VC Cafe

JANUARY 17, 2024

Both startups and large tech companies leaned in hard, incorporating automation tools and generative AI applications across verticals. Progress in generative AI technologies for video has also be moving very fast, but it’s generally less talked about than text and images, which already have products with wide consumer adoption.

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Generative AI Video Intellectual Property Artificial Inteligence 139

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I set up an advisory board as a vehicle to get these industry experts engaged with the company and product. Other advisors provided marketing with industry-specific advice in our initial vertical markets (computational fluid dynamics, computational chemistry, finite element analysis, and petroleum engineering).

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

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?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Seth Rosenberg at Graylock published ‘ Product Led AI’ – pointing to opportunities for founders building AI-first companies. Undoubtedly, there will be detractors who believe many products are simply features on top of foundational models.

Generative AI 78

Generative AI ChatGPT Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 78

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 22, 2013

Starting a company with a mission and purpose. “[…] the biggest thing I’d recommend is to start a company that’s on a mission, not just a company that’s building a nifty product. If you pick one vertical and do it well, other folks will find you. Building a product like Wunderlist requires a large upfront investment into technology.

Cofounder 164

Cofounder Founder Startup Bootstrapping 164

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities. The board raises a collective eyebrow.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

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. You take your product vision and get out of your building to turn your hypothesis into facts. would look in each of the verticals.

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Simulation to Reduce Invention Risk If you’re in a vertical where “invention risk” is dominant, then you want to do everything you can to manage and reduce those risks. The Customer Development process puts you in continuous contact with customers to test your concept, fail, and iterate way before you actually ship the product.

Vertical 128

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 128

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

While I was consulting for them, I got a call from a recruiter for a company called SuperMac, which made add-on products for the Macintosh. They sold their product through the computer retail channel, something I knew nothing about. The new products potentially looked to be industry leaders if and when they came to market.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 146

VC Cafe

MAY 23, 2023

More and more, established companies are leaning into generative AI by either adding generative AI features to their existing suite of tools or partnering with AI companies (mostly OpenAI or the open source HuggingFace) to launch entirely new products. The company is shutting down its consumer product in early June.

Generative AI 165

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence ChatGPT API 165

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” I gave my boilerplate answer, “I’m a product guy and I tend to invest and look at deals that have measurable revenue metrics. However the Customer Development Model and the Lean Startup work equally well for startups on the web.

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Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

The first few months of my startups were centered around building the founding team, prototyping the product and raising money. This mantra of talking to customers and iterating the product is the basis of the Lean Startup Methodology that Eric Ries has been evangelizing and I’ve been teaching at U.C. I was an idiot.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

And once you have a relationship with an author, musician, or journalist, it will be quite easy for them to offer new products and services – and for you to give them feedback that helps them shape ever more interesting (and ever more profitable) offerings. There are too many products clamoring for attention. Is that a lot?

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Mucker Lab

OCTOBER 12, 2016

Vertical integration of different funding risks. I also believe that the ebb and flow of the venture investment cycle has been exacerbated by the recent vertical integration of early, growth, and even late stage venture funds. The investment thesis wasn’t wrong — it’s just that they bet on the wrong horse.

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ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

Which terms are people using to search for your products? Detail the customer demographics that purchase certain products or services. Next, look at the current state of your market: Who’s interested in your product or services? Where do visitors spend the most time? Which actions do visitors take? Dig into your sales data too.

Advertising 131

Advertising Cost Customer PR 131

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 1, 2023

Be honest with yourself VCs are now going to be looking closer at margins, cost structures and true sales, and product market fit. Lean” doesn’t come to mind when you think of a business that needs trucks, warehouses, cross-docks, and thousands of employees to run efficiently. You’re going to spend A LOT of time with them.

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Early Stage Los Angeles Silicon Valley Cofounder 110

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Never Get Even, Get Ahead With a set of orders from brand name customers, we had growing confidence that we had achieved product/market fit. We were within three months of formally announcing our company and products at a major industry trade show. making use of non disclosure agreement is both expensive and counter productive.

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

An example of a reversible decision could be adding a product feature, a new algorithm in the code, targeting a specific set of customers, etc. An irreversible decision is firing an employee, launching your product, a five-year lease for an expensive new building, etc. These are usually difficult or impossible to reverse.

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Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

According to MDG Advertising , 67% of online shoppers rated high-quality images as being “very important” to their purchase decision, which was slightly more than “product specific information,” “long descriptions,” and “reviews and ratings”: ( Image source ). Joann Peck and Suzanne B.

Stock 71

Stock Software Review Arizona Technical Review 71

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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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? And you’ll still need to have a resilient and agile personality, as new customer and product opportunities will appear and change your work. Can you recognize and capitalize on them? Tenacious – can you keep going when everyone else gives up?

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Lightspeed Venture Partners

JANUARY 6, 2011

Improve the product. Many of the companies had resolutions focused on their product management and development. Ed Baker of Friend.ly , a fun way to meet new people, is focused on driving innovation: Encourage more product suggestions from our engineering team. Internalize culture and values. Stay hungry, stay foolish.

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Stealth Startup Lean Cofounder 60

ConversionXL

JUNE 30, 2019

Ask them to use the words they would naturally use when looking for a product or service you offer. What products or services are offered and for whom? The lean, aggressive ones do. Ask: On a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being “Extremely likely,” how likely are you to recommend the competitor’s product to a friend or a colleague?

SEO 126

SEO Conversion Analytics Design 126

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.

Customer Development 124

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 124

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

A Phone Call After I left MIPS Computers I was in New York tagging along with a friend (a computer architect whose products at Apple a decade later would change the shape of personal computing) who was consulting for a voice recognition startup. Reply Karma in the Lean Startup Era , on January 28, 2010 at 5:26 pm Said: [.]

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

This product development diagram had become part of the DNA of Silicon Valley. Were startups failing because of product failures or was there some other failure mode? Reply Best books for the lean product managers — Justin Gibbs , on April 28, 2009 at 2:44 pm Said: [.] What was the difference here?

Product Development 143

Product Development Developer Silicon Valley Product 143

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. Your board nods sagely at your target customer list. Market Type But most startups aren’t in existing markets.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

ConversionXL

MAY 11, 2017

Ask your customers who else they considered for the same product or service. Ask them to use the words they would naturally use when looking for a product or service you offer. What products or services are offered and for whom? The lean, aggressive ones do. Competitive Usability Investigation. What results show up?

SEO 131

SEO Analytics Conversion Search 131

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. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

While it is “just business,” many customers form emotional bonds sometimes with products, other times with the company itself. In fact, if you’re doing your job right as a startup, you’re encouraging customers to be passionate about your company and products. No discount for existing users? You’ve been an idiot for sticking with us.”

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

crowdSPRING Blog

JANUARY 26, 2015

A key aspect of Lean Management is to work effectively with limited resources and small teams. The recommendations the Task Force produces will be stronger if they are drawn from a variety of outlooks and will tend to be less biased if individuals from different verticals contribute. Lean Business: Pivot Point.

Lean 48

Lean Small Business Vertical Leadership 48

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Austin Startup

OCTOBER 22, 2017

They may have the magic first or second order connections you need as a founder to sell your product or service to your most preferred customer targets. Not all incubators and accelerators are the same, and many have adopted vertical specializations and come packing serious heat from major partners in those verticals.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Incubator Software Review Vertical 48

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

Mike built a white label product that let large publishers leverage text based ads by building their own marketplace rather than using Ad Words. The second phase will be who can get the right combination lean back, lean forward, interaction, enhanced data, and make it fun. ESPN, Forbes, AOL were customers. 37:00-40:30).

Vertical 265

Vertical Curation Boston Burn Rate 265

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (..)

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 14, 2014

According to MDG Advertising , 67% of online shoppers rated high quality images as being “very important” to their purchase decision, which was slightly more than “product specific information”, “long descriptions”, and “reviews & ratings”: Joann Peck & Suzanne B. image source.

Stock 129

Stock Software Review Lead Generation Arizona 129

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Metrics – Mine is Bigger Than Yours The first thing SuperMac needed to do was to change how our potential color desktop publishing customers viewed our products versus our competitors’ products. Over the years marketers have found that using numbers to compare yourself to other products works well.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124