by Brant | Sep 12, 2011 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Startups, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
As an early believer in Lean Startup movement, I can perhaps be excused for my unbridled enthusiasm for the release of Eric Ries’ new book, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Not however, for the reasons you might expect.
In fact, some early adopters of Lean Startups — those who have already bought into the framework to the extent that they’ve applied its practices into their high tech startup — might be a tad disappointed. They might have to look a little deeper; there’s no vanity steps to success herein.
by Brant | Mar 15, 2011 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Startups, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
Steve Blank and Alex Osterwalder have combined their respective methodologies, Customer Development and Business Model Generation, into a powerful business model generation and testing framework. There are several good sources for how these two mesh, including this...
by Brant | Sep 13, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Process-Oriented Marketing, Sales and Marketing Roadmap, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
Welcome to the maze of complex B2B sales. Did you think B2B sales was going to be straightforward; based solely on rational, business-savvy calculations? Based on the bottom-line? Most everyone recognizes that the B2C sales process requires appealing to consumer’s emotions. But believe it or not, business buyers, influencers and users are human, too, and thus are not-exempt from emotional decision making. Ego, hierarchy, competitiveness, fear, grandstanding, sycophantry join budget, market share, revenue, profits, risk, time, resources in the sale.
The “Status Quo Coefficient” represents that which you must overcome above and beyond the pain your product solves, in order to make a sale.
by Brant | Jun 14, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Startups, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
Last December, I created the first version of this image, depicting how you might think through your customer acquisition and conversion funnel. In January, I modified the image and added tooltips. In April, a newer, tighter version was released in The...
by Brant | May 26, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, Sales and Marketing Roadmap, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
The consultants came out in droves to weigh in on Steve Blank’s recent post, “Consultants Don’t Pivot, Founders Do.” (Myself included.) Generally, all were in agreement with Blank’s primary point: Founders get out of the building (physically...
by CustDevGuy | Apr 29, 2010 | Brant's Rant, Customer Development, Lean Startup, The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development
Brant and I have finally finished our book, The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany, within which we have included interviews from successful entrepreneurs in order see if their startup experiences mesh...
