Distribution, RSS and Vertical

supermac War Story 1: Joining supermac

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

They had an existing distribution channel and their dealers and customers thought they knew who the company was and what it stood for. When I went through their financials as part of my due diligence I realized that if they ditched their low margin disk drive products, it wouldn’t take much to make them a profitable company. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley

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Lean Startups aren't Cheap Startups

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Lowering/increasing the cost of engineering personnel doesn’t affect this model (although the trend over the last two decades has been to dramatically lower the cost of developing a software product: open source libraries, Moore’s Law, Internet distribution/SaaS are three big drivers). To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

Lean

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Times Square Strategy Session – Web Startups and Customer Development

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Even startups that are dominated by technical risk have the customer validation risk of finding positive ROI distribution in a large market. Let’s not let startups use this as an escape hatch to avoid customer development. Almost all Web startups are dominated by market risk. ““What’s the “Market Type” of your startup?&#

Customer Development

Customer Development Web Developer Customer

Vertical Markets 4: Putting it All Together « Steve Blank

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. would look in each of the verticals. For example, How does sales differ from one market to another? Others you need to know when you execute the plan.

Vertical

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing

Rocket Science 5: Who Needs Domain Experts

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Go spend some time outside the building talking to potential distribution partners. While the Rocket Science press juggernaut moved inexorably forward, a few troubling facts kept trying to bubble up into my consciousness. “No, No, not really, but my partner owns the studio and tells me it’s spectacular and everyone will love it.

Silicon Valley

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Can You Trust Any vc's Under 40?

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Venture Capitalists on your board developed the expertise to get your firm public as soon as possible using whatever it took including hype, spin, expand, and grab market share because the sooner you got your billion dollar market cap, the sooner the VC firm could sell their shares and distribute their profits. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital

The Customer Development Manifesto: Reasons for the Revolution.

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

customers aren’t buying it, the cost of distribution is too high, etc.) Because it isn’t until after first customer ship that a startup discovers that their initial hypotheses were simply wrong (i.e. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Customer Development

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Rocket Science 2: Drinking the Kool-Aid

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

You can be an Independent studio or do “work for hire&# (either a revenue share or buy-out model) - If you’re an independent studio you have a set of choices for distribution channel and marketing models. - We understood none of this. More detail in future posts. steve Twitted by altgate , on July 2, 2009 at 5:22 pm Said: [.]

Silicon Valley

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Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters – Part 2

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Everyone should have a chance to walk the floor looking for deals, technology, distribution, customers, etc. Partnership Opportunities At any show you are attending there has to be tons of opportunity for business to business relationships you hadn’t thought about. These two posts were amazing. Anyways, here’s one question I have.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development

Love/Hate Business Plan Competitions

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

My two cents is that a business plan is the single place to collect your thinking about about your: business model, distribution channel, demand creation plan, financial assumptions, and customer and product development plan. I hate business plan competitions. I now think that was a mistake. I was simply confused about what a plan was for.

Business Plan

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital

SuperMac War Story 9: Sales, Not Awards « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Sales

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas

Faith-Based versus Fact-Based Decision Making « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. One of the key tenets of entrepreneurship is that you start your company with insufficient resources and knowledge. Faith-based Entrepreneurship At first, entrepreneurship is a Faith-based initiative.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California

Closure

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

I responded to their RFP by proposing that Ardent build the Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center a distributed supercomputing environment with hundreds of Ardent personal supercomputers rather than a monolithic Cray supercomputer. And where are we today…distributed computing. I liked to fail fast, move on, and not look back.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California

Startup Tools

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Useful blogs and links for startups Click Here ————– 2. Github - Free public repositories, collaborator management, issue tracking, wikis, downloads, code review, graphs Pivotal Tracker – Agile project management tool that enables real time collaboration.

Software Review

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics

The Leading Cause of Startup Death – Part 1: The Product.

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

After that there’s a discussion of how the product will reach the customer and the potential distribution channel. The distribution discussion leads to some conclusions about competition: who are they and how they differ. The distribution discussion also leads to some assumptions about pricing.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development

Coffee With Startups

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Do you know have they distribute their product? An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.” Some of the conversations went like this: Startup 1 Entrepreneur -“I’m competing against Company x and have been following the Customer Development process and I’ve talked to lots of customers.” Now In Print!

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development

Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 1: Are Those My Initials?

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2009

In the end, the CEO couldn’t get his board to give us the cash in exchange for the Japanese distribution rights and some equity. We ended up raising money from Sega. I heard later that the slide disappeared from his presentation. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Silicon Valley

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Rocket Science 3: Hollywood Meets Silicon Valley « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

So I got out out of the building to meet and understand our customers and distribution partners. I was now a CEO of Rocket Science, and having a great time building the company (more about that in future posts.) To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley RSS California Video

Durant Versus Sloan – Part 1

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Top management was trying to coordinate all of the operating details (sales, manufacturing, distribution and marketing,) across all the divisions and the company almost went bankrupt that year when poor planning led to excess inventory (with unsold cars piling up at dealers and the company running out of cash.) To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development

The Secret History of Silicon Valley 12: The Rise of “Risk Capital.

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Ampex’s first customer was Bing Crosby who wanted to record his radio programs for rebroadcast (and had exclusive distribution rights.) Ampex business took off when Terman introduced Ampex founder Alex Poniatoff to Joseph and Henry McMicking. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Silicon Valley

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