Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. The world of building profitable startups as the primary goal of Venture Capital would end in 1995.

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abovethecrowd.com

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Unfortunately, either information asymmetry or physical distances and the resulting distribution costs can both cut against the economic advantages that would otherwise arise for all. Pierre Omidyar founded AuctionWeb in September of 1995, and its rise to fame is legendary. Exchange of Goods Marketplaces.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The Golden Age (1970 – 1995): Build a growing business with a consistently profitable track record (after at least 5 quarters,) and go public when it’s time. Dot.com Bubble ( 1995-2000): “ Anything goes” as public markets clamor for ideas, vague promises of future growth, and IPOs happen absent regard for history or profitability. (If

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Reid Hoffman

MARCH 19, 2019

Finally, and importantly, society is better off because Amazon makes the system for distributing books (and other products) vastly more productive, freeing up resources for other value-creating investments. If O’Reilly had that same insight in 1995, it could have been an amazing blitzscaling opportunity. Plenty of headroom there!

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