Description:
More than 100,000 entrepreneurs rely on this book for detailed, step-by-step instructions on building successful, scalable, profitable startups. The National Science Foundation pays hundreds of startup teams each year to follow the process outlined in the book, and it's taught at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and more than 100 other leading universities worldwide. Why?
The Startup Owner's Manual guides you, step-by-step, as you put the Customer Development process to work. This method was created by renowned Silicon Valley startup expert Steve Blank, cocreator with Eric Ries of the "Lean Startup" movement and tested and refined by him for more than a decade. This guide will help you:
● Avoid the nine deadly sins that destroy startups' chances for success
● Use the Customer Development method to bring your business idea to life
● Incorporate the Business Model Canvas as the organizing principle for startup hypotheses
● Identify your customers and determine how to "get, keep and grow" customers' profitably
● Compute how you'll drive your startup to repeatable, scalable profits.
Brief description: Bob Dorf founded his first startup at age twenty-two and, since then, six more-"two homeruns, two base hits, and three great tax losses in all," as he puts it. He's advised and/or invested in at least twenty other startups since. Dorf is often called the "midwife of Customer Development," having been among the first to help Steve Blank deploy it when Steve's eighth startup, E.piphany, opened its doors with five employees in 1996. Bob's sixth startup, Marketing 1to1, helped E.piphany engage its very first customers. He later critiqued the early versions of Steve's Four Steps to the Epiphany mercilessly along the way, and they've been friends and colleagues ever since. When Bob and Steve aren't writing, he runs the K&S Ranch consultancy. Bob's deep experience consulting to Fortune 500 companies and in online marketing balance Steve's VC and software-centric experience. Bob teaches a full-semester course at Columbia Business School, "Introduction to Venturing," on Customer Development and getting startups right. Entrepreneurial from the age of twelve, Bob received his last W-2 almost forty years ago, when he quit his editor's job at New York's WINS Radio to launch his first startup. Dorf+Stanton Communications, founded in his living room, grew from a staff of two-Bob and a St. Bernard-to 150+, when Bob sold it in 1989. He's counseled dozens of nonprofits probono on "donor development," as well. Bob cofounded Marketing 1to1 (later Peppers & Rogers Group), an early CRM strategy firm, and drove its growth to 400+ people worldwide. As founding CEO, Dorf spearheaded major strategic customer programs at a veritable "who's who" of companies including 3M, Bertelsmann, Ford, HP, Jaguar, NCR, Oracle, and Schwab. He's spoken before scores of US and international audiences, and published dozens of articles including an indepth Harvard Business Review treatise. Dorf lives in Stamford, Connecticut, with his wife, Fran, a therapist and thrice-published novelist. His proudest startup by far is daughter Rachel, a psychologist who recently cofounded Bob's first grandchild, Maya Rose Gotler.