Steve Blank Quotes

When you understand your customer base, you have to provide them with what they want.

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.

We basically built a pricing model that surgically identified what people wanted to pay us for and what they didn't want to pay us for. One of the things we figured out early on was that we could create value for people by creating a product that allowed them to design something that they couldn't design without us.

Value Proposition Design is a 'must have' for anyone creating a new venture. It captures the core issues around understanding and finding customer problems and designing and validating potential solutions.

When you're thinking about your next product or current product and wondering how to make it different so you don't have competition, understand the job the customer needs to get done.

You can't just tell your team, 'Think long term.' It doesn't work that way. When you are starting out, you have to always think about trying to build something of value for the customer: something they can use all the time, something of use.

It's easier to build a business around a first-class product, even if it's a more expensive product to produce.

Spend a lot of time talking to customers face to face. You'd be amazed how many companies don't listen to their customers.

We need to reengineer companies to focus on figuring out who the customer is, what's the market and what kind of product you should build.

Our development strategy is based on a deep understanding of our customers. They want high-quality products and good service.

To any CEO who's skeptical at all, you have to create a social enterprise today; you have to be totally connected with everyone who touches your brand.

I don't think my basic business strategy is well known by the public, probably because people think it's too simple. My strategy has always been to try to focus in on a product or service where you can create a dollar of value for 20 cents and sell it for 40 cents.

Our line of business structure has served us very well in the past, when customer segments and product requirements were very distinct.

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.

The best business plans are straightforward documents that spell out the who, what, where, why, and how much.

No Plan Survives First Contact With Customers

Before you can pick a social-media strategy, you have to think of your customer and what the value proposition is for them. Social media is a way to engage customers, not to give your business a 'shout out.'

Face-to-face customer feedback refines or validates every component of the startup's business model, not just the product itself.

Any dispassionate observer would recognize that on Day One, a start-up has no customers, and unless the founder is a true domain expert, he or she can only guess about the customer, problem, and business model.

Part of Customer Development is understanding which customers make sense for your business.

When you spend time with potential customers, you get to hear about their struggles firsthand. You see their eyes light up with excitement or darken with confusion. You learn things you would never find in a survey, database, or questionnaire. You learn why people buy.

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.

Using science to tell us what customers are looking for is second nature for us here.

As an entrepreneur, I've learned how crucial it is to be able to call a spade a spade and avoid falling in love with a particular strategy or product. Instead, you need to let the customer tell you what she needs - and to change her as she changes.

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.