Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 238

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” However the Customer Development Model and the Lean Startup work equally well for startups on the web. Yet some startups such as Biotech don’t have market risk, instead they are dominated by technical risk.

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building. luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building. Now In Print!

Customer Development 124

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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. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 179

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Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Was SuperMac attempting to introduce radically new products and create a new market ? Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? No, not really.

Silicon Valley 141

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. After more customer interviews, we have shifted our market type hypothesis to- entering an existant market. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 137

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Ardent would be my third technology company as a VP of Marketing (Convergent Technologies and MIPS Computers were the other two.) I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” It would be the company where I actually earned the title.

North Carolina 125

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Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Blog at WordPress.com.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. But make sure it fits who you are. a comment » Yet another brilliant post from Steve Blank, this time about what it takes to found, co-found, or work in a startup at various stages of [.] To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Blog at WordPress.com.

Cofounder 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. what Market Type is your startup? The next thing you need to do is match your sales team with your market type.

Technology 138

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 125

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

Two years out of the Air Force, serendipity (which would be my lifelong form of career planning) found me in Silicon Valley working for my first company: ESL. But part of his life that that doesn’t even merit a Wikipedia entry is that Bill Perry used Silicon Valley to help end the cold war.

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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. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. But at times it’s why entrepreneurs can sink their own companies.

Customer 195

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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. Ultimately you want to see if you can find customers and a market for the product as specified – as early as possible. Technology?

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. Market Type But most startups aren’t in existing markets. Your board nods sagely at your target customer list.

Silicon Valley 131

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

To do this they have to accomplish five things; 1) get deal flow – via networking and legwork, they identify likely industries, companies and teams with the potential for rapid growth (less than 10 years), 2) evaluate those companies and teams on the basis of technology, market opportunity, and team.

Silicon Valley 217

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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. Since my class was using the Customer Development text, I updated this diagram on to reflect in which markets the process was appropriate.

Vertical 128

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The Startup Magazine

JUNE 1, 2023

By Daniel Sokolovksy, Co-Founder and CEO, WARP and Troy Lester, Co-Founder and CRO, WARP The dissolution of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was more than just a bank collapse, it was a reality check for both startups and the VCs that fund them. Hire versatile players and lean into your team The SVB collapse reminded us that staffing matters.

Early Stage 109

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Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

I remember after a month or two of talking to 14-22 year old male gamers (our potential target market,) I realized that for the first time in my career I had no emotional connection to my customers or channel partners. There couldn’t have been a worse choice for CEO in Silicon Valley. I was in the entertainment business.

Silicon Valley 139

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

At the same time we were educating the press , we began to educate our own marketing department about what exactly we were supposed to be doing inside the company. During the first few weeks I asked each of my department heads what they did for marketing and the company. Titles are not the same as what your job is. This is a big idea.

Silicon Valley 259

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

We had thought really hard about “ market type ” and decided to reposition the company from a technology provider to a solutions provider. Over the years marketers have found that using numbers to compare yourself to other products works well. Now as VP of Marketing, I could have sat back and let my PR agency handle the press.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Our first question was, did the total number of customers that had already bought products from our competitors and us represent a saturated market or the tip of the iceberg? In other words what was the Total Available Market (TAM) and how much of the market had been already served? First, I presented what I had learned.

Silicon Valley 134

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

This is the first way to get video into a computer, we’re going to sell and market this board like there’s no tomorrow. That’s every marketeers excuse for putting their kids in an ad.) Marketing knew who the Spigot customers were; we had all the registration cards and all the data. It was fun watching it happen.

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Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

If you read only one previous post, read this one (or this one.) ————- The Birth of Entrepreneurship in The Hot Cold War Silicon Valley entrepreneurship was born in the middle of a secret war with the Soviet Union. Microwave Valley was about to take off. military, the CIA and the National Security Agency.

Silicon Valley 153

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

If you’re in markets that still exhibit at them (semiconductors, communications, enterprise software, etc.,) ———— T o: Marketing Department From: Steve Subject: Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters Generating Leads Ownership If your company is going to a show to generate leads, then sales owns the show. .

Silicon Valley 128

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Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

What’s Marketing? But the one group that had me stumped was something called “marketing.&# &# Explain it to me again,&# I’d ask. One day I heard there was an opening in the marketing department for a product marketing manager for the Z-8000 peripheral chips. In reality it would be another 20 years.)

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Maybe It’s Me When I got to the SuperMac, our Marketing Communications group told me about our “award-winning&# retail packaging for our graphics boards. Her packaging class was so good that we sent every new marketer at SuperMac to take it. Yet when I saw our retail package, I was confused.

Sales 120

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. How did Silicon Valley start?

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Now, helping potential customers discover new things they might like is the job of the discipline of marketing. But that job is changing dramatically, and this brings us to the next major problem facing traditional media organizations: Media companies are failing at marketing. There are too many products clamoring for attention.

San Francisco 113

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

sgblank Lean Startup Cirle 111909 This movie requires Adobe Flash for playback. I also like the segment on characterizing your market. and I am not sure if that is (a) a new market or (b) a segment of the existing market for energy. Big thanks for the continued sharing, and certainly the link to Lean Startups.

Customer Development 212

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 212

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

No building, no money, no customers, no market? These customer and market risks need to be translated into facts as soon as possible. In this light, can we always trust facts, particularly for new-market products? Is there an existing market or not? You process your customer data differently depending on market type.

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 212

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 21, 2010

The Churchill Club , Silicon Valley’s largest public affairs organization, invited Carl Schramm , president and CEO of the Kauffman Foundation and I to talk about entrepreneurship. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Translation: They write checks for $100 Million dollars a year.) Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 140

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe 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. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Eighty some pages later I realized that a) I had some great war stories as a good marketeer and failed CEO, b) I’d have to pay my wife and kids to read them, c) the three of them were probably the entire total available market, and d) when I looked at what I had done and what other entrepreneurs had done at their startups, that there was a pattern.

Redemption 126

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ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

Yet, this was a successful growth marketing campaign. In this article, you will learn how growth marketing compares to traditional marketing and its key components. You’ll also learn how to apply growth marketing to five key channels and how to plan and execute experimentation. What is growth marketing?

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Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

If you’ve never seen Eric’s Lean Startup presentation, take a few minutes to at least watch his part. If you’ve never seen Eric’s Lean Startup presentation, take a few minutes to at least watch his part. « Market By Numbers - Brant Cooper , on May 5, 2009 at 3:55 pm Said: [.] Now In Print!

Customer Development 139

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 139