Steve Blank Quotes

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.

The reality is the Lean Startup method is not about cost, it is about speed. Lean startups waste less money, because they use a disciplined approach to testing new products and ideas.

HubSpot has used the lean startup method to build a spectacularly successful company. What I particularly love about HubSpot is that they are so geeked out on data analysis and making evidence-based decisions, which are at the heart of the Lean Startup process.

The most important thing in startups is getting a product to market, as imperfect as it may be, and then iterating on it and continually making it better. A first rev of a site that has a few typos may not be perfect, but it was the start of something that I deeply believed in.

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.

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

Decades before we were able to articulate the value of 'getting out of the building' and the Lean Startup, the value in having skunk works controlling their own distribution was starkly evident.

For Customer Development to succeed, everyone on the team - from investor or parent company to engineers, marketers and founders - needs to understand and agree that the Customer Development process is different to its core.

Not only is it possible to do lean startup in federal government, but it's the most effective way to drive change in the federal government.

When talking to first-time entrepreneurs, I often ask them: 'How do you know that people want your product or service?' As you can expect, the answer is often that they don't yet, but will know once they launch. And they're right. That's why it's critical to launch as quickly as possible so you can get that feedback.

The Lean Startup has evolved into a movement that is having a significant impact on how companies are built, funded and scaled.

I think the mistake people make most often when they invest in other kinds of startups is they say, 'This is totally different.' And so the things that matter, like making a product that people desperately want, like talking to customers, they throw this out the window. That is a recipe for heartache and tears.

Look at MIT—the smartest people in the world. They start up 50 companies a year. Only 1 makes it.

The biggest problem is startups in search of a problem. Chase what you're passionate about; you'll probably already have knowledge in the space.

Every new startup business creates new opportunities. It doesn't matter whether you have a new app for college students or a home medical device for senior citizens; there are other multibillion noncompetitive corporations that are spending millions of dollars trying to market their goods and services to your same audience.

In their infancy, startups need geniuses who fit their current tight-knit culture and will iterate quickly as they push towards an ambitious vision - and they need a scaffolding of advisors, strategists, early users, and product-thinkers around these savants to guide them.

Build something, make something, test something, sell something. Learn for yourself if your idea is a good one.

The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build-the thing customers want and will pay for-as quickly as possible. In other words, the Lean Startup is a new way of looking at the development of innovative new products that emphasizes fast iteration and customer insight, a huge vision, and great ambition, all at the same time.

Darwinism may be a fine theory in other contexts, but in startups, intelligent design works best.

Because startups often accidentally build something nobody wants, it doesn’t matter much if they do it on time and on budget. The goal of a startup is to figure out the right thing to build - the thing customers want and will pay for - as quickly as possible.

If you look at the Internet, the vast majority of start-ups are not successful. But the ones that are, are very very successful. So you can't point to the unsuccessful ones and say, 'There's no hope for this field.' It's just that they had the wrong idea or they had bad execution.

Start-ups should be hunch-driven early on and data-driven as they scale.

One of the rookie mistakes first-time entrepreneurs often make is to be too guarded about their idea - in fact, many will actually spend their first $25,000 on patent lawyers without ever fully vetting their product.

If opening your own business is the dream, then it must start with a Dream - not only to understand what it is that you want to do, but also, how you are going to build something better than the same chaotic environment you just left.

Now we teach our leaders that it's your job to put in the systems that enable your people to run your experiments fast and cheap and to keep making them faster and cheaper. Yield as many of your decisions off to the experiment as possible.