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 233

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 233

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Entrepreneur-in-Residence After SuperMac I had been approached by one of our venture investors to be an entrepreneur in residence (EIR), a Silicon Valley phrase which says one thing but means another. Peter described the first company in which “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” and we were enthralled.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I have been working on getting a startup to revenue for a while, and while this is my 4th iteration and I have not yet succeeded, I’ve been learning new things every time. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.” Order Here.

Silicon Valley 129

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 129

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

The guidelines I had originally proposed to my students worked for enterprise software or Web 2.0 You kids have to learn to do it the old fashioned way they did it before they new economy and Silicon Valley. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. What is it that’s unique about the market I’m in?

Vertical 154

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 154

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

This week, the startup tribe from Harvard Business School is making their annual trek to Silicon Valley. It’s a common refrain around Silicon Valley to disparage the role of MBA’s in entrepreneurship. They’ll hear from a variety of experts and get to see many startups firsthand. I also frequently see the reverse.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

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. They never understood Market Type. End result?

Customer Development 217

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 217

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Here at Palo Alto Software in 2007 and 2008, we embraced these planning concepts and moved towards a more agile planning process. This form of planning condensed the business model onto one page and is most useful for high-growth, technically focused startups (think Silicon Valley). Do startups have a manual? Why or why not?

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. For the deputy secretary, such a dialogue in Silicon Valley is not a matter of charity, but necessity.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. For the deputy secretary, such a dialogue in Silicon Valley is not a matter of charity, but necessity.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Michael Eidsaune , co-founder of Carely , a software platform that facilitates communication among families caring for sick or elderly relatives. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 145

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Michael Eidsaune , co-founder of Carely , a software platform that facilitates communication among families caring for sick or elderly relatives. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Five Reasons You Haven’t Launched - Software By Rob , November 10, 2010 Photo by stevendepolo. It’s Easy to Be Great…It’s Hard to Be Consistent - Software By Rob , November 4, 2010 No link from TechCrunch, write-up on Mashable, mention by Leo Laporte, or Tweet by Ashton Kucher is going to make your business. This post is an accusation.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. VC’s invested in things that ran on electrons: hardware, software and silicon. Quickly iterate the product in front of customers.

Lean 262

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 262

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

Those who don’t make it into the class are offered a variety of on- and off-line tools, including government-funded translations of Steve’s nine-part Udacity.com Customer Development lectures , excerpts from the Startup Owner’s Manual in Spanish, and they’ve translated a long list of Code Academy courses and other tools as well.

Colombia 324

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 324

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. Software companies had to buy specialized computers and license expensive software.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2012

from box-office revenue. But the total movie industry revenue was $87 billion. After the VCR was introduced, studio revenues took off like a rocket. Ironically, the six major movie studios have a great technology lab in Silicon Valley with projects in streaming rights , Video On Demand, Ultraviolet , etc.

Silicon Valley 336

Silicon Valley Distribution Washington Channel 336

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

Those who don’t make it into the class are offered a variety of on- and off-line tools, including government-funded translations of Steve’s nine-part Udacity.com Customer Development lectures , excerpts from the Startup Owner’s Manual in Spanish, and they’ve translated a long list of Code Academy courses and other tools as well.

Colombia 287

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 287

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

. - Customer content and engagement built rapid growth in the success of Intel ’s social media and Web-based marketing efforts, increasing “customer contacts” by a factor of tenfold and overall page views by 100x. Two studies have shown that only about 10 percent of promoters actually refer profitable new customers.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

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. Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 268

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2016

Jessica Mah , founder of InDinero , provider of accounting software and tax services for small businesses. We were depending on investor funding, but with $60,000 in revenue no one would fund it. . I went to a customer’s office and I watched him use my software. Jessica Mah. Peggy Burke. No one was interested.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Cofounder Customer Development 120

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 124

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

In today’s language of Customer Development , RIM positioned the Blackberry as a segment of an existing market – pager users who needed two-way communication. But it was the software that made the TiVo great. The TiVo CEO hated the idea that customers might think of TiVo as a better VCR. New Market Revenue Curve.

Hockey Stick 275

Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 275

Up and Running

DECEMBER 5, 2016

Here at Palo Alto Software in 2007 and 2008, we embraced these planning concepts and moved toward a more agile planning process. This form of planning condensed the business model onto one page and is most useful for high-growth, technically-focused startups (think Silicon Valley). Do startups have a manual?

Lean 60

Lean Silicon Valley Business Model Forecast 60

Steve Blank

MAY 16, 2016

In a company you know you’ve been successful when you generate revenue and profit. In those case revenue will become an additional metric. Note that they plan a trip to San Diego to visit the customer. With a great assist from the State Departments innovation outpost in Silicon Valley.) Now back to the class. .

San Diego 145

San Diego Metrics Indonesia Silicon Valley 145

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Most publishers are still caught up in an outdated “vision vs. metrics&# argument, which is already obsolete here in Silicon Valley. What is the right revenue model? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and what.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

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

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Especially if you aren’t from around Silicon Valley. pretty much sums everything up well, but – let’s be honest here – if you live outside Silicon Valley, you are going to be at odds, because the rest of the world hasn’t yet caught up with this tech start-up thing.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

ConversionXL

JANUARY 28, 2013

Steve Blank , a Silicon Valley mentor and serial-entrepreneur, recognized for developing the customer development methodology, says it best: No plan survives first contact with customers. The information you get is pure gold. They ended up giving totally random and useless feedback. ( It’s unmoderated.

Conversion 106

Conversion Silicon Valley Matching Design 106

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

" => I have not bothered to put up a landing page, survey to test customer demand, or done any customer development whatsoever. "Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life?" It's my perspective as well and I'm not a software engineer let alone a rockstar.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

This single decision wound up costing the company significant revenue and over the course of several months sent its customer growth into decline. I agree that listening and communicating is a key to success, but customer development can only do so much. We couldn’t have been more wrong.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158