The Startup Magazine

MARCH 29, 2024

This isn’t just about having a eureka moment; it’s about understanding the problem you’re solving and why it matters to your potential customers. Then, consider how you’ll reach your customers and what kind of relationship you want to build with them. Building Your Team A venture is only as strong as its team.

Intellectual Property 130

Intellectual Property Angel Investor Business Model Bootstrapping 130

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

A few other credible ones would include Chairman of the Board (COB), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). This person may be an extraordinary communicator, who rallies employees, customers, and colleagues around the vivid future he sees. The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO.

CTO Hire 252

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 252

Steve Blank

AUGUST 22, 2011

Over the last few weeks I’ve gotten involved in hiring for two startups, a public agency and a non profit. In the last week I had four separate groups through the ranch all wanting to talk either about hiring a senior exec or a senior exec looking for a new job. Are you looking for a visionary or an operating executive?

Hiring 290

Hiring Non-Compete Search Customer Development 290

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. And all of that cost was caused by one activity: hiring. Hiring is no different from any other company process. Sounds a little abstract, though, doesnt it?

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

While the last post was titled “ You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When They Offer You a Job “, this post should probably be titled, “You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When You Offer Them a Job.&#

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

A few other credible ones would include Chairman of the Board (COB), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). This person may be an extraordinary communicator, who rallies employees, customers, and colleagues around the vivid future he sees. The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO.

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

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 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

At Tekes, government employees (and their hired consultants) – with no equity, no risk or reward, no startup or venture capital experience – try to pick startup winners and losers. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Technology , Venture Capital.

Finland 324

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 324

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? This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. They are gaining valuable customer data.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

A few other credible ones would include Chairman of the Board (COB), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). This person may be an extraordinary communicator, who rallies employees, customers, and colleagues around the vivid future he sees. The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO.

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

It should talk about how many customers you think you will acquire and how much you’ll charge for your product. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? I care about the thought that you’ve given to the customer problem.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

A few other credible ones would include Chairman of the Board (COB), Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Chief Marketing Officer (CMO). This person may be an extraordinary communicator, who rallies employees, customers, and colleagues around the vivid future he sees. The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO.

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

They close on the $750k, hire a buddy or two, buy some Macs, and get to work. Things start to get a little fuzzy in terms of priorities, but not to fret, the new office is coming along really well with all of the hiring! Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. And some of their best and brightest have ended up in the organizations like the 2nd Bureau, Unit 61398 tasked euphemistically for “Computer Network Operations.”.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 12, 2020

Lockdown restrictions and social distancing guidelines have led to a loss of customers. Now has never been a more important time to have a website – many physical stores have also started operating as online stores, allowing them to take in business during lockdown. Independent stores have been hit hard by the pandemic.

Marketing 246

Marketing Social Media PPC SEO 246

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So What if a buyer asks, can you make a custom version of your product? Hiring PR Agencies. Bettina said, “We want to drive customer demand into our channel.” They learned a ton.

PR 314

PR China Lean Channel 314

Steve Blank

JANUARY 28, 2020

He explained that companies have a penchant for continually improving sustaining products by adding more features to solve existing customer problems, and while this maximized profit, it was a trap. It dawned on me that the implicit assumption startups had operated under was that startups were simply smaller versions of large companies.

Lean 428

Lean Business Model Government Agile 428

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

While we sometimes cut the price of graphics boards, it was only because we offered our customers no compelling reasons to buy one that was priced equivalently to the market share leaders. Our company’s graphics boards were designed to speed up a key part of the Macintosh graphics operating system called QuickDraw.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. And some of their best and brightest have ended up in the organizations like the 2nd Bureau, Unit 61398 tasked euphemistically for “Computer Network Operations.”.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 24, 2018

Much of the writing on startups focuses on two elements: finding product-market fit scaling the company once #1 is accomplished For product-market fit, we have a lot of source material to work with from the last decade: Steve Blank’s leadership on Customer Development , and Eric Ries’ on the Lean Startup ?—?along Stanford’s CS183c?—?Blitzscaling

Warrant 48

Warrant Bootstrapping Framework Hiring 48

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

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Access to the corporate investor’s ecosystem can open up great opportunities from technology validation to customer and partner development. Teten: How is the corporate VC model evolving: in how they interact with portfolio companies or the operating side of their organization? They used to come in at series B and later.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

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

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? And when do business planning and execution come into play?

Search 320

Search Business Model Customer Development Agile 320

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

I was glad to see him but it was clear over coffee that he was struggling with his first hiring failure. I’ve been running our company, cycling through Customer Discovery and Validation and the board suggested that I was running out of bandwidth and needed some help in closing our initial orders. a well-understood group of customers.

Startup 312

Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 312

ConversionXL

MARCH 4, 2020

You need to know how each tool operates. You can also set up custom alerts in Google Analytics to spot a dramatic change in conversions. You can store the information with a custom dimension. You can do this with custom reports, custom segments , etc., Issue: The custom segment setup in Google Analytics is wrong.

Analytics 88

Analytics IP Metrics Conversion 88

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring Channel Sales. “So What if a buyer asks, can you make a custom version of your product? Hiring PR Agencies. Bettina said, “We want to drive customer demand into our channel.” They learned a ton.

PR 206

PR China Lean Channel 206

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 29, 2012

Over Saturday and Sunday teams focus on customer development, validating their ideas and building a minimal viable product. Now is a full-time employee that works for the operation, but that was a relatively recent circumstance: before he was hired, he volunteered his time.

St. Louis 135

St. Louis Kansas City Norway Kansas 135

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 5, 2016

The holiday season has begun, and small business owners in the retail and hospitality industries are operating in what is often their busiest time of year. While the holidays can be unpredictable, small business owners can navigate these waters by focusing on keeping their customers happy.

Customer 100

Customer Distribution Government Agile 100

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

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

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

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 13, 2011

Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology detailed in his book, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany." Blank teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford University and UC Berkeley and blogs at steveblank.com.

Finland 158

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 158

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. We finally settled on a $1.99 Setup a simple website.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

SVPG

OCTOBER 14, 2014

” We were big practitioners of what we now call Customer Development, and our customer was typically the IT organization of large companies. I remember being immediately struck by how different we designed and built technology, versus how our customers did. In any case, the Internet happened. 2) Passion.

Product 91

Product Technical Review Engineer CTO Hire 91

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. The biggest source of cost/time advantage that all lean companies have is avoiding building features that customers dont want. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. This speeds up the Ideas-Code-Data feedback loop.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102