Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Joining me in SiriusXM’s studio in New York were. Being in Ohio, which lacks the startup ecosystem of an entrepreneurial cluster like Silicon Valley, made it difficult for Will to get funding for his first startup, Huddlewoo : The type of business that we were building needed an investment of capital ahead of revenue.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. These three tools allow startups to focus on the parts of an early stage venture that matter the most: the product, product/market fit, customer acquisition, revenue and cost model, channels and partners.

Oakland 326

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

What CEOs, management teams and shareholders care about is growth —revenue growth, greater user adoption, increased market share, bigger margins, etc. In fact, I believe the movement is now mainstream—startups, VCs, accelerators, are no longer “new.”. in developing these new models. And why wouldn’t it be?

Lean 326

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 326

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Slowly, over time, we optimized (or eliminated) each step in the process of becoming a customer by giving us money. And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. We’d always cringe as we admitted that, no, we really only had a few thousand customers and a few thousand dollars in monthly revenue. Retention cohort analysis.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Lets return to our team thats failing to hit their targets.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

Invented in 1854 by Daniel McCallum, superintendent of the New York and Erie railroad, the org chart became the organizing tool for how to think about strategy and structure. Plans and processes are in place, and rules, job specifications, revenue, profit and margin goals have been set. We will propose some alternatives.

Business Model 333

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 333

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Naturally, they had just raised money, and their new investors were understandably pissed. The company struggled mightily with how to explain this bad news to their board. They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. What is customer development?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2016

I thought all of these are raising $5 million, $10 million, $15 million pre-revenue. I thought I had to raise funding to compete with them, so I pitched to 26 companies here on Sand Hill Road in San Francisco and even Boston and New York. Filed under: Customer Development.

Entrepreneur 260

Entrepreneur Cofounder San Francisco Campaign 260

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Because this is a new skunkworks-type project, everyone involved is savvy enough to understand that the initial ROI is likely to be low, much lower than projects that are powered by sustaining innovation. And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

To increase the number of iterations you have left, you can either increase cash on hand (by raising money or increasing revenues), reduce burn rate, or increase the speed of each iteration. Customer Development : a disciplined approach to finding out if there is a market for your product before its too late.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

As Ive argued elsewhere , my belief is that startups (and anyone else trying to find an unknown solution to an unknown problem ) have to measure progress with validated learning about customers. In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

If you can start getting ROI on a feature in month one of a twelve month project versus waiting until the end, youve comparatively reduced the cost of development by the revenue generated by that feature over 11 months. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Most executives, especially in startups, dont have the courage to hold their teams to a high standard for new products or features. Not even if its generating revenue. The only efforts a new product team should be expending are those that lead to validated learning about customers.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Should you charge from day one, testing the revenue model first? For more on how to figure out which question applies in which context, see Business ecology and the four customer currencies.) And therein lies the most common source of confusion about whether startups should listen to customers.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

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. We would rather chase revenue. Of course you should chase revenue. It’s supposed to make money, and of course, profitable revenue, too.

Widget 204

Widget Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 204

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 9, 2018

Rent Seekers take advantage of regulatory capture to protect their interests against the new innovators. For revenue streams figure out who’s going to pay. Understand Who Pays. Is it the end user? An insurer? Some other third party? And he is as cynical about politicians as one can get.

Marketing 321

Marketing Startup Government SEC 321

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

incubators, e.g., the many options in New York. intrapreneurs, e.g., the employee of GE who is tasked with launching a new business. An intrapreneur is the extreme; usually an intrapreneur’s employer owns 100% of the new business that she creates. mentor VCs, e.g., most VCs. Our model at Casual Corp.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Or follow all of the New York Times columnists equally? This is good news for everyone except those who have huge legacy investments in large-batch distribution. It’s time for us to start thinking of every piece of content – books, blogs, albums, TV shows, movies, everything – as a new little startup.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

In fact, in the early days, when IMVU would experience unexpected surges of revenue or traffic, it was inevitable that every person in the company was convinced that their project was responsible. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

There are a whole range of valid reasons why non-developers would want to dictate the production release schedule (Seasonal/timing issues, marketing, fulfillment concerns, documentation/training, revenue controls, legal/regulatory. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Either way, you would have been better off focusing your split-test on high level metrics that measure how much customers like your product as a whole. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2016

I thought all of these are raising $5 million, $10 million, $15 million pre-revenue. I thought I had to raise funding to compete with them, so I pitched to 26 companies here on Sand Hill Road in San Francisco and even Boston and New York. Filed under: Customer Development.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder San Francisco Campaign 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Still, theyre not really hitting it out of the park, because their product isnt growing new users as fast as theyd like, and they arent making any money from the current users. Most of all, I encouraged them to start talking to their most passionate customers and running some big experiments based on that feedback.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

We just add up the revenue we've made in the past few months from Win98 users, and compare to the pain that Win98 has caused as identified in 5Ys. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? It's so old and so buggy that it's a real pain to ship 3D software on it.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

There are huge classes of bugs that "work as designed" but cause catastrophic changes in customer behavior. No automated test is going to catch that, but it still will drive revenue to zero. Most QA teams are organized around finding reproduction paths for bugs that affect customers. Better handling of intermittent bugs.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

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. If you look around the United States it’s hard to avoid Sloan. There’s the Alfred P. Sloan’s book My Years with General Motors written 40 years ago is still a business classic.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

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. Offer equity instead of cash.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

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. That is customer development. “But it never happened.&# [Alas, customers dont know what they want!

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

It took us months to realize what we had done, and to eventually apologize and win back the trust of those customers wed alienated. The whole episode cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. In fact, it was the revenue trends that eventually alerted us to the magnitude of the problem.

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

The Ultimate Combination of Startup Business Development Methods - ArcticStartup , November 16, 2010 I've been a huge fan of Steven Blank's Customer Development methodology for a long time. Meet the New Enterprise Customer, He’s a Lot Like the Old Enterprise Customer - Ben's Blog , November 15, 2010 Meet the new boss.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

I would focus on one product and set a goal to generate $1M in yearly revenue from it. Near shoring development with your team (ex: your team is based in Canada / India) is cool, but not outsourcing. Outsourcing is something a big company, with a known customer / problem (that has revenue & traction) does to save cost.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Maybe, but the thought never even entered our minds. Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94