Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

During the first few weeks I asked each of my department heads what they did for marketing and the company. When I asked our trade show manager she looked at me like I was the house idiot and said, “Steve, don’t you know that my job is to set up our trade show booth?” Two paragraphs, Five bullets. It didn’t take more.

Silicon Valley 269

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 125

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. Creating a vertically oriented regional ecosystem is a pretty amazing accomplishment for any country or industry. Trip 2 to the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story. That is until I saw that in startup after startup customers come from places you don’t plan on. Your board nods sagely at your target customer list. What happened?

Silicon Valley 143

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Most pundits and the people I ask for advice fall into one of two camps. Customers will get to consume the content they want, and support the producers of that content directly, rather than having to rely exclusively on intermediaries. The key tools of this new marketing are: targeting, filtering, and customer insight.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

How big are your Mexican and Spanish markets,” I asked? I took a deep breath and asked, “Ok, if you were, what percentage of your sales do you think these markets would be in 5 years?” “I guess less than 5%,” was the answer. Customer Development.) Well, we’re not in those markets today… but we might be some day.”

Silicon Valley 201

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Through trial and error, hiring and firing, successful startups all invented a parallel process to product development. In particular, the winners invent and live by a process of customer learning and discovery. It’s a process that doesn’t exist in large companies with existing customers and markets.

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 133

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

Zen moment #1- Admitting a mistake and asking for help Up until this point in my career I had one response anytime I screwed something up: blame someone else. I was asked to explain why a marketing program that cost $150,000 bucks literally generated nothing in revenue for the company. Anybody else got some other ideas?&#

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

HP 150a Oscilloscope 1956 In March of 1956, Fred Terman , the Stanford professor who encouraged Bill Hewlett and David Packard to start HP, wrote Bill Hewlett asking for help. So the Army asked Terman for help. So the Army asked Terman for help. Terman, who now was the Provost of Stanford, had joined the U.S.

Silicon Valley 186

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ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

When clients ask, “Do you do X?,” So, I got on the phone with existing clients and asked the question: What else are you struggling with at the moment? It starts by asking clients the right questions. Asking clients if they’d invest in a solution without understanding it doesn’t make sense. It starts with a simple email.

PR 120

PR B2B Lean Audience 120

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

Hacker News new | comments | ask | jobs | submit login Startups in stealth mode need one piece of advice. We already have some competitors in the vertical and while there is no point in trying to hide the actual idea, there are differences in the way we implement stuff that can get us an advantage over the competition. >>

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Dinner in a Strange Land When I was in my mid 20′s working at ESL, I was sent overseas to a customer site where the customers were our three-letter intelligence agencies. It seemed like forever before she asked with a look of confusion, “What do you mean agencies x and y?&#

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 210

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

To an entrepreneur, being asked to join a venture firm with an Entrepreneur-in-Residence title means you have been tapped on the shoulder by the VC gods. I asked Peter what kind of company he had in mind and was surprised and dismayed by the answer, “I want to make video games.” Now he wanted to go off start his own company.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. So I have a question for you, Jason.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

But without sales there is no revenue, and without revenue there is no company. All the strategic thinking in the world won’t make up for a missed revenue plan. If sales revenue and profits are high enough, we could take the company public or sell it, and the stock would be worth more than the paper it was printed on.

Silicon Valley 132

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Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

In fact, according to our Potrero benchmark suite this new board ran our customer applications ten times faster than our current products. Marketing Gets into the Engineering Business The next day I walked in uninvited to the VP of Engineering’s office and asked if he had a minute. I went home to think about this.

Silicon Valley 145

Silicon Valley Product RSS Engineer 145