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" The goal of listening to customers is not to please every one of them. It's to figure out which customer segments serve your needs - both short and long term. "

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" The introduction of new technology is always disruptive to existing markets, particularly to content/copyright owners who sell through well-established distribution channels. "

Steve Blank

Always

Technology

New

" Companies that acquire startups for their intellectual property, teams, or product lines are acquiring startups that are searching for a business model. If they acquire later stage companies who already have users/customers and/or a predictable revenue stream, they are acquiring companies that are executing. "

" All too often, a corporate innovation initiative starts and ends with a board meeting mandate to the CEO followed by a series of memos to the staff, with lots of posters and one-day workshops. This typically creates 'innovation theater' but very little innovation. "

" Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need. "

" You can get a good handle on a company's culture before you even get inside the building. For example, when companies say, 'We value our employees' but have reserved parking spots, a private cafeteria, and over-the-top offices for the executives, that tells you more than any PR spin. "

" Startups have finite time and resources to find product/market fit before they run out of money. Therefore startups trade off certainty for speed, adopting 'good enough decision making' and iterating and pivoting as they fail, learn, and discover their business model. "

" Customer discovery is the process of translating a founder's vision for the company into hypotheses about each component of the business model and creating a set of experiments to test each hypothesis. "

" The business model is both the starting point and the scorecard for Customer Development progress. "

" A startup is not just about the idea: it's about testing and then implementing the idea. A founding team without these skills is likely dead on arrival. "

" Describing something as the 'Woodstock of...' has taken to mean a one-of-a-kind historic gathering. "

" If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job. "

" Founding a company is a sheer act of will and tenacity in the face of immense skepticism from everyone - investors, customers, friends, family, and employees, to name a few. "

" Customer Development changes almost every aspect of startup behavior, performance, metrics, and, as often as not, success potential. "

" The convergence of digital trends, along with the rise of China and globalization, has upended the rules for almost every business in every corner of the globe. "

" Normally when I have students over, we sit in the house and look at the fields to try to catch a glimpse of a bobcat hunting. "

" If you've never founded a company, rest assured it never happens as elegantly and smoothly as articles in 'Inc.' and other business magazines or case studies suggest. "

" We now understand the distinction between startups - who search for a business model - versus existing companies - that execute a business plan. "

" Only by moving away from the comforts of your conference room to truly engage with and listen to your customers can you learn in depth about their problems, produce features to solve those problems, and learn what drives customers to recommend, approve, and purchase products. "

" What's been missing from regions outside of Silicon Valley is a 'playbook.' In American football, a playbook contains a sports team's strategies and plays. It struck me that every region needs its own industry playbook on how to compete globally. "

Steve Blank

American

Football

" One can make the case that the New York venture capital industry is rooted in the 21st century, not the 20th. "

" Not all new ventures are at the same stage of maturity. "

" The art of entrepreneurship and the science of Customer Development is not just getting out of the building and listening to prospective customers. It's understanding who to listen to and why. "

" At the end of the day, VCs have to provide their limited partners with great returns, or they aren't going to be able to raise another fund. "

" In a web/mobile startup, coding is not an outsourced activity. It's an integral part of the company's DNA. "

" The Lean Startup process builds new ventures more efficiently. It has three parts: a business model canvas to frame hypotheses, customer development to get out of the building to test those hypotheses, and agile engineering to build minimum viable products. "

" As I've gotten older, I've come to grips that the unexamined life is what works for most people. Most take what they learned in school, get a job, marry, buy a house, have a family, become a great parent, serve their god, community and country, hang with friends, and live a good life. And for them that's great. "

" Not all startups are alike. One of the key ways they differ is in the relationship between a startup's new product and its market. "

" For busy young adults, the lure of meal substitutes is simple - it's all about convenience - the level of effort to open a bottle or package is minimal, and the time from thinking you're hungry to eating is almost zero. "

" Failure will happen. It's a normal part of the startup process. "

" First and deadliest of all is a founder's unwavering belief that he or she understands who the customers will be, what they need, and how to sell it to them. "