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Times Square Strategy Session – Web Startups and Customer Development

Steve Blank

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. Dancing Around the Question Union Square Ventures was kind enough to sponsor a meetup the night before my class.

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Customer Development in Japan: a History Lesson

Steve Blank

The book has been shepherded and edited by a great Japanese VC at Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, Takashi Tsutsumi, with help from Masato Iino. I asked Tsutsumi-san to write a guest post for my blog to describe his experience with Customer Development in Japan. Evangelizing Customer Development in Japan.

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“Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch

Steve Blank

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Brendan McManus said: “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [link] #startup #advice [.] Your “Customer Development Process&# has really resonated for me. Your results may vary.

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This Week in Venture Capital – Episode 2

Both Sides of the Table

I was on This Week in Venture Capital (TWiVC) again this week with Jason Calacanis. Bill Gross is the man responsible for the overwhelming amount of monetization on the web. My take was that this follows three trends: a) customer involvement in product design, b) mass customization [e.g. Overture sold for $1.6

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The Customer Development Manifesto: The Startup Death Spiral (part.

Steve Blank

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

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Customer Development is Not a Focus Group

Steve Blank

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

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Early-stage Regional Venture Funds–part 2 of 3 of Bigger in Bend

Steve Blank

The cloud , open-source development tools and web 2.0 as a distribution channel have vastly reduced the amount of capital a startup needs at the early stage when the risk is greatest. Startups still need capital to scale once they find good product-market fit and a repeatable-scalable business model.).