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. Part 4 of the Customer Development Manifesto to follow.

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 228

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building.

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 125

SiliconHills

DECEMBER 12, 2014

Other participating in the round were Noro-Moseley Partners, Harmony Partners, Altos Ventures and Capital Factory. The Austin-based startup plans to use the money on office expansion, product development and new vertical markets.

Venture Capital 106

Venture Capital Vertical Austin Social Media 106

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 21, 2009

On the third Wednesday of every month I co-chair a meeting called the SoCal VCA (venture capital alliance), which represents participants from all of the top venture capital firms in Southern California as well as prominent members of the Tech Coast Angels (TCA). What are your predictions for the road ahead.

Technical Review 241

Technical Review IPO Southern California Venture Capital 241

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

Each month, we pick an up-and-coming vertical or theme and do a deep dive (with the help of Mattermark … portfolio plug). In addition to developing our investment thesis, we recognize that VC is still an industry built on relationships. The post Lessons from my first year at Version One appeared first on Version One Ventures.

Venture Capital 162

Venture Capital Portfolio Vertical Technical Review 162

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 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Other advisors provided marketing with industry-specific advice in our initial vertical markets (computational fluid dynamics, computational chemistry, finite element analysis, and petroleum engineering). Some of these advisors from the academic community would work with our of VP of Engineering and help us solve specific technical problems.

Engineer 205

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 205

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Now with a new infusion of $8 million dollars of venture capital, SuperMac had been resurrected from the dead and was attempting to restart. The assets were a series of products already developed and on the market or in the development pipeline. The first step was to recruit a new management team.

Silicon Valley 150

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 150

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 8, 2019

2- Transformative development. 2019 was full of transformative development for Intellifluence. Throughout that development process the marketing team kept pressing, leading the company to 50,000 influencers over the Summer, which made us the largest warm contact influencer network in the market. Lancaster ! #2-

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Technical Review Vertical Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. I began to gain an appreciation of how world-class venture capitalists develop pattern recognition for these common types of problems. “Oh Oh yes, company X, they’re having problem 343.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 126

Austin Startup

JUNE 27, 2017

Austin-Based Venture Capital Firms There are a eleven venture capital firms based in Austin that are actively investing today, six of which are first funds. VC Firms Actively investing in Austin Companies Finally, there are a group of venture capital firms that are not based in Austin that are active investors here.

Venture Capital 54

Venture Capital Austin Texas Private Equity 54

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that.

Vertical 130

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 130

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.

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 123

VC Cafe

MAY 23, 2023

As I mentioned in my post on the LLM Benchmarking , venture capital investment in AI startups was down 43% in Q1 2023. This Open LLM Leaderboard on Hugging Face is a good example of the developer excitement and engagement in this space.

Generative AI 165

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence ChatGPT API 165

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 3, 2011

Finally, for those of you who need some additional infusion of courage, please study the story of Ryan Allis in North Carolina who bootstrapped his company iContact to $1 million in revenue and THEN raised venture capital to get to $40 million. In that case, the verticals of choice could be manufacturing, wholesale and retail.

North Carolina 116

North Carolina San Diego Entrepreneur Balance Sheet 116

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

I’ve been a traditional equity VC for 8 years, and I’m now researching new business models in venture capital. RBI normally requires founders to pay back their investors with a fixed percentage of revenue until they have finished providing the investor with a fixed return on capital, which they agree upon in advance.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

thebarefootvc

AUGUST 13, 2013

These vertical solutions would focus on specific pain pain points in the enterprise, such as logistics or customer relationship management. Client-server has moved to the cloud (dramatically decreasing the cost of software development and deployment), and mobile apps are everywhere. Fast forward to 2013.

Advisory Board 70

Advisory Board Cloud Venture Capital Vertical 70

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.

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 217

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

But builders who see AI as the driving force behind product development and GTM strategy will actually create new markets and experiences that never existed before. Index Ventures also pointed out the potential of generative AI to disrupt vertical SaaS.

Generative AI 78

Generative AI ChatGPT Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 78

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

We worked closely together on this exciting new investment. ** While still very much in its infancy when it comes to development and adoption, a decentralized financial system has the ability to be massively disruptive and important for decades to come. This post was written with my colleague Amit Kumar.

Web 48

Web Silicon Valley Technical Review Artificial Inteligence 48

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

Each month, we pick an up-and-coming vertical or theme and do a deep dive (with the help of Mattermark – portfolio plug). In addition to developing our investment thesis, we recognize that VC is still an industry built on relationships. News investment thesis Mattermark values venture capital' Compassion.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Portfolio Vertical Technical Review 60

Version One Ventures

APRIL 8, 2014

Thus, it should come as no surprise that we are now seeing Venture Capital being disrupted by these forces as well. In his post The Disruption of Venture Capital , Albert Wenger described VC as “the club you had to be invited into.”. Enter Mattermark: where “Big Data Meets Venture Capital”.

Venture Capital 160

Venture Capital Vertical Curation SEC 160

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 185

Version One Ventures

JULY 11, 2013

Every venture capital firm narrows its investment focus one way or another…perhaps by geography, sector, and/or stage. For example, at version one ventures, we’re focused on early-stage (seed and Series A) opportunities in e-commerce, SaaS, and marketplaces/platforms across North America.

North America 147

North America Vertical Venture Capital Early Stage 147

Ben's Blog

MARCH 1, 2011

In my career, I have never seen a position in any industry with more varying criteria than General Partner at a venture capital firm. When we started Andreessen Horowitz, our vision was to build the kind of venture capital firm that we would have wanted to take money from. One night on my knees, here it comes, the prayer.

Partner 78

Partner Technical Review Venture Capital Cofounder 78

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. 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.

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# My advice was to start a policy of making reversible decisions before anyone left his office or before a meeting ended. That’s why startups are agile.

Silicon Valley 302

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 302

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile. You’re not joining a big company.

Cofounder 223

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 223

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Brendan McManus said: “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [link] #startup #advice [.] Your “Customer Development Process&# has really resonated for me. Your results may vary.

Venture Capital 216

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 216

Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

The Customer Development talk can be seen here. That said I will be giving a Customer Development talk at TIECON , Saturday May 16th, 1:30 thanks for asking. steve Customer Development is Hard. Thanks to Dave McClure and Leonard Speiser for the opportunity to speak. It starts at ~40:30 in the video. Order Here. Now In Print!

Customer Development 142

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 142

View from Seed

MARCH 29, 2018

We wanted to learn more about the nuanced industry market forces before applying the same hands-on investing model we do with tech startups in other verticals. We don’t seed companies that are developing drugs or medical devices that will require FDA approval. They can be surprisingly capital efficient.

Vertical 120

Vertical Stealth Portfolio Seed Capital 120

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

We started this week's roundtable with a discussion of all the resources we have brought together over the last three years to help entrepreneurs, including a comprehensive curriculum for entrepreneurship development on a large scale. wants to develop a mystery show. Very cool concept, designed by an energy scientist, upon which J.J.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. Our friends who run the state park surrounding our ranch will join all of us for Thanksgiving dinner. Just a reflection on my family and hopes for our children.

Silicon Valley 140

Silicon Valley Turkey United States RSS 140

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

This product development diagram had become part of the DNA of Silicon Valley. And even more importantly, was there any way to reduce risk in early stage ventures? familiar with Customer Development you should be. It’s very different than the traditional product development model.

Product Development 146

Product Development Developer Silicon Valley Product 146

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. A few successful ones do all these things.

Customer Development 246

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 246

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development | Tagged: Entrepreneurs « Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) Unintended Lessons » 6 Responses Twitter Trackbacks for Let’s Fire Our Customers « Steve Blank [steveblank.com] on Topsy.com , on September 24, 2009 at 7:19 am Said: [.]

Customer 201

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 201

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2011

Second, to share how my how my thinking about entrepreneurship as a distinct practice and how Customer Development as one of its central components has evolved over the last decade. And with the 30-year statute of limitations now passed, stories about who I worked for (and the names of agencies.).

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley California Vertical Customer Development 201