cofounder Non-Compete 41

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 2, 2013

You can’t just “decide” to avoid working on sales and marketing and still have a business that you can rightly claim is more stable than a job. But yes, in the words of Ben Horowitz , “Some employees make products, some make sales; the CEO makes decisions.” Does it mean you decide your working hours?

Cofounder 312

Cofounder Startup Founder Engineer 312

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

They asked for my advice, and we went through a number of recommendations that readers of this blog will already be able to guess: adding revenue opportunities, engagement loop optimization, and some immediate split-testing to figure out whats working and whats not. The goal of refactoring is to make it easier to do future development.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79