1. Everything you knew about starting a company is wrong. And how to do it right. Steve Blank Stanford School of Engineering www.steveblank.com Twitter: sgblank

2. More startups fail from a lack of customers than from a failure of product development

3. Traditional Product Introduction Concept Product Dev. Alpha/Beta Test Launch/ 1st Ship

4. Traditional Product IntroductionHas Two Implicit Assumptions Customer Problem: known Concept Product Dev. Alpha/Beta Test Launch/ 1st Ship Product Features: known

7. Hire Sales VP

8. Hire 1st Sales StaffSales

10. Hire Sales VP

13. Hire Sales VP

16. Waterfall Development

17. Q/A

19. Waterfall / Product ManagementExecution on Two “Knowns” Requirements Product Features: known Design Implementation Verification Customer Problem: known Maintenance Source: Eric Rieshttp://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com

20. This is A Plan For Failure Customer Problems and Product Features are hypotheses Sales & Marketing costs are front loaded focused on execution vs. learning & discovery First Customer Ship becomes the goal Execution & hiring predicated on business plan hypothesis Heavy spending hit if product launch is wrong Financial projections assume success = You don’t know if you’re wrong untilyou’re out of business/money

21. An Inexpensive Fix Focus on Customers and Markets from Day One How?

22. Traditional Product Introduction Concept/Bus. Plan Product Dev. Alpha/Beta Test Launch/1st Ship Customer Development Company Building CustomerDiscovery CustomerValidation Customer Creation Customer Development

23. Agile Development Waterfall Product Development Require-ments Design Implement Verify Maintain Agile Product Development

24. Lean StartupCustomer Problem + Product Features are Unknown Problem: Unknown Solution: Unknown Source: Eric Rieshttp://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com

25. Customer Development CustomerDiscovery Company Building CustomerValidation Customer Creation Pivot The founders Get the heck Out of the Building ^

27. Test hypotheses I.e. problem and product concept

28. Validation

29. Build a repeatable and scalable sales process

30. Creation

31. Scale via relentless execution and fill the sales pipeline

32. Building

35. PassionateEarlyvangelists?

37. Iteration without crisis

39. Minimum feature set speeds up cycle time

41. $’s for scale

48. Can grow to $100m/year

49. Business model found

50. Focused on execution and processScalable Startup

52. Can grow to $100m/year

53. Business model found

54. Focused on execution and process

56. Typically needs risk capital

58. i.e. Product/Market fit- Repeatable sales model - Managers hired What’s A Startup? A Startup is the organization used to search for a scalable business model

60. Professional Mgmt

61. Process

63. Why Startups Aren’t Run By Accountants

65. Repeatable sales model- Managers hired

67. Product/Market fit- Repeatable sales model - Managers hired

69. Cash Flow Statement

71. Viral coefficient

72. Customer Lifetime Value

73. Average Selling Price/Order Size

74. Monthly burn rate

76. Cash Flow Statement

78. Scalable

79. Price List/Data Sheets

81. Pricing/Feature unstable

82. Not yet repeatable

83. “One-off’s”

85. Scalable

86. Price List/Data Sheets

88. Feature Spec’s

89. Competitive Analysis

91. Feature Spec’s

93. Minimum Feature Set

94. Pivots

96. Waterfall Development

97. QA

99. Waterfall Development

100. QA

102. Continuous Learning

103. Self Organizing Teams

104. Minimum Feature Set

106. Known features for line extensions

107. Known customers/markets

109. Unknown feature set

110. Unknown business model

111. Model found by iteration

112. Plan describes “knowns”

113. Known features for line extensions

114. Known customers/markets

116. Product/Market fit- Repeatable sales model - Managers hired You failif you remain a startup!

117. I Wrote This

118. I Write a Blog www.steveblank.com

119. Thanks www.steveblank.com