Comments on: Ardent War Story 6: Listen more, talk less

By: Art vs Product: The creativity motivation spectrum | The Startup Foundry

Art vs Product: The creativity motivation spectrum | The Startup Foundry — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 15:27:02 +0000

[...] the end work looks like from the get go. However, unlike an artist, they should be willing to validate every part of the product, and tear down any part which doesn’t serve their customer’s true needs. They should be [...]

By: Lean Medical Device Startup: Test Your Problem Hypothesis | Jay Caplan on Medical Devices

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 09:11:27 +0000

[...] Blank tells of his experience at super-computing company Ardent: I had needed to ask customers four simple questions. Did the customers know they had a problem? If [...]

By: Andrew Cahoon

Andrew Cahoon — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 21:26:09 +0000

Steve,

This reminds me of my days in Supercomputing at Control Data [Cyber 205] and at ETA [ETA-10]. In fact, I was recruited to join this effort before it was called Stardent – my recollection was that it was being partially funded by Kubota (yes, the Japanese tractor company). I skipped this startup to move on to others….

Thanks !

Andrew

By: Does the Lean Startup revolutionize bootstrapped marketing? | matt daniels

Does the Lean Startup revolutionize bootstrapped marketing? | matt daniels — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 03:34:21 +0000

[...] customers nor running tons of focus groups”–that is, traditional market research [via Steve Blank]. Rather, we’re determining if there are customers to buy the product, potentially one that [...]

By: Chui

Chui — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 03:11:06 +0000

Asking for the order at this early stage must be a very hard thing to do. Nobody enjoys a rejection. Getting to the 4th “Yes” would be an exercise in punishment.

How did you overcome that in your later ventures?

By: Prakash S

Prakash S — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:29:23 +0000

Hi Steve,

1. At what point in time during/after Ardent did it occur to you that you didn’t do Customer Validation?

2. What was the “Aha” moment that made you realize you didn’t do Customer Validation?

Thanks!

By: Tim Pham

Tim Pham — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 16:45:28 +0000

This is gold for any startups. It’s very hard to distinguish between “nice to have” and “must have”, but, as folk said, money talks… that’s the key thing we can all count on.

Tim

By: links for 2009-10-22 « Blarney Fellow

links for 2009-10-22 « Blarney Fellow — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 01:08:21 +0000

[...] Ardent War Story 6: Listen more, talk less « Steve Blank (tags: customer-development product-management startup) Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)links for 2009-08-07links for 2009-10-20The Unraveling of String TheoryTimes Says It Will Cut 100 Newsroom Jobs [...]

By: Alan Commike

Alan Commike — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 00:20:10 +0000

In the early 90′s I was at Landmark Graphics – a company building software for the Oil & Gas industry; one of Ardent’s markets. One day I was wandering around the building and there in a room all by itself was this large rack computer I’d never seen. After asking around a bit, I finally found someone that knew what it was.

It was a Stardent machine, which I’m sure Steve will eventually get to in his story. Ok, so here’s the tie in to this chapter of the story. When I asked what it does, the answer was, “not much, but it spins great teapots”. So they eventually did buy future generations of machines, but those still didn’t fit the need. Years later, we started rolling in multi-rack SGI Onyx machine.

…alan

By: DK

DK — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:57:46 +0000

I think the problem of “talking too much and listening too little” can usually be traced to company culture, starting with CEO. If everything thinks they are so awesome because of their prior and usually unrelated successes, disaster is just around the corner.

By: Customer validation: the four golden questions « Mohammad Al-Ubaydli’s blog

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 23:27:10 +0000

[...] Steve Blank’s blog is awesome but its latest post is very well timed for me: it talks about customer validation. Customer discovery is understanding who has problems that you can solve. But customer validation [...]

By: Twitter Trackbacks for Ardent War Story 6: Listen more, talk less « Steve Blank [steveblank.com] on Topsy.com

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:14:39 +0000

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