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SuperMac War Story 6: Building The Killer Team – Mission, Intent.

Steve Blank

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.” My new head of Public Relations quickly learned that my admin could answer calls from the press. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Order Here.

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The Customer Development Manifesto: Reasons for the Revolution.

Steve Blank

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. Implicit in these materials is the corporate and product “positioning.”

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American Entrepreneur Radio Interview

Steve Blank

The following week Ron Morris interviewed Regis McKenna , who for decades was the “gold standard” for high tech Public Relations in Silicon Valley. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development.

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Why Pioneers Have Arrows In Their Backs

Steve Blank

Over time the idea that winners in new markets are the ones who have been the first (not just early) entrants into their categories became unchallenged conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley. First Movers tend to launch without really fully understanding customer problems or the product features that solve those problems.

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The Leading Cause of Startup Death – Part 1: The Product.

Steve Blank

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. Marketing develops a complete marketing communications plan, provides Sales with a full complement of support material, and starts the public relations bandwagon rolling.

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Lean Startups aren't Cheap Startups

Steve Blank

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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Rocket Science 4: The Press is Our Best Product

Steve Blank

Our “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” story played great in Silicon Valley, they ate it up in Hollywood, and the business press tripped over themselves to talk to us. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing.