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Why Pioneers Have Arrows In Their Backs

Steve Blank

Over time the idea that winners in new markets are the ones who have been the first (not just early) entrants into their categories became unchallenged conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley. The irony is that in a retrospective paper ten years later (1998), [ 2 ] the authors backed off from their claims. By then it was too late.

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Social Networking (the Shorter Version) Past, Present, Future

Both Sides of the Table

While you dialed AOL to get on the Internet, the goal of AOL was to keep you locked into their proprietary content and thus earned the classification of “walled garden.&# They had a proprietary browser, their own search engine, their own content, chat rooms, email system, etc.

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New Rules for the New Internet Bubble

Steve Blank

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. Carpe Diem.

Internet 334
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Uh-oh! Do you have a “sitcom” startup?

Up and Running

in 1998 and eventually became Yahoo!Store. It’s the poor quality version of HBO’s Silicon Valley. Attracting angel investment and getting ‘Valley’ respect is. At first, Google seemed like a bad idea; there were already several search engines doing what they did. Sold to Yahoo! The difference?

Startup 80
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Nest-ing Data

thebarefootvc

billion acquisition of Nest , a Silicon Valley based company that sells “smart” thermostats and smoke detectors: - Build vs Buy: Even for a company with significant resources such as Google, it is difficult to innovate beyond core products. A few observations from the just announced Google $3.2

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Philosopher Versus MBA

Reid Hoffman

In the startup world, one of the most important parts of building a network for non-technical entrepreneurs is getting to know brilliant engineers and technologists. Network strength is one of the reasons that people who want to build great software businesses have, and will continue to move to Silicon Valley.

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Philosopher Versus MBA

Reid Hoffman

In the startup world, one of the most important parts of building a network for non-technical entrepreneurs is getting to know brilliant engineers and technologists. Network strength is one of the reasons that people who want to build great software businesses have, and will continue to move to Silicon Valley.