SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 19, 2012

I was talking with an early-stage founder who has a product vision and wants to get it built. He wanted to get input from me on what he's doing, and he wants to begin to ask developers what it would take to build his product. This should be an iterative process with advisors and customers providing feedback on the product.

Developer 354

Developer Technical Review Fractional CTO Software Review 354

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2011

Max and his partners had interviewed and analyzed over 650 early-stage Internet startups. In May they released the first Startup Genome Report — an in-depth analysis on what makes early-stage Internet startups successful. It’s Not How Big It Is – It’s How Well It Performs. Happy birthday Max.

Software Review 292

Software Review Early Stage Technical Review Startup 292

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

110 researchers and clinicians, and Principal Investigators got out of the lab and hospital, and talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them. clinical utility, customer, quality of data, reimbursement, what parts of the product are valuable, roles of CRO’s , and partners, etc.,)

Lean 269

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 269

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Max and his partners interviewed and analyzed over 650 early-stage Internet startups. Today they released the first Startup Genome Report — a 67 page in-depth analysis on what makes early-stage Internet startups successful. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. ——-.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2015

It is in need of innovation on many fronts and is also trying to embrace the amazing amount of innovation happening with early-stage companies. The reality is that healthcare customers know that startups’ portals are likely hosted by AWS, Azure, or Google, and therefore pose security and privacy concerns. a compliance review.

Startup 120

Startup Early Stage Azure Lean 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

Innofund is designed to bridge early stage technology companies that have innovative technology and good market potential but are too early for commercial funding (banks or VCs.) Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

Programming 278

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 278

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

In the early stages of a startup your hypotheses about all the parts of your business model are your profound beliefs. Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development. Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development. I was a great marketer.

Business Model 305

Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 305

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. Others dream things that never were and ask why not. George Bernard Shaw.

Agile 332

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 332

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Hopefully, by bringing on strong partners early, you will get great advice and support to minimize your overall dilution down the road. They find weak pre-seed investors or angels who are almost predatory in their early stage pricing and add no value. Experienced founders: Consumer.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Customer/Market Risk Versus Invention Risk One day I was having lunch with a VC sharing what I learned from my students. Our firm has a portfolio of companies across a broad range of markets and the way we look at it is pretty simple – the deals fall into two types: those with customer/market risk and those with invention risk.”

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

You find early stage employees expecting to work normal hours, to get paid a regular salary, and not asking or expecting equity. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. There isn’t much of a killer instinct among the masses.

Finland 324

Finland Naming Russia Government 324

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. They’ve tested their hypotheses with literally hundreds of customer interviews on every continent in the world. Corporate elephants can dance.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Over my career as a serial entrepreneur I observed that since the late 1990s, no early-stage Silicon Valley investor had used business plans to screen investments. Traction and evidence from customers were what investors were looking for – even in “slow” sectors like healthcare and energy. And there it was. Berkeley-wide.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. The problem stems from selling each customer a custom one-time product.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

The Next Web

JUNE 8, 2014

The keys are maintaining capital efficiency, launching early versions to the SMB market and constantly applying customer development methods.

B2C 132

B2C B2B IP Technical Review 132

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. Even if they did, what if the assumption – that we had developed a better approach to teaching entrepreneurship – was simply mistaken?

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Hunter Walker

AUGUST 11, 2022

You’re trying to build a software product, do customer development and find PMF. There are startups who are just amazing at marketing and comms from Day One, but for many it’s not an immediate critical workpath. But* doing marketing or comms poorly can create huge wastes of dollars or in the worst cases, get you in trouble.

Seed Stage 102

Seed Stage Cap Table Founder Marketing 102

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

Innofund is designed to bridge early stage technology companies that have innovative technology and good market potential but are too early for commercial funding (banks or VCs.) Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

Programming 170

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 170

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

In less than three years from the day it started, the company had pivoted its technology process, sales had done a masterful job of Customer Discovery and had found a sweet spot in the market and its fabrication plants were busy turning out as many transistors and diodes as they could make. I see this same pattern in early stage startups.

Silicon Valley 239

Silicon Valley Technical Review Spain Engineer 239

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 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

After I retired, I began teaching Customer Development , a theory of how to reduce early stage risk in entrepreneurial ventures. Raising Money Using Customer Development……… 47. Customer Development Manifesto. Customer Development In the Real World.

Silicon Valley 202

Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 202

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

The first time a few brave corporate innovators tried to overlay the Lean tools and techniques that work in early-stage startups in an existing corporation, the result was chaos, confusion, frustration and ultimately, failure. Fast forward to today. We can adapt these startup tools for use inside the corporation.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 31, 2011

Max and his partners had interviewed and analyzed over 650 early-stage Internet startups. In May they released the first Startup Genome Report -- an in-depth analysis on what makes early-stage Internet startups successful. If you're like thousands of other startups struggling to get started, it's worth a look.

Software Review 134

Software Review Early Stage Startup Technical Review 134

David Teten

MARCH 28, 2012

The company teams they work with are usually highly motivated entrepreneurs trying to engage in extensive product and customer development efforts for a product they don’t typically have a full vision of, for a customer whose needs are opaque, and for a use case which is ambiguous.

Portfolio 144

Portfolio Private Equity Venture Capital Early Stage 144

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? Yet for every founder there are 10-20 other employees who take the near-equivalent risks in joining an early-stage company. Can you recognize and capitalize on them? Tenacious – can you keep going when everyone else gives up?

Cofounder 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Dan Kozikowski, Partner and Head of Platform, First Mark Capital , said to me, “Firms should match services to the stage-specific needs of companies. For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. But things like vendor introductions are only needle-movers at the earliest stages.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Following is his advice to early stage entrepreneurs for creating structure in their company. So, I’ll explain my reasoning through the story of ASC, a fictitious company that has a combination of characteristics I’ve seen across a number of early stage companies. Soundbites from potential customers are encouraging.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any engineering, customer or competitor problem, and you shouldn’t agonize over trying to find one. An example of a reversible decision could be adding a product feature, a new algorithm in the code, targeting a specific set of customers, etc.

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

The Startup Toolkit

MAY 25, 2012

Everything I know from 4 years of intensive customer development & sales, boiled down into an 18 minutes talk I gave at HackFwd in Berlin. HD video is here , normal is embedded below. I’m pretty happy with this one and think you won’t have heard the content elsewhere. Watch it!

Customer Development 53

Customer Development Early Stage Sales Developer 53

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. It bears repeating: an early-stage startup must focus on making one customer group excited by a mission-aligned product.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Lessons to Learn By the time I joined Ardent I thought I was an experienced marketer, but I’ll never forget my first real lesson in what it meant to understand customers and product/market fit. Get Out of My Company At the top of his lungs he screamed, “You don’t know a damn thing about what these customers need!

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 271

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

Rather than a traditional VC pitch I suggested that they do something unconventional and tell the story of their journey in Customer Discovery and Validation. The heart of the Cafepress presentation is the “ Lessons Learned from our Customers ” section. Your “Customer Development Process&# has really resonated for me.

Venture Capital 209

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 14, 2008 How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people Frequency is more important than talking to the "right" customers, especially early on. Youll know when the person youre talking to is not a potential customer - they just wont understand what youre saying.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 12, 2012

Here are the details of both of those customer development experiences. Recently at WP Engine I did some brand new customer development for a new project that we think will revolutionize WordPress blog management. Way #2: Get ten paying customers. But there’s no one “number.”

Customer 252

Customer Customer Development Dilution Engineer 252

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

HOF Capital has stitched together our workflow across Google Suite , Slack , Airtable , Asana , Copper , and some other tools (leveraging Zapier for basic 3rd party integration, in addition to custom development for certain other integrations). 9) Accelerate portfolio company value. 10) Time, market, and exit investment.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

They sold to a set of customers I knew nothing about. After talking to its resellers and customers I realized that SuperMac was the only company that could be described as “fifth in a group of three.” They had an existing distribution channel and their dealers and customers thought they knew who the company was and what it stood for.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 146