Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim. And it may work.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

While our teams have mentors, socialize a lot and give great demos, the goal of our class final presentations is “ Lessons Learned ” – about product/market fit, pricing, acquisition/activation costs, pricing, partners, etc. Given something tangible, customers were able to start gauging their willingness to use and pay.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2010

It’s the combination of Business Model Design and Customer Development. Business Model Design Gets Dynamic, Customer Development Gets Strategic. One of the key tenets of Customer Development is that your business model is nothing more than a set of untested hypotheses. Business Model Design.

Customer Development 329

Customer Development Business Model Developer Customer 329

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

One of the attributes of great entrepreneurs is that they are tenacious and relentless. Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. Here’s our story: We started like most entrepreneurs — an idea, an opportunity, and very little money.

Customer Development 230

Customer Development Developer Customer California 230

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Dino Vendetti a VC at Bay Partners, moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Over the years Dino and I brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Part 1: Bend, Oregon Ecosystem and Entrepreneurs. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds.

Early Stage 286

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 286

Steve Blank

AUGUST 21, 2013

—— When I wrote Four Steps to the Epiphany and the Startup Owners Manual , I believed that Life Sciences startups didn’t need Customer Discovery. For example when one team found the right customer, they changed the core technology (the basis of their original idea!) used to serve those customers.

SBIR 314

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 314

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. But at times it’s why entrepreneurs can sink their own companies. These customers are idiots and I don’t want them anymore.”

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

How to make corporate innovation work and drive success in startups were the topics of discussion with the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Evangelos Simoudis’ is the founder and managing director of Synapse Partners. If you can’t hear the clip, click here. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 120

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 26, 2018

In our experience, structured customer development work is right up there amongst the most valuable things a founder can do in the early days of their startup. Once you have an idea that feels strong, it’s imperative to speak with customers about it. But good customer development is tough to do.

Customer 75

Customer Framework Differentiation Customer Development 75

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Funding challenges and other issues founders face in the early days of starting up were the focus of interviews with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern). Steve : And they wanted a bigger business than just a vent company.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

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. The goal of their startup in this stage becomes “getting funded.”

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

I originally conceived it as the Top 11 things that I believe “all entrepreneurs need to succeed.&# If it stuck to this theme then I would stand by my top 11. It isn’t a “must&# for me but it’s certainly a huge positive when entrepreneurs have it. So the whole customer development cycle is very streamlined.

San Diego 267

San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 3, 2014

When I started with Forward Partners I went out to speak with a bunch of our target customers, entrepreneurs, and I learned a bunch of stuff which helped shape our strategy of empowering great entrepreneurs with minority stake investments and real-world useful help – but I’d have learned much more if I’d read this book first.

Customer Development 94

Customer Development Developer Customer Hosting 94

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. The traditional business plan is an essential organizing and planning document to launch new products in existing companies with known customers and markets. The 47th (-46) Annual Business Model Competition.

Business Model 275

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 275

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Build a product, get it into the real world, measure customers’ reactions and behaviors, learn from this, and use what you’ve learned to build something better. Repeat, learning whether to iterate, pivot or restart until you have something that customers love. Waterfall Development. Microsoft Windows 3.0).

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

Although the class was run completely online, and even though they were suffering from Zoom fatigue, the 10 teams of 42 students collectively interviewed 1,142 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, industry partners, etc. How would customer interviews work via video? We Changed The Class Format.

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. This person may be an extraordinary communicator, who rallies employees, customers, and colleagues around the vivid future he sees. c-level entrepreneur funding startup titles' Chief Brand Officer.

CTO Hire 252

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 252

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks , turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. I remember thinking, “Wow, whoever’s on the other end of phone sounds just like an entrepreneur, they were asking for the impossible.” Over the last two months the U.S. This week we saw the results.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Eric Ries , entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Lean Startup. Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Taking My Class.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc. It is the key to “customer development” that Steve Blank talks about. I’m going to save that for a future blog post.

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

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

The Equity Kicker

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

The first development is increased capital efficiency. Entrepreneurs can now achieve an awful lot with very little money. Similarly, from the other side of the table fundraising is still a tough thing for entrepreneurs to pull off and building a company remains as hard as ever. Startup general interest'

Early Stage 119

Early Stage Development Team Review Technical Review Software Review 119

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

The bootcamp requested that participants do what entrepreneurs do before requesting seed funding – Discover, Network and Accelerate. (In Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching.

Programming 291

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 291

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2013

The bootcamp requested that participants do what entrepreneurs do before requesting seed funding – Discover, Network and Accelerate. (In Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching.

Programming 283

Programming Design Lean Seed Money 283

The Next Web

JUNE 8, 2014

Yoav Leitersdorf and Ofer Schreiber of are partners at YL Ventures. Developing an enterprise-grade SaaS product is not easy. The keys are maintaining capital efficiency, launching early versions to the SMB market and constantly applying customer development methods. Design & Dev Entrepreneur Analysis and Opinion'

B2C 132

B2C B2B IP Technical Review 132

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

A big piece of the solution lies in the scalable impact of entrepreneurship and an increase of successful entrepreneurs. Max continued, “That’s why I’m really interested in ways of optimizing the entrepreneurship ecosystem to allow more entrepreneurs to go from idea to reality. I was feeling pretty old.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

Once again, along with my partners at 500 Startups, we are proud to present the most substantive track at SXSW: [link] There was a running joke last year that "the Lean Startup track was the only place at SXSW you couldn't get out of the building." STAY #500STRONG ON THE INTERWEBS OUR STARTUP LOVIN' PARTNERS. We're back!

Lean 165

Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering 165

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

By the end of the 20th century, case studies and business plans had reached an evolutionary dead-end for entrepreneurs. The case method and business plans are the antithesis of how entrepreneurs create startups. But the case method is the antithesis of how entrepreneurs create a startup. Here’s why and what we did about it.

Lean 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2020

Hacking 4 Recovery is a 5-day version of the Lean LaunchPad / Hacking For Defense / National Science Foundation I-Corps curriculum that’s trained tens of thousands of entrepreneurs and innovators. This class is team-based. (We’ll We’ll help Individuals without a team find a place on one.)

Lean 436

Lean Business Model Affiliate Incubator 436

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

In the last five years “ Lean Startup ” methodologies have enabled entrepreneurs to efficiently build a startup by searching for product/market fit rather than blindly trying to execute. Companies pursuing innovation can Buy, Build, Partner or use Open Innovation. Horizon 3 is where companies put their crazy entrepreneurs.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. There’s lots of lore, emotion, and misconceptions of what VC’s do or don’t do for entrepreneurs. Each VC firm/partner has a different spin on what to weigh more.) What Do VC’s Do?

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 9, 2014

They succeed by getting out of the building, testing those hypotheses and learning by iterating and refining minimal viable products in front of potential customers. This is a virtuous cycle: Entrepreneurs manifest their ideas by inspiring others’ imagination, including those who join the effort, fund the venture, and purchase the products.

Entrepreneur 335

Entrepreneur Framework Lean Customer Development 335

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

It’s your startup, so you can give early partners any title you want, but be aware of potential investor and peer implications. This person may be an extraordinary communicator, who rallies employees, customers, and colleagues around the vivid future he sees. Invested Interests C-level entrepreneur startup titles'

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. He continued: “I’d like to convince my boss so our company can be your first customer.”

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

Today, however there are two important updates for entrepreneurs everywhere. Two years in the making and literally ten years in development, I’m proud to announce that my new book, The Startup Owners Manual , goes onto the printing press next Tuesday. While entrepreneurship is in the news fairly regularly, I seldom make news myself.

Entrepreneur 289

Entrepreneur Lean Business Model Customer Development 289

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Nick Kim , Crosscut’s Head of Platform, in his presentation at the 4th Annual VC Platform Summit, shared their Platform development methodology, which he viewed as an exercise in product development. For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. I have developed a founder curriculum on my blog.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78