Steve Blank – 4 Steps of Customer Development Processes

Why Steve Blank and importance of his work to Startup

Mr. Steve Blank is one of the respected and demanded startup educator in the world having started 8 businesses which 4 startups later went public before he became an evangelist of startup education. He is teaching at Standford/UC Berkley and as well works very closely with US government in changing how the startup is built.

One of this students is the publisher of one of most known startup book “The Lean Startup” and have both collaborate together along with the author of Business Model Canvas to accelerate the process of failing and learning from the customer in order to build product people want and need , supported by sustainable business model.

The 4 steps to Steve Blank’s Customer Development Processes

Steve Blank’s customer development processes has 2 key phases (the “search” and the “execution” phase) and each phase has 2 steps. >In the first phase (the search phase), the phases is about “search” for problem/solution by testing the hypotheisis the startup team has initially in order to achieve “product market fit” while going out of building speaking to actual customer with MVP. The startup team will finetune the elements in the business model by turning hypothesis into fact and the processes is known as pivoting in the lean startup world.

Start with “Business Model Canvas Hypothesis”and use yellow stickies (3M sticker) and put on the hypothiese or initial thoughts about the 9 elevements in the

Step#1: (The Search Phase of customer development)

construct and get out of the building to test out hypothese

Step#2: (The Search Phase of customer development)

see if what match customers want (to get PMF)

Step#3: customer creation (The Execution Phase of customer development

Step#4: company building (The Execution Phase of customer development

How Steve has positively impacted the work of iiiNNO

Back in 2014, had the honor to meet Mr. Blank at Microsoft Beijing Accelerator for the launch of Startup Weekend’s new program called Startup Next. Microsoft Beijing Accelerator also supported the launch of Mr. Blank’s books in simplified Chinese where participants of the workshop and fireside chat got a free book.

One of the questions that I had the honor to ask is how to best build an ecosystem and Mr. Blank was kind enough to share despite the risk of getting additional attention in the room.

Q&A Session with Steve Blank @ Microsoft Beijing: How to create a “Silicon Valley” like environment in Asia/China from WizXpand International on Vimeo.

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