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 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

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 228

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 228

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. I began to gain an appreciation of how world-class venture capitalists develop pattern recognition for these common types of problems.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 131

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

There's a lot out there around Customer Development - read Steve Blank : Entrepreneurship as a Science – The Business Model/Customer Development Stack - Steve Blank , October 25, 2010 Checklists for Chaos, The Path to Success - Steve Blank , October 28, 2010 and reading about Lean, MVPs, etc. is a requirement.

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Valuation Revenue Pre-Money Valuation Early Stage 198

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. After twelve months Handspring’s revenue was $170 million. End result?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And it was going to mention the two words that SuperMac marketing needed to live and breathe: revenue and profit. To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

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 24, 2009

This tendency is a two edged sword: by iterating strategy a startup can dramatically improve the size and trajectory of the company, but at times this process can be the bane of venture investors (and why they have prematurely grey hair.) 4) You don’t see any revenue gain past three years.

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 216

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

And most importantly, you have your customers that you want to sell your product or service to. But it’s sales that really drive your progress with those three groups of people. Will : Yes, and that was my first brutal intro into the difficulties of raising venture capital where I lived. .

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. Electron-based Venture Capital. Quickly iterate the product in front of customers.

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Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 263

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. These two numbers have direct impact on revenue and financial health.

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 162

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

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.”.

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Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 299

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

If you take funding from a venture capital firm or angel investor and want to build a large, enduring company (rather than sell it to the highest bidder), this isn’t the decade to do it. The collapse of the IPO market and dysfunctional math in the venture capital community has stacked the odds against you. Here’s why.

Venture Capital 303

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 303

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. This makes sense in a company where your customers, channel and competition are known. And your revenue plan is something more than a hallucination. The Business Plan ?-

Business Model 267

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 267

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

DECEMBER 3, 2012

In turn, these new strategies drove the need for companies to be structured around functions (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, etc.). In the 1920’s companies restructured from monolithic functional organizations (sales, marketing, manufacturing, purchasing, etc.) In the U.S. each with its own profit and loss responsibility.

Business Model 334

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 334

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

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

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. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

Lean 260

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260

Hearpreneur

JULY 30, 2016

trillion in sales. The short answer was no and whilst many of the businesses present had a large technology component to their company, with custom developed software etc they could not present themselves as a tech company. But only around 2% will actually achieve revenues over $1 million dollars.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Entrepreneur CTO Hire 48

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.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 269

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 125

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

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

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

If it was a very big mistake, I blamed the VP of Sales. “This marketing campaign didn’t work? It was a brilliant strategy but Sales screwed it up.&# (My own lame defense here for this behavior is that sales and marketing are always cats and dogs in startups. Ownership and Teamwork not turf.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Top management was trying to coordinate all of the operating details (sales, manufacturing, distribution and marketing,) across all the divisions and the company almost went bankrupt that year when poor planning led to excess inventory (with unsold cars piling up at dealers and the company running out of cash.)

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 179

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

Things Change In 1956 Hewlett Packard (HP) was a 17-year old company with $20 million in test equipment sales with 900 employees. And venture capital and entrepreneurship has made life even tougher for the modern corporation. I’ll show you the memo in a second. But first some background.)

Silicon Valley 186

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 186

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 24, 2009

When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. What is the right revenue model? Is that a lot? Is that good? In other words, what is the minimum viable product ?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

www.instigatorblog.com

MARCH 2, 2010

Venture capital firms like to see CEOs with strong support (beyond the Board of Directors) and that’s what the Advisory Board is there to do. As such, advisory board members will often become customers or help you find customers. link] Ken Great post. I will be having one someday.

Advisory Board 40

Advisory Board Startup Cofounder Equity 40

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

. • Repeatable: Startups may get orders that come from board members’ customer relationships or heroic, single-shot efforts of the CEO. These are great, but they are not repeatable by a sales organization. Does our product or service solve a customer problem (product-market fit)? How do we attract, keep and grow customers?

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 334

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

. • Repeatable: Startups may get orders that come from board members’ customer relationships or heroic, single-shot efforts of the CEO. These are great, but they are not repeatable by a sales organization. Does our product or service solve a customer problem (product-market fit)? How do we attract, keep and grow customers?

Venture Capital 226

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 226

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. For venture capital, right?

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

It became clear to me that the mission of marketing in most companies has to be to support sales. While this may seem obvious to anyone not in sales and marketing, trust me, in a technology company this is a conceptual breakthrough. But without sales there is no revenue, and without revenue there is no company.

Silicon Valley 132

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 132

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

Some engineers were insulted that we were going to slow down their board and sales was convinced that within days of the board hitting the street we would have a black market in chips to speed up the $699 boards and turn them into $3,999 ones. We did that when we surveyed our customers. At first most people thought we were joking.

Silicon Valley 145

Silicon Valley Product RSS Engineer 145

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

The timing is perfect, there is more than a little overlap with Vivek Wadhwa’s guest post on venture capital earlier today. Take the top 10 largest tech innovators (take your pick of largest by revenue or largest by idea) of the last 20 years in Silicon Valley. I think I just really feared working for the Man.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84