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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Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

This preference isn’t necessarily due to market size, but rather the structure of the market: are there only a few dozen customers that might buy your product or are there thousands, or even tens of thousands of potential customers? CTO, VP of HR) in the customer organization. Final thoughts.

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Fractional CTO Software Review Viral Sales Cycle 154

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Nick Kim , Crosscut’s Head of Platform, in his presentation at the 4th Annual VC Platform Summit, shared their Platform development methodology, which he viewed as an exercise in product development. For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. Organize events in your vertical.

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Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

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.

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deal architect

FEBRUARY 25, 2024

Like many other Zoho executives he boasts career longevity and a product development start in the company, He now has a field. For the 113th episode of Burning Platform we host Gibu Mathew, VP and GM, Asia Pacific for Zoho.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

When Sloan arrived at GM in 1920 he realized that the traditional centralized management structures organized by function (sales, manufacturing, distribution, and marketing) were a poor fit for managing GM’s diverse product lines. Think of the iPhone and its yearly new models.). The next year, 1910, trouble hit.

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Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 28, 2022

The name To Tony Productions is a dedication to my cousin and close friend Anthony Ranoiccha III, or Tony, as the family would call him. So when it came time to form my production company, I wanted it to have meaning beyond myself and so it came naturally to name it after Tony as a dedication. 1- Dedication to my cousin.

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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. 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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Version One Ventures

AUGUST 26, 2016

Building an efficient engineering organization takes more science than art and adding an experienced VP of Engineering to your team will maximize your chances of being able to execute on product development in the most efficient way. 5 th hire: VP Product. 5 th hire: VP Product. 2 nd hire: VP of Finance.

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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.

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Generative AI ChatGPT Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 78

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.

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Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Berkonomics

JANUARY 3, 2013

Sometimes, products are designed to make all of their profit upon the recurring revenues from supplies or support. We immediately recall the razor and blade analogy to illustrate the point when planning product development and release.

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Revenue Software Review Vertical Valuation 79

The Equity Kicker

SEPTEMBER 27, 2013

Jeff Richards of US VC fund GSV Capital has a good post up today: Content, Community and Commerce: Why Verticals Win. His investment thesis is that vertical platforms combining content, community and commerce will make great investments over the next period, and he cites existing portfolio companies including Houzz as good examples.

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eCommerce Community Silicon Valley Vertical 109

SiliconHills

DECEMBER 12, 2014

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

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Lightspeed Venture Partners

JANUARY 6, 2011

Improve the product. Lisa Marino of RockYou , a leading developer of social games and advertising solutions for social media, is focused on building a great team with more gaming DNA to improve the quality of the games it publishes: Make RockYou the place talent wants to be. Internalize culture and values.

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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.

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Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Once the product begins to ship, startup sales execs use orders and revenue as its marker of progress in understanding customers. Freemium models have their own scorekeeping.) What plan says that?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

In addition, I’ve noted a few multi-product lending firms, e.g., Kapitus and United Capital Source , which provide RBI as one of many structural options to companies seeking capital. . We have a special program if you are pre-seed and need product development. Alternative Capital. “ You qualify if you have $5k+ MRR.

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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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Version One Ventures

NOVEMBER 29, 2016

This is why it was so great to hear from Indiegogo co-founder Slava Rubin on how Indiegogo grew by 1) expanding into different verticals and 2) expanding into different products. Expand into different verticals. Don’t spread across verticals too fast. Expand into different products.

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San Francisco Vertical Equity Cofounder 60

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.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

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 (..)

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Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

If you’re building a startup, you’re likely to be in one of these two situations: Launching and selling a new product that nobody’s ever heard about, and probably don’t even know they need, or… Improving an existing product or service, which means that you’re going head on against someone with more traction, people, and money than you.

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Version One Ventures

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

The first startup, a vertical SaaS company, wondered if they should bring someone on board to run their paid search marketing campaigns or outsource it to an agency. The second startup was struggling to find good mobile developers and debated outsourcing their mobile app development to an agency.

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The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 10, 2019

So you’ve started a business: you’ve made a great product, achieved product-market fit and have an extraordinary road map laid out. But to build a scalable business you need more than just product-market fit. There’s more to your business’s success than how great your product is.

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Version One Ventures

NOVEMBER 22, 2016

We’ve written about the rise of the vertical reputation graph and how the enterprise is still a nascent area for collaboration. Unlike code where version control of text is relatively straightforward, product and design IP is locked up in inaccessible file formats (binary). We don’t need more visual tools.

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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. This post describes such a model.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

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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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Hunter Walker

JUNE 14, 2018

“Vertical Expertise” – More hands and minds around the industry maze they’re traversing. Hiring, org structure, product development philosophies and so on. The answers I receive typically fall across four categories: 1.

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Cap Table Portfolio Vertical Reputation 81

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? End result?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 7, 2013

Over the last 3 decades, IT has evolved from providing infrastructure and hardware to a more strategic role that is intimately woven with business verticals as shown below: - 1980s to 1990s: Servers, Storage, and Communications Infrastructure. Macro Trend 3: IT “Tuned” for Industry.

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The Startup Magazine

FEBRUARY 16, 2022

He has a wealth of experience in the data vertical, having served in previous roles at companies such as Intel, AllScripts, and Vision.bi. In his 17-year career, Rosenberg has developed key insights into the minds of CFOs and FP&A teams, with strengths in both customer-facing leadership and data analytics itself.

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Hiring Software Review Customer 136

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 21, 2020

That’s the mission driving products like Hemafuse , one of 50 finalists for SXSW Pitch 2020. Sisu is currently expanding its product portfolio and geographic scale to develop additional cutting-edge, patented, clinically proven medical devices, and to create a system for medical device commercialization in emerging markets.

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www.informationarbitrage.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Selecting value-added angel investors and advisors can also help with the camaraderie issue, as they can provide advice and counsel during the solitary period of hard-core coding and product development. By the time this point has been reached, the focus has ceased to be the technology and the product, but on organization.

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crowdSPRING Blog

SEPTEMBER 21, 2014

Companies that keep the focus on their clientele build better products, offer better service, and experience stronger organic growth than those that, well, do not. This applies whether the focus is on product development, strategy, hiring, or positioning in the market. Disciplined. Focus equals discipline.

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Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 30, 2017

In the earliest stages, these skills relate to what any good founding team should bring to the table — an acumen for business strategy and product development coupled with great engineering. Starting and scaling a company requires execution, and execution requires skills.

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Up and Running

MAY 13, 2015

In the webinar, Lara offered some excellent time management tips and productivity hacks. Watch the webinar below: Read the transcript below: Jonathan: We’re so happy and excited to have Lara with us to share some of her time management tips and productivity hacks. We may be actually quite productive most of the time.

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