Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

In the last decade Torch managed to break free of China’s state central planning bureaucracies. 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.) government’s SBIR and STTR programs.

Programming 283

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 283

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

The Energy Storage division is acting like a startup, and Prescott Logan its General Manager, has lived up to the charter. 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. So why this post?

Silicon Valley 236

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 236

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 252

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 252

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

50% the fault of a Nokia management that didn’t see it coming, while 50% was due to brilliant Apple execution.) You find early stage employees expecting to work normal hours, to get paid a regular salary, and not asking or expecting equity. Most Finns take their failure as a personal embarrassment. Note to Finland – lighten up.

Finland 330

Finland Naming Russia Government 330

Hunter Walker

AUGUST 11, 2022

You’re trying to build a software product, do customer development and find PMF. So think of these angels as risk management that can eyeball your general plans, and called upon strategically if there’s an unexpected issue to navigate. And so instead you get what you pay for.

Seed Stage 102

Seed Stage Cap Table Founder Marketing 102

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 303

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 303

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

In the last decade Torch managed to break free of China’s state central planning bureaucracies. 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.) government’s SBIR and STTR programs.

Programming 175

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 175

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

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

— I just watched a very smart company try to manage innovation by hiring a global consulting firm to offload engineering from “distractions.” There was no burden on those who proposed a new idea or technology to talk to customers, build minimal viable products, test hypotheses or understand the barriers to deployment.

Incubator 316

Incubator Curation Engineer Government 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 259

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 259

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Once you have assembled the right core team, I recommend prioritizing as follows: First, meet with your portfolio company management. Dan Kozikowski, Partner and Head of Platform, First Mark Capital , said to me, “Firms should match services to the stage-specific needs of companies. Customer Development. Minimal cost. .

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

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. Congratulations to all of you who actually managed to slog through it.). Raising Money Using Customer Development……… 47. Customer Development Manifesto.

Silicon Valley 224

Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 224

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Following is his advice to early stage entrepreneurs for creating structure in their company. This second kind of seed financing can be a double-edged sword for the entrepreneur and company if not very carefully managed. One of them used to be a lead developer at [insert hot consumer tech company here].

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

David Teten

MARCH 28, 2012

The objective of the research is to define a blueprint for how investors can help portfolio companies succeed through operational (non-financial) support, including but not limited to facilitating shared services, recruiting, knowledge sharing, and enhancing management skills.

Portfolio 144

Portfolio Private Equity Venture Capital Early Stage 144

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers.

Technology 142

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

Silicon Valley 129

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 129

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 282

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 282

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

In venture capital in particular, early-stage companies are often operating in frontier industries, where the rules are unpredictable and conventional analytic frameworks may be misleading. A major angel group used Influitive , an advocate management tool, to track, activate and motivate their members. 4) Manage deal flow.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

The first step was to recruit a new management team. 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.” Why they were looking to me to run marketing wasn’t clear. I took the job.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 161

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 305

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 305

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 12, 2012

(from his blog post ) …some civil engineers think the world of project management in their field is ripe for revolution, but do I know enough of them? Here are the details of both of those customer development experiences. Way #2: Get ten paying customers. How many should I talk to? Way #1: Go until boredom.

Customer 252

Customer Customer Development Dilution Engineer 252

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Prior to founding Carely , Michael Eidsaune earned his MBA in finance and spent several years in investment management, eventually earning his level 1 CFA certification. You might look at it and say, “In some ways, that team is overkill for an early-stage company. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 145

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

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. These three tools allow startups to focus on the parts of an early stage venture that matter the most: the product, product/market fit, customer acquisition, revenue and cost model, channels and partners.

Oakland 329

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 329

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Prior to founding Carely , Michael Eidsaune earned his MBA in finance and spent several years in investment management, eventually earning his level 1 CFA certification. You might look at it and say, “In some ways, that team is overkill for an early-stage company. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

But underlying the company’s existence was a fundamental hypothesis we refused to see or test - customers would care if we did. In the game business of the early 1990’s video was at best a brief narrative, a distraction you maybe watched once, not the core of the game. Our customers wanted to kill, shoot or hunt for something.

Silicon Valley 221

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 221

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Luckily while I was teaching classes at headquarters, Zilog’s field application engineers (the technical engineers working alongside our salesmen) would work side-by-side with our large customers as they designed their systems with our chips. Customers The irony is that Zilog had no idea who would eventually become its largest customers.

Silicon Valley 195

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 195

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds.

Silicon Valley 316

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 316

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Oh, and since it was not code compatible with anything, we were going to have to port all the key scientific applications our customers needed (as soon as we figured out who they were.) Personal supercomputer s meant yet again learning something completely new; new computer architectures, new applications and customers, new markets.

North Carolina 129

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 129

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing. To a Hammer Everything Looks Like a Nail In hindsight my failure was that I executed to my strength – telling a compelling story – without actually listening to customer feedback. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to listen to customers.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

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

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 2, 2012

Small Business and Startups: Slice & Dice Your Customer Service Data | crowdSPRING Blog - [link]. Is The Only Purpose of Customer Service To Change Feelings? How Customers evaluate your product | StartupCFO – [link]. Using mTurk to interview 100 customers (in 4 hours) | Customer Development Labs - [link].

Social Media 93

Social Media Small Business Design Media 93

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

That’s @MeganBerry to you, blogger and social media expert, marketing manager of Klout.com. 0160; If I need $250,000 to get to 100 customers, or $1 million to get to X, and I can raise both amounts from either Angels or VCs, where do we turn? Customer Care Today. Customer Validation needs to have the CEO actively involved.

Software Review 217

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Technical Review 217

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. Victor Hugo. Now they can.

Silicon Valley 288

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 288

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies. Provide early seed capital, and be the ones to make those introductions. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 17, 2016

How they think and feel; their sense of community; and their appetite to share their opinions are all creating new paradigms for how any business, regardless of size, connects with its customers. According to our research, millennials ardently avoid calling customer service. Old school customer service rules haven’t changed.

Customer 100

Customer Singapore Advisory Board Asia 100

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Instead of encouraging entrepreneurs to focus on developing long and in-depth, static business plans, Tim advocated for a simpler approach: Define your business identity: What’s your value proposition to your customers? Determine your target market: You need to know and understand your customers.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147