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The Four Steps to the Epiphany Hardcover – July 17, 2013

by Steve Blank (Author)

4.5 664 ratings

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The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win
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The bestselling classic that launched 10,000 startups and new corporate ventures - The Four Steps to the Epiphany is one of the most influential and practical business books of all time. The Four Steps to the Epiphany launched the Lean Startup approach to new ventures. It was the first book to offer that startups are not smaller versions of large companies and that new ventures are different than existing ones. Startups search for business models while existing companies execute them. The book offers the practical and proven four-step Customer Development process for search and offers insight into what makes some startups successful and leaves others selling off their furniture. Rather than blindly execute a plan, The Four Steps helps uncover flaws in product and business plans and correct them before they become costly. Rapid iteration, customer feedback, testing your assumptions are all explained in this book. Packed with concrete examples of what to do, how to do it and when to do it, the book will leave you with new skills to organize sales, marketing and your business for success. If your organization is starting a new venture, and you're thinking how to successfully organize sales, marketing and business development you need The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Essential reading for anyone starting something new.

Print length

370 pages
Language

English
Publisher

K&S Ranch
Publication date

July 17, 2013
Dimensions

7.5 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches
ISBN-10

0989200507
ISBN-13

978-0989200509
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Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

The bestselling classic that launched 10,000 startups and new corporate ventures - The Four Steps to the Epiphany is one of the most influential and practical business books of all time. The Four Steps to the Epiphany launched the Lean Startup approach to new ventures. It was the first book to offer that startups are not smaller versions of large companies and that new ventures are different than existing ones.Startups search for business models while existing companies execute them. The book offers the practical and proven four-step Customer Development process for search and offers insight into what makes some startups successful and leaves others selling off their furniture. Rather than blindly execute a plan, The Four Steps helps uncover flaws in product and business plans and correct them before they become costly. Rapid iteration, customer feedback, testing your assumptions are all explained in this book.Packed with concrete examples of what to do, how to do it and when to do it, the book will leave you with new skills to organize sales, marketing and your business for success.If your organization is starting a new venture, and you're thinking how to successfully organize sales, marketing and business development you need The Four Steps to the Epiphany.Essential reading for anyone starting something new.

About the Author

A retired eight-time serial entrepreneur-turned-educator and author, Steve Blank has changed how startups are built and how entrepreneurship is taught around the globe. He is author of the bestselling The Startup Owner's Manual, and his earlier seminal work, The Four Steps to the Epiphany, credited with launching the Lean Startup movement. His May 2013 Harvard Business Review article on the Lean Startup defined the movement.Steve is widely recognized as a thought leader on startups and innovation. His books and blog have redefined how to build successful startups; his Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford, Berkeley and Columbia has redefined how entrepreneurship is taught; and his Innovation Corps class for the National Science Foundation forever changed how the U.S. commercializes science. His articles regularly appear in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, The Atlantic and Huffington Post. Blank's first book, The Four Steps to the Epiphany (2003), offered the insight that startups are not small versions of large companies large companies execute business models, but startups search for them and led him to realize that startups need their own tools, different from those used to manage existing companies. The book described a Customer Development methodology to guide a startup's search for a scalable business model, launching the Lean Startup movement in the process.His second book, The Startup Owner's Manual, published in March 2012, is a step--by--step guide to building a successful company that incorporates the best practices, lessons and tips that have swept the startup world since The Four Steps was published. His essays on his blog, www.steveblank.com, and his two books are considered required reading among entrepreneurs, investors and established companies throughout the world.In 2011, Blank developed the Lean LaunchPad, a hands--on class that integrates Business Model design and Customer Development into practice through rapid, real--world customer interaction and business model iteration. In 2011, the National Science Foundation adopted Blank's class for its Innovation Corps (I--Corps), training teams of the nation's top scientists and engineers to take their ideas out of the university lab and into the commercial marketplace. To date, more than 400 handpicked teams of scientists and engineers have participated in I-Corps. Blank also offers a free online version of Lean LaunchPad through Udacity.com; more than 100,000 people have signed up for the class, which is also the centerpiece of Startup Weekend NEXT, a global entrepreneurship training program launched in fall 2012. Steve is a prolific writer, speaker and teacher. In 2009, he earned the Stanford University Undergraduate Teaching Award in Management Science and Engineering. In 2010, he earned the Earl F. Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award at U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business. The San Jose Mercury News listed him as one of the 10 Influencers in Silicon Valley. Harvard Business Review named him one of 12 Masters of Innovation. Despite these accolades and many others, Steve says he might well have been voted least likely to succeed in his New York City high school class. Eight startups in 21 years After repairing fighter plane electronics in Thailand during the Vietnam War, Steve arrived in Silicon Valley in 1978, as boom times began. He joined his first of eight startups including two semiconductor companies, Zilog and MIPS Computers; Convergent Technologies; a consulting stint for Pixar; a supercomputer firm, Ardent; peripheral supplier, SuperMac; a military intelligence systems supplier, ESL; Rocket Science Games. Steve co--founded startup No. 8, E.piphany, in his living room in 1996. In sum: two significant craters, one massive dot--com bubble home run, several base hits, and immense learning that resulted in The Four Steps to the Epiphany. An avid reader in history, technology, and entrepreneurship, Steve has followed his curiosity about why entrepreneurship blossomed in Silicon Valley while stillborn elsewhere. It has made him an unofficial expert and frequent speaker on The Secret History of Silicon Valley. In his spare time, Steve is a Commissioner of the California Coastal Commission, the public body that regulates land use and public access on the California coast. Steve is on the board of the California League of Conservation Voters (CLCV). He is a past board member of Audubon California, the Peninsula Open Space Land Trust (POST), and was a trustee of U.C. Santa Cruz.Steve's proudest startups are daughters Katie and Sarah, co--developed with wife Alison Elliott. They split their time between Pescadero and Silicon Valley.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ K&S Ranch; 2nd edition (July 17, 2013)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 370 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0989200507
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0989200509
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.75 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 7.5 x 0.75 x 9.25 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #923,635 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,077 in Starting a Business (Books)
- #2,247 in Decision-Making & Problem Solving
- #5,579 in Entrepreneurship (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.5 664 ratings

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Steve Blank

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Eight-time entrepreneur-turned-educator Steve Blank is credited with launching the Lean Startup movement. He’s changed how startups are built, how entrepreneurship is taught, how science is commercialized, and how companies and the government innovate.

Recognized as a thought leader on startups and innovation, Steve was named one of the Thinkers50 top management thinkers and recognized by the Harvard Business Review as one of 12 Masters of Innovation.

His Harvard Business Review cover story (May 2013) defined the Lean Startup movement.

He teaches his Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and NYU, among others; and created the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps that is now the standard for science commercialization in the U.S. His Hacking for Defense class at Stanford is revolutionizing how the U.S. defense and intelligence community deploys innovation with speed and urgency, and its sister class, Hacking for Diplomacy, is doing the same for foreign affairs challenges managed by the U.S. State Department.

A prolific writer and speaker, Steve blogs at www.steveblank.com. His articles regularly appear in Forbes, Fortune, The Atlantic and Huffington Post.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5

664 global ratings

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Mark Gibson

Four Steps to Startup Success

Reviewed in the United States on February 27, 2010

Verified Purchase

If you were to interview entrepreneurial high-tech CEO's having just sold their companies, or less than successful CEO's who wound them up, they would provide a great source of information; however their reflections could sound like Tiger Woods at his recent press conference, "Regrets, I've had a few....too few...I mean too many to mention".

Underachievement of potential is an opinion many investors will have reached on exiting their high-tech investment. In a conversation with Nic Brisbourne, investment partner at Esprit Capital Ventures in London last week, we concluded that the principal factors causing underachievement are generally people, not product related and the root cause is nearly always poor sales and marketing execution.

In hindsight CEO's will generally agree that they should have made changes earlier and knowing what they know now, can tell you what they would have done differently.

But what if entrepreneurs had a method or set of best-practices that were proven to create early sales and marketing success in both startups and new product introductions in high-tech companies...would this change the odds of survival and over/underachievement and the value of the company on exit?

I believe it would and am currently reading and absorbing the wisdom and four steps cover knowledge captured in Steven Gary Blank's "The Four Steps to the Epiphany", subtitled "successful strategies for products that win", a book about building successful high-tech companies.

Blank is better known in the US than in Europe, having started 8 companies in CEO or Marketing roles, five of which were IPO's including names you may remember: E.piphany an enterprise software company, Ardent a Supercomputer company, two semiconductor companies MIPS Computers and Zilog and according to Blank 3 very deep craters.

Blank teaches entrepreneurship and Customer Development at UC Berkeley's Haas Business School, in the Colombia/Berkeley MBA program and at Stanford University at the Graduate School of Engineering.

I love this book!; it's the best advice I have ever read in one volume for entrepreneurs. So many times through this book I said aloud, "wow if i'd only known this back then.....

Blank's core thesis in building companies is that there are four discrete stages in the process:
4 steps to the epiphany

1.Customer Discovery - is about finding out if there are customers for your idea and if and what they would be willing to pay for it, before you write a line of code. This must be done by leaving the office and talking to real potential customers and of course this removes the guess work in initial product specification - as the spec. is the founders vision and the mimimum working set required to win first customers (or earlyvangelists as Blank calls them). Customer Discovery removes pricing risk because prospects tell you what they would be prepared to pay and it removes the hiring and market failure risk of alternate approaches, including the popular "build it and they will come" start-up strategy.

2.Customer Validation creates a repeatable sales and marketing road-map based on the lessons learned in selling (not giving it away) to the first early customers. These first two steps validate the assumptions in your business model, that a market exists for your product, who your customers will be, the target buyers, establishes pricing, sales process and channels strategy.

3. Customer Creation builds on early sales success and after completion of Customer Validation. Blank states that customer creation is dependent on the market entry type which is governed by the nature of the product - is it a disruptive innovation or a me-too. Customer Creation strategies define the four types of start-up
* Startups entering an existing market
* Startups that are creating an entirely new market
* Startups wanting to resegment an existing market as a low cost entrant
* Startups that want to resegment an existing market as a niche player

4. Company Building is where the company transitions from its informal learning and discovery
oriented Customer Development team into formal sales, marketing and business development teams to exploit the company's early success.

If you are an entrepreneur or a sales, marketing or business development leader responsible for introducing new products or services, then this book is a must read.

11 people found this helpful

Helpful

Arvind Devarajan

Novel and methodical approach to startups!

Reviewed in the United States on July 13, 2015

Verified Purchase

The book is good and interesting. Steve gets all his experience on the table, and makes a wonderful case for "Customer development" and "Product development" going in parallel. I have been through a launch of a product, and much of what he mentions in the book have also been my reasons for failure - and that's truly insightful! Many of the situations in the book has had happened in my case - primarily because we've been majorly "product development"- centric and worked on "customer development" after the product had reached the MVP state - when we figured out that things don't work the way customers like.

Also, the examples and case-studies in the book are very nice. Some of them, I can already identify with (Eg: SUN's great start), and many I knew not - but still very apt. Postmortem on failures is a very nice way of explaining way to succeed, and Steve does a good job at it!

Some parts of the book becomes a little monotonous to read. I see some repetitions, and some very obscure text. I could actually skip some pages in between, and still get a gist of the chapters. This is the reason for 4/5 stars.

What I would also appreciate is some stories on "success" stories of startups whose founders have read this book, and have actually applied the methods explained in there. Such stories adds that extra supportive information, and first-hand accounts of success based on this book. I believe future editions of this book might contain such stories...

8 people found this helpful

Helpful

Robert Morris

Here is "a radical reexamination of the entire new product introduction process"...and almost everything that precedes it

Reviewed in the United States on November 6, 2012

Verified Purchase

Note: The review that follows is of the Third Edition, published in 2007.

In this volume, Steven Gary Blank introduces and then explains in thorough detail the "Customer Development" model, one that he characterizes as "a paradox because it is followed by successful startups, yet has been articulated by no one [other than Blank, prior to its initial publication in 2005]. Its basic propositions are the antithesis of common wisdom yet they are followed by those who achieve success. It is the path that is hidden in plain sight." In fact, Blank insists that what he offers is a "better way to manage startups. Those that survive the first few tough years "do not follow the traditional product-centric launch model espoused by product managers of the venture capital community." And this is also true of product launches in new divisions inside larger corporations or in the "canonical" garages.

Moreover, "through trial and error, hiring and firing, successful [whatever their nature and origin] all invent a parallel process to Product Development. In particular, the winners invent and live by a process of customer learning and discovery. I call this process `Customer Development,' a sibling to `Product Development,' and each and every startup that succeeds recapitulates it, knowingly or not." Wow! This really is interesting stuff and I haven't even begun to read the first chapter.

Few start ups succeed, most don't, and Blank notes that each new company or new product startup involves (borrowing from Joseph Campbell) a "hero's journey" that begins with an almost "mythological vision - a hope of what could be, with a goal few others can see. It is this bright and burning vision that differentiates the entrepreneur from big company CEOs and startups from existing businesses." Although Blank suggests that the aforementioned "journey" involves a four-step process, it should be noted that not one but several epiphanies or at least revelations can and - hopefully - will occur during that process, one that is multi-dimensional rather than linear, from Point A to Point Z.

These are among the dozens of reader-friendly passages I found of greatest interest and value:

o Customer Discovery Step-by-Step (Page 30)
o The Customer Discovery Philosophy (33-37)
o Customer Discovery Summary (76)
o The Customer Validation Philosophy (82-83)
o Customer Validation Summary (118)
o Customer Creation Step-by-Step (120)
o Customer Creation Philosophy (123-124)
o The Four Building Blocks of Customer Creation (129-132)
o Customer Creation Summary (157)
o Company Building Step-by-Step (158)
o The Company Building Philosophy (162-163)
o Company Building Summary (205)

No brief commentary such as mine can possibly do full justice to the scope and depth of material that Steven Gary Blank provides in this volume but I hope that I have at least suggested why I think so highly of him and his work. Also, I hope that those who read this commentary will be better prepared to determine whether or not they wish to read it and, in that event, will have at least some idea of how the information, insights, and wisdom could perhaps be of substantial benefit to them and to their own organization.

10 people found this helpful

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Amazon Customer

Must-have book for all businesses.

Reviewed in Canada on December 28, 2023

Verified Purchase

There are so many cargo-cult businesses out there simply trying to copy 'winning formulas' There is no winning formula. Don't let your mind be distorted by the length of your purse straps, you absolutely NEED the epiphany.

engata e vai

A edição em inglês é incomparável

Reviewed in Brazil on July 17, 2020

Verified Purchase

Quem quer ler e entender corretamente Steve Blank precisa mergulhar na obra original. A versão brasileira é muito ruim, tem bastante problemas de tradução e algumas coisas ficam incompreensíveis. Essa obra é seminal, é a introdução do conceito do desenvolvimento do consumidor, genialmente bolado por Blank. Esse sistema tem sido responsável pela criação de empresas inovadoras que verdadeiramente entregam valor aos consumidores, algo que o business plan não conseguia realizar. Como diz Blank: "nenhum plano de negócio sobrevive ao primeiro contato com o cliente."

One person found this helpful

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pablo rodriguez

Excelent

Reviewed in Mexico on May 29, 2020

Verified Purchase

Excelente

ADev

Putting customer first

Reviewed in India on December 1, 2020

Verified Purchase

A comprehensive start up manual with guidance on what to focus on and what not to do. A must read for any one in business including people in established companies.

Pablo Fernandez Peña

A must read

Reviewed in Spain on January 19, 2020

Verified Purchase

A must read if you are at the first steps of your startup. Stop and read this book first.

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