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. Handspring’s customers understood what a Personal Digital Assistant was.

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. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Are there customers for what you are building? How many are there? Can it scale?”

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

To move innovation faster, we now have 21 st century tools — Business Model Canvas , Customer Development , Agile Engineering – all adding up to a Lean Startup. The Lean Definition of the Three Horizons of Innovation. Fast forward to today. We can adapt these startup tools for use inside the corporation. Get to Yes.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

ConversionXL

MARCH 4, 2020

Don’t choose metrics that are similar but not the same. Otherwise, it’s easy to turn a small discrepancy into a massive issue—one that torches year-over-year data comparisons and just about all of your quarterly (even annual) metrics. You can also set up custom alerts in Google Analytics to spot a dramatic change in conversions.

Analytics 88

Analytics IP Metrics Conversion 88

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2014

0:45: The definition of a startup. 2:21: Accounting Metrics in a Large Company vs. Metrics that Matter in a Startup. 6:07: Engineering: Waterfall Development in a Large Company vs. Minimum Viable Product in a Startup. 1:49: Use Customer Development to Test Your Hypotheses. 1:53: Types of Startups.

Founder 330

Founder Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 330

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

The “strategy” of learning who SuperMac’s customers were, what solutions they needed and what our repositioning would be was a three month effort. As hokey as it is, when confronted with uncertainty or unknowns, human beings like to be reassured by comparative metrics. I just want to do strategy.” Those were very short interviews.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 127

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” As the engineers were busy rearchitecting the original Stanford MIPS chip into a commercial product, one of my jobs was to find out what features customers wanted.

Customer Development 284

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 284

Occam's Razor

APRIL 8, 2013

To win in business you need to follow this process: Metrics > Hypothesis > Experiment > Act. We are far too enamored with data collection and reporting the standard metrics we love because others love them because someone else said they were nice so many years ago. That metric is tied to a KPI.

Metrics 156

Metrics Analytics Lean Churn Rate 156

The Next Web

MARCH 11, 2014

For the past year, they invested in the team and technology to prioritize speed of iteration with disregard to traditional methods of customer development and company building. Furthermore, a paying customer is an even better indicator that they truly care. They just built it. Some things just have to exist first.

Silicon Valley 151

Silicon Valley Cofounder Stock Options Mobile 151

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

In fact, you could say that all that remains from my last book are the four steps of Customer Development. Integrates Alexander Osterwalders “Business Model Canvas” as the front-end and “scorecard” for the customer discovery process. Briefly, the new book.

Entrepreneur 295

Entrepreneur Lean Business Model Customer Development 295

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. Assuming you know what the customer wants. Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

And that narrow definition of entrepreneurship doesn’t count all of the managers inside established companies who are effectively engaged in the same process of building an internal startup (see What is a startup? for my more expansive definition). for my more expansive definition). What motivates all these entrepreneurs?

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. The most common mistake startups make is assuming they can operate the same way big companies do, and expect success with little to no feedback from potential customers. This is a customer development problem. Website Analysis.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. They’ve found product/market fit (what products customers want to buy). and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

We lack a consistent and clear definition of the job. When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. All I have to say it WOW!

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

And do your customer development. These quotes are, as is my custom, straight from twitter. Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. When they could hear the customers complaints in their own voice, it became clear when it was time to up the quality level.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

In this post we’re going to offer a new definition of why startups exist : a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Or depending on your metrics for success, get users, grow traffic, etc.). Most of the time the darn customers don’t behave as you predicted. Winston Churchill.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

Yet, I think this definition is too important to leave out. bigs : @ericries says Stealth dev is a (undesirable, failure-presaging) customer-free zone. Another recent meme that I hope more and more startups will take to heart: "stealth is a customer-free zone." See Validated learning about customers for more info.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Unfortunately, customers hated that initial product. For example, at a previous virtual world company , we spent years developing an architecture to cope with millions of simultaneous users. Leverage product development with open source and third parties. How likely will customers ultimately use that feature?

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Unfortunately, most decisions that confront startups lack a definitive right answer. That’s because the model is based on assumptions about customers that are totally unproven. In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

So let’s turn our attention from what may happen in the future to what is definitely happening in the present. Customers will get to consume the content they want, and support the producers of that content directly, rather than having to rely exclusively on intermediaries. There are just too many of them out there.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Recently, he was bitten by the lean startup bug and has started writing about his experiences attempting to apply lean startup and customer development principles. Managing weekly releases got a lot harder once I started doing customer development. On the one hand, this is the ultimate in customer responsiveness.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. You dive deep into a customer development process, working closely with a few customers who feed you requirements and are willing to trial an imperfect product that is evolving quickly. 1) Enterprise Sales.

Sales 50

Sales Technical Review Software Review B2B 50

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

If we accept the verdict of customers instead of pundits, I think these claims are easy to dismiss. First, continuous deployment separates out two different definitions of the terms “release.&# Another is used by marketing to refer to what customers see. Just you, your code, and your customers.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Now there was nothing wrong with their analysis: anyone who invents a technology as sophisticated as The Transformers is definitely going to make a lot of money. Most important slide: hockey stick Micro-scale results Key questions: who is the customer, and how do you know? who is the customer? what is the potential market size?

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Take a look: This full-day Master Class focuses on how to build a startup from the ground up to focus on customers, markets, and speed of iteration. Im working on a future post where Ill share the details of how I used customer development to shape both the content and packaging of this event, so look for that soon.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Steve Blank

MAY 16, 2016

They have to change the metrics across the entire organization. If not, then the effectiveness of the Horizon 3 effort will be graded using Horizon 1 metrics. But in the military success has different metrics. In those case revenue will become an additional metric. Now back to the class. . Team Presentations: Week 7.

San Diego 145

San Diego Metrics Indonesia Silicon Valley 145

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

We then formulate what we’ve learned into a problem definition, which we issue to our communities as a provocation, rather than specification. Depending on the specifics of the process we’re employing, we make the underlying research available to them as well, and bring the stakeholders in for user testing of the work as it’s being developed.

Lean 164

Lean New York City Startup San Francisco 164

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

He has a good team, and theyve shipped a working product to many customers. But they are pushing for the things that matter to customers - features. And they are cognizant that their funding is limited, and if they dont find out which features are absolutely critical for their customers soon, they wont be able to survive.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# Let’s begin with the four customer currencies. Some companies definitely should.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

So let’s begin with a definition of a startup that captures its essential nature, and tries to leave behind the specific associations of the most famous startups. Isn’t the word human redundant in this definition? And yet the newness of a startup’s product or service is also a key part of the definition.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Listen to this episode if you want to hear about a founder who has a product and users and paying customers … and is trying to figure out how to take his company to the next level and grow faster. Jason: So how many of those 20,000 people are paying customers? Edwin: Okay, I have different types of customers. Jason: Okay.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Aymeric Gaurat-Apelli

JULY 1, 2010

You will find here a list of tools you can use during the customer discovery phase. A/B testing As Ash Maurya mentioned on his blog, depending on whether you are in the Customer Discovery phase or another one, you will be testing different things. Analytics You need to understand your customers/users better. OyoLive is awesome!

Lean 38

Lean Customer Ruby Startup 38

Aymeric Gaurat-Apelli

JULY 1, 2010

You will find here a list of tools you can use during the customer discovery phase. A/B testing As Ash Maurya mentioned on his blog, depending on whether you are in the Customer Discovery phase or another one, you will be testing different things. Analytics You need to understand your customers/users better. OyoLive is awesome!

Lean 32

Lean Customer Ruby Startup 32