Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. A business model competition would emulate the “out of the building” experience of real entrepreneurs executing the customer development / business model / agile stack. Utah: Entrepreneurial Surprises.

Business Model 278

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 278

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. That died with waterfall software development. I’m not even talking about your 12-page Powerpoint presentation that you need to raise venture capital or to talk with potential biz dev partners.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Understanding the left-side of the mission model canvas ( activities, resources , partners , and costs) forces all teams to ask, “Are we building a product for a DOD/IC customer only or do we have a “dual-use” product that could be sold commercially and get funded by venture capital?”. Team Presentations: Weeks 8 and 9.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. This methodology forces rapid hypothesis testing and Customer Development by getting out of the building while building the product. After 7 weeks they returned to Silicon Valley for their final presentations.

Incubator 303

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 303

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

A business plan is the execution document that large companies write when planning product-line extensions where customer, market and product features are known. Each team would be judged by their business model presentation on these five steps. There are now examples of business model presentations on the web.

Business Plan 314

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 314

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

Greycroft is Alan’s venture capital firm that recently raised its second fund ($130 million) with offices in both New York and LA. We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc.

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Freemium models have their own scorekeeping.)

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

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 264

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 13, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford's Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology detailed in his book, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany."

Finland 158

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 158

Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

The Customer Development talk can be seen here. If you’ve never seen Eric’s Lean Startup presentation, take a few minutes to at least watch his part. alancommike , on May 2, 2009 at 11:59 am Said: I’m glad the the presentation was recorded. steve Customer Development is Hard.

Customer Development 142

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 142

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Draw Your Ideas - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 16, 2010 I saw Jack Dorsey give this talk at The 99% Conference last month. A FB ad targeted at one person (my wife) - Gabriel Weinberg , May 14, 2010 The other day I gave a presentation with Steve Welch on the use of social media in politics. Tesla is not.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

David Teten

MARCH 28, 2012

Best Practices in Venture Capital Portfolio Company Value Creation. View more presentations from David Teten. Lowering that failure rate would be highly impactful on venture capitalist returns, if we could figure out how to do it. I’ve also posted this at Betabeat.).

Portfolio 144

Portfolio Private Equity Venture Capital Early Stage 144

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

I use the Investment Readiness Level as part of my sessions to help the students understand that being ready for investment means that besides having a pretty PowerPoint, they need to do real work and show Customer Development progress. Since I began incorporating the Investment Readiness Level framework I’ve made three observations.

Sacramento 308

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 308

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. He continued: “I’d like to convince my boss so our company can be your first customer.”

Silicon Valley 232

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 232

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

This being presented to another company’s proud engineering team who was being forced to buy product from us because they couldn’t build their own in time.) After I sat down I was convinced the only logical conclusion was for the customer to tell us how many they wanted to buy. The result wasn’t what I expected. Help them?!!

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

Ann who had been my Teaching Assistant while she had finished her PhD at Stanford felt the same frustration about teaching entrepreneurs to assemble a business plan that we knew in the real world wouldn’t survive first contact with customers. After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner.

Business Model 230

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 230

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

Rather than a traditional VC pitch I suggested that they do something unconventional and tell the story of their journey in Customer Discovery and Validation. The heart of the Cafepress presentation is the “ Lessons Learned from our Customers ” section. Your results may vary.

Venture Capital 216

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 216

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

The previous post described the evolution of the Chinese Venture Capital system. I trained the Startup Weekend Next Beijing mentors and instructors, presented to several hundred entrepreneurs, and had a great fireside chat with Zhen Fund founding partner Xu Xiaoping in front of another roomful of entrepreneurs.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 269

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. Our friends who run the state park surrounding our ranch will join all of us for Thanksgiving dinner. Just a reflection on my family and hopes for our children.

Silicon Valley 140

Silicon Valley Turkey United States RSS 140

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2011

Students ; presented to entrepreneurship classes teaching technology-driven Scalable startups as well as students interested in Social Entrepreneurship. Venture Capital ; met with the local hardware/software venture capital firm. You Can’t Start a Fire Without A Spark – A Lack of Venture Capital.

Michigan 309

Michigan Silicon Valley Venture Capital Incubator 309

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

When venture capital teamed up with technology entrepreneurs in the 1960’s they brought with them the canonical MBA planning tool – the business plan. Business Plan vs. Business Model + Customer Development. But you can’t fake a business model/customer development presentation. The Business Plan ?-

Business Model 264

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 264

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 14, 2013

“The results of programs like 500 Startups, Techstars, and Y-Combinator are well known, but due to the culture here in Europe there’s still a lot of unknowns in terms of the track record for follow on funding and results of accelerator programs based in Europe,” says Don Ritzen, co-founder and CEO of Rockstart Accelerator.

Silicon Valley 231

Silicon Valley Europe Venture Capital Incubator 231

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Now with customers and early revenue, it was out raising its first round of venture money. Not only did their sales curve look like a textbook case of a VC-friendly hockey stick, but their Lessons Learned funding presentation was an eye-opener.). Lets take venture capital and grow this thing into a real business.”.

Hockey Stick 284

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 284

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

And I got to experience a type of customer buying behavior I had never seen before – the Novelty Effect. Present at the Creation It was early 1991 and Apple’s software development team was hard at work on QuickTime , the first multimedia framework for a computer. It was fun watching it happen.

Video 168

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 168

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

The previous post described the evolution of the Chinese Venture Capital system. I trained the Startup Weekend Next Beijing mentors and instructors, presented to several hundred entrepreneurs, and had a great fireside chat with Zhen Fund founding partner Xu Xiaoping in front of another roomful of entrepreneurs.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 161

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

This is a 3-day program for entrepreneurship faculty from around the world how to teach entrepreneurship via the Lean LaunchPad approach ( business model canvas + customer development ) and bring their entrepreneurship curriculums into the 21st century. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

Silicon Valley 307

Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 307

Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Since I was heading a marketing department, not acting as an individual contributor, I needed to teach all of marketing the importance of customer data. First, I presented what I had learned. You could sense the skepticism in my staff meeting as I described what I found.

Silicon Valley 136

Silicon Valley Customer RSS Philippines 136

Steve Blank

MAY 12, 2015

The SBIR/STTR program made ~6,200 seed stage investments in 2014, dwarfing the seed investments made by venture capital. startups that don’t fit whatever’s hot in venture capital. The companies present to I-Corps instructors at a “Beat the Odds Bootcamp” – the day before the biannual NSF Phase I Grantee Workshop.

SBIR 120

SBIR Maryland Lean Seed Stage 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Secondly, each student team will present “lessons learned” from their team’s experience getting out of the building learning, testing, iterating and/or pivoting their business model. So what did you do?

Wiki 312

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 312

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

We provided customer references and testimonials supporting the key features we were promoting. My rule was no magazine could review our boards without us present. Focused on winning these reviews, I left nothing to chance. The magazines’ rules were that no company could be in their labs when they reviewed the boards.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. It’s one of the subtle distinctions that at times gets lost in the process.

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 133

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms. my startup is Blank Label (www.blank-label.com), which is a provider of custom dress shirts that empowers consumers to become the designer of their own product.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

I’ve built my company using the Customer Development Model from Day One. I recently completed the Validation step (less the industry analyst presentations) and am ready to move on to Customer Creation. Can I buy you lunch to share it with you? &# Yes, I’m serious. So the ask is made — shall it be given?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2012

And if you want my presentation on the things I Effed Up at my first startup you can view or download the short PPT by clicking that link on Docstoc. 4:30 How did you come up with the idea of customer development? 33:15 Thank you to Detroit Venture Partners for supporting the show. What brings you to LA?

Community 350

Community Silicon Valley Detroit Chicago 350

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

If you can’t see the slide presentation above, click here.). Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. Startups could now get a first version of a product out to customers in weeks/months rather than months/years.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2013

Jim Hornthal splits his time between venture capital, entrepreneurship and education. I think you will see the work of some talented and determined entrepreneurs who have honed their customer discovery and customer development skills to an impressive level. Align and train mentors to embrace customer development.

Lean 284

Lean Cofounder Dividend Business Model 284