Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

The book has been shepherded and edited by a great Japanese VC at Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, Takashi Tsutsumi, with help from Masato Iino. I asked Tsutsumi-san to write a guest post for my blog to describe his experience with Customer Development in Japan. But customers didn’t agree.

Japan 302

Japan Customer Development Developer Customer 302

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2019

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. It always reduces risk to plan your business first.

Intellectual Property 219

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 219

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. It always reduces risk to plan your business first.

Intellectual Property 309

Intellectual Property Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 309

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 14, 2014

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. It always reduces risk to plan your business first.

Entrepreneur 283

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 283

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. Only one-third make it past their tenth anniversary.

Intellectual Property 134

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 134

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

He also nails the reason why venture capital is still necessary to grow large businesses quickly in a world where the costs of running startups have fallen dramatically. After all, growth equals high valuations and loads of venture capital! It might be for technical reasons or it might be for customer adoption reasons.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers?

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 228

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. Are there customers for what you are building? How many are there? Can it scale?”

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2017

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. It always reduces risk to plan your business first.

Product Development 177

Product Development Cost Developer Product 177

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. The last couple of years has also seen the huge initial success of Ycombinator, the Lean Startup and many other product driven approaches to going to market. Let’s take your revenue line.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

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 232

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 232

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

The first hint lies in its name; this is a product development model, not a marketing model, not a sales hiring model, not a customer acquisition model, not even a financing model (and we’ll also find that in most cases it’s even a poor model to use to develop a product.) Where Are the Customers? Product Development Diagram 1.

Customer Development 244

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 244

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2015

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Commit to a major customer. It always reduces risk to plan your business first.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 120

online.wsj.com

SEPTEMBER 23, 2012

To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers, use the Order Reprints tool at the bottom of any article or visit www.djreprints.com. SIGNIFICANCE PROMINENT. --> The Venture Capital Secret: 3 Out of 4 Start-Ups Fail. See a sample reprint in PDF format. SMALL BUSINESS. Stock Quotes.

Venture Capital 107

Venture Capital Software Review Rhode Island North Dakota 107

abovethecrowd.com

DECEMBER 18, 2017

While other industries often speak of being “customer centric” or “putting the customer first,” the U.S. healthcare system rarely thinks of the patient as a customer. healthcare market is the least customer centric of any customer service industry. One could go even farther, and suggest that the U.S.

Customer 59

Customer Technical Review Venture Capital Software Review 59

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

the wave of semiconductor startups in the 1960’s/70’s, the emergence of Venture Capital as a professional industry, the personal computer revolution in 1980’s, the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s and finally. Yet time after time, after the product shipped, startups would find that customers didn’t use or want most of the features.

Restful 243

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 243

SoCal CTO

MARCH 1, 2010

Startup Killer: the Cost of Customer Acquisition | For Entrepreneurs , February 2, 2010 Looks at the critical equation around customer acquisition cost vs. customer lifetime value similar to what I discussed in Startup Metrics but in more depth. Great stuff. This post looks at the implementation details of HTML 5 video.

Acquisition 150

Acquisition Cofounder Technical Cofounder Cost 150

Up and Running

MAY 28, 2015

We recently had Tim Berry, Palo Alto Software founder and business planning expert, present our Bplans audience with his latest advice on lean business planning. Start your lean business plan today: Download our Free Lean Plan Template one-page-pitch-download.pdf. I’m going to start with what’s a lean business plan.

Lean 60

Lean Business Plan Video Software Review 60

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 8, 2023

Customers will be even more comfortable with the introduction of voice commerce, another unicorn of the online shopping experience. Sustainability is the Queen In 2023, customers have become even more environmentally conscious, as recent statistics prove. million people and generate monthly revenue. Only in 2021, 72.9%

eCommerce 185

eCommerce Technical Review Software Review Analytics 185

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

So if your costs are $500,000 per month and you have $350,000 per month in revenue then your net burn (500-350) is equal to $150,000. But those of us with longer memories remember that the revenue line can move south very quickly when the market overall turns south. Gross burn is the total amount of money you are spending per month.

Burn Rate 383

Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net Valuation 383

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. Let’s Fire Our Customers Part of the DNA of great entrepreneurs is a bias towards decisive and immediate action. Get it done, now.

Customer 216

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 216

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

VC Cafe

JANUARY 24, 2021

billion gamers worldwide will help the global games market generate revenues of $189.3 billion in revenue last year. According to Ark Invest’s research , revenue from virtual worlds will compound 17% annually from roughly $180 billion today to $390 billion by 2025. Fortnite alone made $1.8 Twitch stats in 2020.

Technical Review 207

Technical Review Audio Forecast Social Media 207

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Some very early dollars may be required to assemble the early team, in which case I’d lean towards bringing on some angels who are willing to invest in a company at a very favorable price. There are always exceptions, on both the positive and negative side, and many companies really shouldn’t be raising venture capital at all.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

Up and Running

OCTOBER 3, 2017

If you don’t have a specific immediate need to show a formal business plan to a banker or investor, then you are probably better off doing just a lean business plan , for your internal use only. Your business plan should present what a banker or venture capitalist expects to see, in the order they expect to see it in. Key Customers.

Business Plan 134

Business Plan Balance Sheet Forecast Lean 134

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. Electron-based Venture Capital. Quickly iterate the product in front of customers.

Lean 263

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 263

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

In 2012 I got together with Alexander Osterwalder , Henry Chesbrough and Andre Marquis to think about the Lean and the future of corporate innovation. What CEOs, management teams and shareholders care about is growth —revenue growth, greater user adoption, increased market share, bigger margins, etc. in developing these new models.

Lean 329

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 329

The Startup Magazine

MAY 26, 2024

Bucher, founder of venture capital firm Day One Ventures, was recently accepted into the Milken Institute’s membership program, with her official induction taking place at the prestigious global conference. As a general partner of Day One Ventures, she supports companies and founders who demonstrate this same dedication.

Los Angeles 78

Los Angeles Global Founder Venture Capital 78

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 1, 2020

The primary source of your funds should be your paying customers, i.e., your business should generate enough revenues and profits to fund the growth and expansion. Any custom manufactured IoT device would require software development as well as hardware customization. Both of which are expensive and time-consuming.

Startup 150

Startup Entrepreneur Elevator Pitch Seed Stage 150

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Customer/Market Risk Versus Invention Risk One day I was having lunch with a VC sharing what I learned from my students. Our firm has a portfolio of companies across a broad range of markets and the way we look at it is pretty simple – the deals fall into two types: those with customer/market risk and those with invention risk.”

Vertical 162

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 162

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 21, 2021

Even if you have an angel investor or a venture capital (VC) firm backing you, you’ll have an abundance of expenses, limited income, and a finite amount of time before the money completely runs out. So what are the best ways to stay on the lean-side of things? Accordingly, you’ll need to be frugal.

Startup 106

Startup Software Review Open Source Technical Review 106

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. Step 1: Start with a lean plan. A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. Competing To Win Deals - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 7, 2010 The venture capital business is highly competitive.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. . At Flow Capital, we use HubSpot’s sequences and workflows functions to automate a bulk of our emails and internal tasks. 3) Raise capital. 6) Due diligence.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2010

Everyone has their own definition of momentum (user numbers, revenue, channel partners, biz dev deals, whatever). And VC’s are tough customers. If you have good experience then the VC will be leaning forward for the rest of the presentation. They might want you to start lean. They’ve “seen it all.&#.

Early Stage 360

Early Stage Startup Venture Capital Seed Stage 360

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

There's a lot out there around Customer Development - read Steve Blank : Entrepreneurship as a Science – The Business Model/Customer Development Stack - Steve Blank , October 25, 2010 Checklists for Chaos, The Path to Success - Steve Blank , October 28, 2010 and reading about Lean, MVPs, etc. What do you really need to prove?

Valuation 198

Valuation Revenue Pre-Money Valuation Early Stage 198

YoungUpstarts

JULY 6, 2020

They’re all VC-backed, and it was venture capital financing, those back then young startups, received, which was integral to their tremendous growth. However, many first-time entrepreneurs fail to grasp the important distinctions between a “venture backable” business and a “lifestyle business.”

Venture Capital 226

Venture Capital Software B2B Early Stage 226