Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

Finally, I’ll write about 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. Three to six months after first customer ship, if Sales starts missing its numbers, the board gets concerned.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

How do you figure out what’s the right mix of skills for the co-founders of your startup? I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup. Trying to figure out what the right set of co-founders isn’t so clear.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

View from Seed

OCTOBER 22, 2015

Customer development” has become its own skill and body of knowledge, and there are some crucial nuances to understand up front before beginning your customer dev discussions. Talk and listen to customers instead. The gut reaction for many people is to approach customer research through some sort of survey methodology.

Customer Development 120

Customer Development Developer Customer Seed Stage 120

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. 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.

Customer Development 126

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? When we build products, we use a methodology. But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit."

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. You can imagine how well that worked. On the minus side, that has made it a wee bit hard to understand.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Unfortunately, positioning our product as an "IM add-on" was a complete mistake.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 25, 2023

A common initiative I hear from business owners today is their effort to improve the customer experience. To achieve real growth, business leaders need to improve both employee as well as customer experiences. Flexible – listen to allow flex hours and customization. Personalized – job is relevant to personal needs.

Employee 282

Employee Matching Customer Leadership 282

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 6, 2011

I’m going to take that thought out into the field and validate it with my customers." I’ve spoken to dozens of customers, I have a validated customer persona, built an MVP to test key behavioral hypotheses, and the data doesn’t back what you’re saying." " One was an enterprise software product.

Customer 227

Customer Fractional CTO Viral Lean 227

Hunter Walker

AUGUST 11, 2022

In addition to our dollars, we are eager to help founders with the construction of their cap table, not just generically with the highest profile folks available, but more specifically where they might get some help along the way. What expertise do the founders personally have? Founders Often Don’t Come From These Backgrounds….

Seed Stage 102

Seed Stage Cap Table Founder Marketing 102

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2024

One of the most exciting things a startup CEO in a business-to-business market can hear from a potential customer is, “We’re excited. This can be the beginning of a profitable customer relationship or a disappointing sinkhole of wasted time, money, resources, and a demoralized engineering team. And it went great. What did I do wrong?

Founder 325

Founder Engineer Sales Conversion 325

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. In most agile development systems, there is a notion of the "product backlog" a prioritized list of what software is most valuable to be developed next.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. But for a new coffee shop, things like customer service, atmosphere and selection, will make or break the company.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2013

The class has talked to 1,440 customers to date.). The teams present what they learned talking to 10-15 customer/week, and get comments, suggestions and critiques from their teaching team. It turns out that for commercialization, the business model (Customers, Channel, Revenue Model, etc.) Therapeutics (Starting at 0:30).

Lean 258

Lean Customer Business Model Customer Development 258

Steve Blank

MARCH 12, 2014

Therefore we needed them to think and learn about two parts of a startup; 1) ideation - how to create new ideas and 2) customer development – how do they test the validity of their idea (is it the right product, customer, channel, pricing, etc.). Customer Discovery in the Real World.

Lean 334

Lean Customer Development Startup Silicon Valley 334

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. Many of them get hung up on understanding how to select the right minimal viable product. Your mission is your baby.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

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. Founder : Ummm. Founder : Umm. what do you mean? I know how it feels.

Developer 354

Developer Technical Review Fractional CTO Software Review 354

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.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 14, 2012

Freshman Salesman writes: I’ve read somewhere in your blog about how you had a very large organisation as the first customer for your software. I’m putting myself in the same boat now with the solution I’m developing so could you tell me: 1. How did you reach out to your first customer? I think you meant this

Customer 231

Customer Software Review IP Technical Review 231

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2021

The conversation got interesting when I asked, “How are you going to describe the product to potential customers in the concrete industry?” Do you know what if any of the features you mentioned actually matter to a potential customer?” Your product is not someone’s problem. Ask customers how they solve the problem today.

Product 429

Product Advisory Board Green Customer 429

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

I was having coffee with the CEO of a new startup, listening to her puzzle through how to communicate to potential customers. I reminded her that all the Lean tools she learned in class–Customer Discovery, business model and value proposition canvases– contained her answer. How do I sort out what to do?”.

Marketing 310

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 310

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

View from Seed

DECEMBER 8, 2015

Editor’s note: At a recent team meeting at NextView, we looked at the high number of startups we invested in which were pre-product at the time. The question arose: What is a seed VC’s process like when a company is pre-product? A big chunk of our investments at NextView have been made pre-product.

Product 120

Product Startup Early Stage Seed Capital 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

The classes are built on the Lean Startup methodology: Customer Discovery, Agile Engineering and the Business/Mission Model Canvas. So how do our students get out of the building to talk to customers to do Customer Discovery when they can’t get out of the building? Reminder: What’s the Point of Talking to Customers ?

Customer 413

Customer Business Model Restful Video 413

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. However, if the founder is still running the company, the last thing he wants is a company complacent with day-to-day execution.

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Customer 420

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 420

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. We were lucky to learn about Customer Development early on in the life of our startup. More importantly, we’d witnessed Customer Development’s massive success at another local startup. So how did Customer Development fail us?

Customer Development 230

Customer Development Developer Customer California 230

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 30, 2012

The class teaches founders how to dramatically reduce their failure rate through the combination of business model design, customer development and agile development using the Startup Owners Manual. And Udacity has put their awesome production resources behind the class and hosts the Lean LaunchPad online lectures.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

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

The Next Web

DECEMBER 30, 2012

These are with no doubt worthwhile goals, but I’d like to pose an important challenge for founders: Make learning and development your key resolution in 2013. How to Build a Startup (EP245) by Steve Blank: You’ll learn the key steps of the Customer Development process.

Artificial Inteligence 156

Artificial Inteligence Founder Private Equity Ruby 156

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? This is the minimum feature set for founders. Other Roles in a Startup Generic advice given to entrepreneurs assumes that everyone is going to be the founder/co-founder. Founders know they want to start something.

Cofounder 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. A Day in the Life of A Founder For those of you who’ve never started a company, let me assure you that it never happens like the pleasant articles you read in business magazines or in case studies.

Founder 297

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 297

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

Each sale requires us to handhold the customer and takes way too long to close. He took a deep breath, looked around the boardroom table and then proceeded to outline a radical reconfiguration of the product line (repackaging the products rather than reengineering them) and a change in sales strategy, focusing on a different customer segment.

Business Model 332

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 332

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

Either way, the “hurdle” for successful, scalable startups is high, and it gets higher every day as customer acquisition challenges continue to increase. The “it” is a physical or web product they’ve often been locked-down, pounding away at, for many weeks. Dropbox is a great example.

Startup 332

Startup Cofounder Customer Development Viral 332

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2019

It’s past the “napkin-sketch” stage with a rough minimum viable product and about 100 users. They have a unique insight about the nature of interactions between customers and service providers I’ve never heard before. The early indication from their minimum viable product is that they found early signs of product/market fit.

Bandwidth 281

Bandwidth Database Venture Capital Demand 281

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

The Times Square Strategy discussion I had with Eric Ries , was still top of mind, so instead of my standard Customer Development lecture , I offered my thoughts on: the origin of Customer Development, where we are today, and where does Customer Development go, and how you can help get it there.

Customer Development 212

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 212

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2014

Kauffman just launched Founders School - a new education series to help entrepreneurs develop their businesses during the startup stage by highlighting how startups are different from big companies. After weeks honing the script and days of filming, I’m honored to present the “ Startups ” section of Founders School.

Founder 327

Founder Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development 327