Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. Other than “I’ll know it when I see it”, there’s no formal way for an investor to assess project maturity or quantify risks.

Sacramento 306

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 306

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Dave McClure, “Startup Metrics for Pirates”, [link]. What are the key financials metrics for your business model? What are the key financials metrics for costs in your business model? ——————– March 11 th 1-4pm Demo Day at VC Firm (Location TBD). Get real costs from suppliers.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2010

Their supposed lack of ambition was belied by the many cool demos and startups I got to meet. If anyone is interested, the Wellington Lean Startup Meetup is a good place to start. Im particularly looking forward to inaugurating the Sydney Lean Startup meetup. In fact, you have to learn to adjust to the humility.

Australia 111

Australia Lean New Zealand San Francisco 111

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

They need to raise money before building anything substantial after determining that they needed a little dough to follow the Lean Startup methodology. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet. Eventually early product demos start happening but they’re rough and the product looks very alpha.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. With an online course from Stanford and a series of webcasts from the Lean Startup Conference team, you can learn a lot from your desk in the coming months. We’re lining up a series for entrepreneurs this fall, going in-depth on Lean Startup methods and applications.

Lean 165

Lean San Francisco Cofounder Hosting 165

Steve Blank

MAY 16, 2016

Minimal viable products are being demo’d to sponsors and sponsors are reacting to what the teams are learning. They have to change the metrics across the entire organization. If not, then the effectiveness of the Horizon 3 effort will be graded using Horizon 1 metrics. But in the military success has different metrics.

San Diego 142

San Diego Metrics Indonesia Silicon Valley 142

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Growth marketing borrows a concept from the lean startup methodology. They work to improve top-of-funnel metrics like brand awareness and identify opportunities to improve customer activation, retention, and referral efforts. If your campaign works and your brand awareness metrics improve, you win. What are “pirate metrics?”.

Framework 102

Framework Marketing Acquisition Retention 102

The Startup Toolkit

FEBRUARY 27, 2012

Folks who know nothing about your business will evaluate it based on the default metrics: traffic & revenue. Accepting the default metrics is bad. The default metrics are dangerous because they compel you to scale prematurely and kill your company. Picking good metrics. They’re default. Focus on referral.

Metrics 46

Metrics Retention Viral .Net 46

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

In other words, how can we adapt the Business Model Canvas when the metrics of success for an organization is not revenue? The Lean Startup is the way most innovators build startups and innovate inside of existing companies. With the goal of not just building a great demo but getting the product adopted and deployed.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 13, 2015

In Lean Analytics , Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz gave a great example of the value of cohorts, using data from a hypothetical online retailer: January. Customers that converted in the last year that originally reached out for a demo. Will this cohort help me improve that metric?”. Their metric was revenue: Image Source.

Conversion 48

Conversion Retention Acquisition Metrics 48

Duct Tape Marketing

DECEMBER 24, 2019

Once you find the metrics that can help you understand your business’s effectiveness in guiding the journey at each stage, you can begin to make changes to your existing approach. You can find ways to lean into the tactics that are working and eliminate the less effective elements of your strategy. Repeat and Refer.

Customer 70

Customer Metrics Retention Clickthrough 70

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 17, 2017

Together Pete, Joe Felter and I created Hacking for Defense , a nationwide program to teach university students how use Lean methodologies to solve defense and national security problems. Solution 4 : What we have been missing is an innovation pipeline focused on deployment not demos.

Community 212

Community Silicon Valley Technical Review Incubator 212

The Next Web

AUGUST 6, 2012

Support via mail, phone, live demos and basically everything the customer wants. Yeah, I’m a big believer at being lean and to always practice continuous deployment. On the other hand, without knowing what is working for our metrics and KPI we will just be in the dark. My belief is that customer support should be a top priority.

Acquisition 121

Acquisition Churn Rate Customer Continuous Deployment 121

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. And we can offer investors metrics to play Moneyball – with the Investment Readiness Level. We think we can do better.

Oakland 326

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 22, 2016

But at least if you’re working on an eCommerce site, you have clear metrics to hit. But many times, they’re dealing with non-financial metrics or competing online goals. Point is, thinking about and discussing this will help you move forward into choosing metrics, setting up reports, and optimizing based on insights.

Conversion 48

Conversion Metrics Analytics Non-Compete 48

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

The team was demoing their AJAX-powered map solution, the first of its kind, to senior management at Google. Lean manufacturing , agile software development , and Theory of Constraints are all examples of this idea in action. No vanity metrics should be looked at. In reality, most quality problems are systemic in nature.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

While the data that you care about will likely differ based on your business type, you can bucket it all under general customer satisfaction metrics. This may be something simple like a test instance of the software or as hands-on as a live demo session. How to choose a CRM for your business.

Management 116

Management Customer Software Review Technical Review 116

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2010

Imagine the “typical&# deal – somebody comes into a VC’s office, they’ve never met, they’re highly referred by a friend and they’re pitching a product demo and a PPT. 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.

Early Stage 360

Early Stage Startup Venture Capital Seed Stage 360

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2018

Most importantly we now have a better idea of how to build innovation programs that will deliver products and services, not just demos. the best presenter and flashiest demo usually win. And we can explain why innovation in large organizations looks nothing like startups.

Programming 320

Programming Incubator Leadership Silicon Valley 320

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

These dynamics harm startups at all stages, because they pressure founders to engage in “success theatre” – trying to make themselves look successful by general management standards by focusing on vanity metrics , product milestones, and whiz-bang demos. And it’s not just investors who are having trouble.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Guy Nirpaz

OCTOBER 31, 2011

And, given the choice of getting it immediately without a salesperson looking over their shoulder vs. scheduling a demo or a pilot that will be designed to hide any flaws, most B2B buyers will choose the former. It’s more educational, more convincing, and more comforting to see the real thing. If the statistics are segmented, e.g,

B2B 51

B2B Customer Algorithm Campaign 51

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

No amount of learning how to get a VC meeting or improving your VC demo skills will fix the lack of concrete customer data. Your presentation doesn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Did the VC’s like your team ? You might as well bring your lucky rabbits foot to the VC meeting.

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Duct Tape Marketing

JUNE 11, 2019

And I later leaned that they actually didn’t want the answer. It’s so alluring to measure what are called vanity metrics. I call these failure metrics. So everybody has success metrics for their projects. Diana Kander: The failure metrics you can figure out much sooner. Diana Kander: Right.

Metrics 61

Metrics Kansas City Small Business Missouri 61

ConversionXL

JUNE 2, 2022

The median figures for each strategy should give you an idea of which program to lean towards. Does your company clearly understand current CAC , LTV, CAC payback period, and other core growth metrics? They haven’t completed a form, joined a webinar, or requested a demo. Typical deal sizes for Programmatic ABM are $50K to $250K.

Customer 98

Customer Marketing Channel Acquisition 98

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2013

Later, they built a web demo to demonstrate the functionality of the PalmPilot product—the idea was to lure people to the PalmPilot project. Then, to their surprise, the web demo really started to take off, and they started to attract a lot more interest in the web product than the PalmPilot product. What do we do?

Lean 167

Lean Silicon Valley Framework Cofounder 167

ConversionXL

MAY 29, 2019

For the SaaS 250, the strongest correlation (0.87) between subscribers and any other key metric (videos, views, channel age) was with the quantity of videos published. Ultimately, the primary success metric for a YouTube channel is subscribers, not views. Briggs narrows the long list down to one key metric: watch time.

Channel 106

Channel Video Audience Software Review 106

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2019

We just finished the 8 th annual Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford. So in 2011, with support from the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (the entrepreneurship center in the Stanford Engineering School), we created a new capstone entrepreneurship class – the Lean LaunchPad. It’s the same, but different. I-Corps @ NIH ).

Lean 248

Lean Business Model Balance Sheet Video 248

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

You don't have an "edge" just because you're passionate, hard-working, or "lean.". Some head straight to the booth to get a demo; for many I give a private demo of the product on sofas in the hallway. On the surface, it's yet another "marketing metrics" company. Like what?? Insider information.

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

What most founders don’t realize is: Every stage of a startup requires a different set of metrics and milestones and founder skills. And thanks to Ann Miura-Ko of Floodgate (my first Lean LaunchPad co-instructor) for her suggestions. It might be a wire-frame, PowerPoint demo or prototype. Number of customers? 2M in 18 months.

Cofounder 429

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

grasshopperherder.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2011

Show Metrics If you ask me to be a co-founder or even just a consultant, you’re essentially asking me to invest in your company with my time. As an investor, I will expect the same metrics an investor would get. Don’t tell me your metrics are a secret and please don’t tell me you have to “look them up.&#

Cofounder 47

Cofounder NDA Founder Sweat Equity 47

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 16, 2012

As we have seen with the recent speed bumps at highfliers like Groupon and Zynga, taking “lean startups” from foundation to creating sustainable, scalable, profitable business models is a very rare and special task. TripAdvisor, in effect, was a model lean start-up with an engineering-driven, product-focused founder. Really hard.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE Software Review Costa Rica Technical Review 54

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. How to stay lean and iterate quickly while you’re building a two sided marketplace, especially when “network effect” and “critical mass” are the two main focuses? 10) Metrics.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Up and Running

AUGUST 12, 2015

You need to think of business planning from a lean perspective, and it’s just enough to get you to the right place. It is lean. Why do I talk about it as being a process, and lean. For the purposes of the demo, we did three years of monthly, because it allows me to go into some detail. That is an old-school plan.

Forecast 60

Forecast Video Business Plan United States 60

Occam's Razor

FEBRUARY 9, 2015

. + Traffic Trends Key Metrics Analysis. Onsite Behavior Key Metrics Analysis. I tend to use Hitwise a lot less, or not at all, because it is a very hard to use, it is slow, the UX/UI, metrics and reports have not really evolved over the years. Traffic Trends Key Metrics Analysis. Visitor/Audience Type Profile Analysis.

Metrics 60

Metrics Analytics Non-Compete Search 60

crowdSPRING Blog

JULY 17, 2015

Content Marketing Metrics You Aren’t Measuring | SEJ [link] crowdspring.co/1KPRXNZ Lean Business Tips: Marketing Channels on the Cheap | crowdSPRING Blog – [link] crowdspring.co/1L8yVm3 Convert a Chrome Timeline data to a GIF (video) demo [link] crowdspring.co/1J2nKa9 Performance + Quality Compared [link] crowdspring.co/1HdLqdw

Small Business 48

Small Business Design Social Media Cuba 48

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

Just as.NET is both a lock-in and very restricting, and Java violates both “lean cuisine class hierarchy” and “objects if necessary, but not necessarily objects”, the “we’ll just use XML” mantra deserves to die. In March 2009, they launched a Beta version and demoed it at FinovateStartup 2009.”

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Lean Methodology Sources. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Part 3- Lean Cust. Steve Blank’s Lean Startup Resources. Lean Startup Circle â?? Startup Metrics for Pirates â?? SaaS Metrics Tutorial â?? Lean project management. Demo Germany. Lean Startup Machine.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53