Creating Startup Success – Customer Development + Business Model Design | Hacker News Reader

Creating Startup Success – Customer Development + Business Model Design

steveblank.com

54 pointsedanm10 comments

I liked this description from slide 13 the second presentation: "a startup is a temporary organization used to search for a scalable business model"

Steven also said this live on Startup Lessons learned conference, a few months ago: http://www.justin.tv/startuplessonslearned/b/262670582

I predict it will become a buzz-phrase in Startup Land within the next couple of months.

cf. also Mike Maples comment on the importance of being able to draw your Biz Model with arrows in (revenues) & out (expenses) later in this vid: http://vimeo.com/16098382 (Edit: from 8th mn on). Imo, there is a lot written about "lean startup", to keep my head clear, I keep in mind: 1/Steve Blank's Customer Development (aka PG "go to your users"), 2/ testing, drawing your biz model (like explained by M. Maples), 3/Listening, being flexible, ready to (biz model) pivot (vs simple iterations) when evidence adds up [edit] 4/going to Product Market Fit. If anything simple to remember/execute on let me know.

I bought this book off of B&N.com while I was in India (well, I'm still here). I can't wait to get home and read it. Although I haven't created anything from the ground-up yet, books and messages like this are empowering.

Great presentation. I just bought the book from Amazon.

I hope the slides are in the book because I couldn't download them through Slideshare:

"The file is damaged and could not be repaired."

fyi http://www.alexosterwalder.com/ site of Alexander Osterwalder who focuses on bizmodel innovation.

The biz model blocks from the slide deck are explained in great details (about 60 pages), and the rest is case studies and various ways of visualizing and brainstorming parts of a business. It's well worth the read and has become my primary way of explaining and thinking about businesses.

It doesn't cover validation or customer discovery, or the startup process at all (you'll find it generally has a more corporate feel). Most of that stuff from the deck has been developed from recent meetings between Blank & Osterwalder along with the work of a few others (e.g. Ash Maurya).

Don't build your company, until you've verified your Business Model

Amusing presentation but it smells like some corporate point of view. I'd remove the word "startup".

Anyway how do you figure out your business model if you haven't even created a product?

Steve Blank has written pretty extensively on this - the point of a startup is to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. The business model and product are fluid and change in response to feedback from potential customers. He calls it the "Customer Development" model.

By "Don't build your company, until you've verified your Business Model", he means don't build out an entire company around a business model that hasn't been through the customer development process.

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