Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

After running Microsoft for 25 years, Bill Gates handed the reins of CEO to Steve Ballmer in January 2000. The best are agile and know how to pivot – make a substantive change to the business model while or before their market has shifted. 16 years later it’s just another software company. Filed under: Corporate Innovation.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

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. August 1995 – March 2000: The Dot.Com Bubble. That requires building a company using Agile and Customer Development. Rules For the New Bubble: 2011 -2014.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

I’m honored to be at a university noted for knowledge, and in a city with 2000 years of history – home of Gaudí one of the 20 th century’s greatest innovators. These Key Performance Indicators and processes are what make a company efficient —but they are also the root cause of its inability to be agile and innovative.

Private Equity 325

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 27, 2014

Institutional venture capital dispensed thus far in 2014 has been up significantly over the last few years, but is still less than half of the peak hit way back in the year 2000 (over $100 billion). Many have disappeared, and others have forgotten how to be agile and innovative. The cost of entry for tech startups continues to go down.

Angel Investor 260

Angel Investor Silicon Valley Startup Portfolio 260

ReadWriteStart

MAY 28, 2013

Blank first started piecing together the concept in 2000 and created The Four Steps to the Epiphany in 2003. A few years later Blank was teaching agile engineering, which is the idea that “instead of building a product in one lump sum, people build it in increments.” The Evolution Of The Lean Startup. The lean startup model is not new.

Lean 60

Lean Startup Technical Review Business Model 60

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 6, 2014

Here’s an example of how they made performance-based compensation work: If someone sold 100 cases in April 2000, and 100 cases in April 2001 (these numbers are unrealistically small for simplicity), their commission would be the same in both years. But the most innovative, agile companies embrace mistakes.

Employee 208

Employee Leadership Technical Review Hiring 208

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

The two decades from 1979 when pension funds fueled the expansion of venture capital to 2000 when the dot-com bubble burst were the Golden Age for entrepreneurs and venture capital firms. During the decade between 1991 and 2000, nearly 2000 venture backed companies went public. Here’s why. Take a look at the chart below. (It

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

ConversionXL

MAY 1, 2017

Reporting in the Harvard Business Review on a major study of growth stalls they conducted, Olson and his colleagues cite the case of the iconic brand Levi Strauss, which hit a historic high mark of sales in 1995, reaching revenue of $7 billion, but then, starting in 1996, saw a decline in sales so precipitous that by 2000, revenue was down to $4.6

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Algorithm Channel Analytics 127

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

He wrote it in 2000, and as far as I know has never updated it. I know plenty of people who prefer more advanced source control system, but my belief is that many agile practices diminish the importance of advanced features like branching. but I have not seen that dysfunction in any of the startups I advise, so hopefully its behind us.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

ConversionXL

MAY 22, 2017

In early 2000, the diffusion of Personal Computers transformed the way users made decisions and the paradigm buyer/seller changed again. SaaS stacks give companies the agility they need to move fast, but often they are the cause of a huge data fragmentation. Valuable customer data is buried in these disconnected tools.

Customer 92

Customer Marketing Artificial Inteligence Clickthrough 92

Agile VC

OCTOBER 23, 2012

And even if they wanted the index return, there is essentially no way to buy (or sell) a broad-based basket of VC funds in the way you can trade the S&P 500 or Russell 2000 or other public equity index. LPs investing in venture hold a subset of all the funds in the VC universe by design (see #4 & 5).

LP 176

LP Accredited Investor Carried Interest Portfolio 176

Hearpreneur

AUGUST 9, 2020

He arrived at the project site as a young optometrist to find 2000 people waiting to have their eyes checked. Our level of solidarity, agility, graciousness, determination and ‘can-do’ during this, continues to inspire me. One of those patients was a 7-year-old boy, carrying a book in braille.

Jordan 79

Jordan Bangladesh India Mexico 79

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 9, 2020

He arrived at the project site as a young optometrist to find 2000 people waiting to have their eyes checked. Our level of solidarity, agility, graciousness, determination and ‘can-do’ during this, continues to inspire me. One of those patients was a 7-year-old boy, carrying a book in braille.

Jordan 62

Jordan Bangladesh India Mexico 62

Agile VC

MAY 26, 2011

Silicon Valley is still emerging from the tech bubble and massive downturn of late 2000-2002. Google is still a private company (their IPO was Aug 2004). is the leading consumer internet company with Terry Semel as CEO. The market size for online advertising, e-commerce, and web premium services are 1/10th to 1/3rd the size they are today.

Term Sheet 178

Term Sheet Silicon Valley Technical Review Social Network 178

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

FEBRUARY 15, 2010

For example, let's say you designed a banner ad for a certain website (cost: $1000) and paid to run the ad for three months (cost: $2000). Here's where you expect me to say how stupid big-business is and how little startups are smart and agile and never make mistakes like that, but that's crap.

Cost 273

Cost Reputation Agile Sales 273

View from Seed

JUNE 17, 2015

My first startup job was as an early employee at PayPal, where I took a job at the end of ‘1999 and started a few months later in 2000. Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on Lee’s personal blog, Agile VC. But I think it’s important to discuss, particularly given today’s heady environment for startups.

Startup 120

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage IPO 120

Agile VC

OCTOBER 17, 2011

What we refer to as the PC era (the ’80s, ’90s, and early 2000′s) was not just the desktop phase era but more accurately a desktop corporate computing era. It was only in 2000 that a majority of of US homes had a computer. In the ’80s a home computer was the preserve of wealthy and upper middle class families.

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley Seed Stage Syndicate Syndication 133

David Teten

JANUARY 28, 2013

Small, agile funds are in an excellent position to take advantage of opportunities in the angel space. All exits occurred between 1990 and 2007—the vast majority after 2000. Even if the methodology is full of holes, it is still useful for generating theories on angel-stage opportunities.

IRR 114

IRR Angel Investor Angel Groups Cofounder 114

Agile VC

JANUARY 21, 2015

But during the year 2000, we went through three different CEOs, fraud nearly killed the company, our revenue was negligible and unproven, and at our worst point, the company was burning well over $10 million a month — A MONTH! We went public in 2002 and eBay bought the company later that year for over $1.5

Cofounder 188

Cofounder Seed Stage Employee PR 188

Agile VC

JUNE 17, 2015

My first startup job was as an early employee at PayPal, where I took a job at the end of ‘1999 and started a few months later in 2000. But I think it’s important to discuss, particularly given today’s heady environment for startups.

Startup 188

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage IPO 188

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 26, 2012

They all went away; they got rolled up in 1999 and 2000 into these too-big-to-fail banking operations," Davidson tells us. You're at a constant level of anxiety, and it makes you more agile and responsive - a lot of good things happen.". They were some great, small banks: Robertson Stephens, Hambrecht & Quist, Alex.

IPO 115

IPO Stock San Francisco Lean 115

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 25, 2020

And I think how you think about that, whether you're a restaurant owner that didn't invest in curbside pickup, what can you do to, I'll call it, hack it or in an agile mindset, how do you think about bringing a way to be able to do curbside and do that well, and not just rely on the delivery folks to be able to support you? Let's go."

Technical Review 148

Technical Review Balance Sheet Texas Austin 148

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

The original Hewlett Packard which made test and measurement products was spun-out and renamed Agilent. Agilent is a $5.8 Technology changes, culture changes, customer needs change, more agile competitors emerge, etc. The remaining company kept the Hewlett Packard name and focussed on computers.

Silicon Valley 164

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 164

Agile VC

MAY 23, 2012

E-commerce accounts for the vast majority of LL Bean’s revenue today ( it crossed 50% in 2010 though was as low as 15% in 2000 ), but because LL Bean is over a hundred years old and started as catalog & physical store retailer we typically don’t refer to it as an internet company.

Internet 182

Internet Silicon Valley IPO Seed Stage 182

Agile VC

JANUARY 21, 2015

But during the year 2000, we went through three different CEOs, fraud nearly killed the company, our revenue was negligible and unproven, and at our worst point, the company was burning well over $10 million a month — A MONTH! We went public in 2002 and eBay bought the company later that year for over $1.5

Cofounder 100

Cofounder Seed Stage Employee PR 100

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. This was possible because in 2000, Donna and Handspring were in an Existing Market. End result?

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Agile VC

JULY 19, 2012

Back in the 2000-2001 timeframe, a flood of LP capital was coming into the VC asset class given the strong returns of the mid-late 90s tech boom/bubble. This is true not only in a firm’s dealings with entrepreneurs but also with it’s limited partners and even within the firm among its partners.

Cofounder 193

Cofounder Limited Partner Early Stage LP 193

Agile VC

JUNE 17, 2015

My first startup job was as an early employee at PayPal, where I took a job at the end of ‘1999 and started a few months later in 2000. But I think it’s important to discuss, particularly given today’s heady environment for startups.

Startup 100

Startup Cofounder Seed Stage IPO 100

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2017

“The future is inherently unpredictable,” insists the small company, spurred on by Lean and Agile mindsets. Of course, the latter is a better failure mode than the former, but both are sub-optimal, and the solution is predictability. Indeed, blue-sky invention and execution are hard to predict.

Government 223

Government Startup Cofounder Technical Support 223

Agile VC

JULY 11, 2012

And while the internet created both tremendous reward and tremendous investment carnage leading up to and after the 2000 tech bubble, it’s created long run disruption of broad sectors of media, advertising, business software & computing, and retail commerce and VCs that missed this shift have faced real struggles.

Silicon Valley 240

Silicon Valley Carried Interest Cofounder Boston 240

Occam's Razor

MAY 2, 2017

The challenge I want to take on is to be specific in the recommendations make, and to share how we can be very nimble and agile. Let your competition be lame and play by 2000 worldviews. You’ll see three consistent patterns in the thinking expressed below. You take advantage of them by living in 2017!

Metrics 141

Metrics Acquisition eCommerce Analytics 141

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

Since 2000 we have passed a number of laws and regulations that are killing innovation in the US. All three of the pillars have been under attack since 2000. September 10, 2009 4:37 AM Dale B. Halling said. Our patent laws have been weakened reducing the value of intellectual capital. . Expo SF (May.

DC 90

DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 13, 2017

Sometimes called “Gen Y”, millennials are the much sought after generation born between 1980 and 2000. Startups must be agile and adapt their value proposition several times until they get it right. Millennials. According to Forbes, 58% of startups successfully figure out a clear market need for what they have.

Small Business 53

Small Business Startup Global Design 53

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

In 2000, new investors bought Iridium’s satellites and network for $25-million, or one half of one percent of the invested capital. Customer Development, Business Model Design and Agile Development could have changed the outcome. The company burned its way through more than $5.2-billion Lessons Learned.

Business Plan 335

Business Plan Customer Business Model Customer Development 335

Agile VC

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

Sarah also points to the vast global wealth that has to get allocated somewhere as well as a small bump in long term average returns, now that the generally terrible performance of funds from the 2000-2002 time frame (after the tech bubble of the late 90s crashed) no longer factor in to 10 year returns.

LP 154

LP Portfolio Venture Capital IRR 154

Agile VC

APRIL 13, 2012

The kinds of places where you have to sign an NDA when you walk in the lobby… When I lived and worked in the bay area (2000-2005) virtually all the startups were down on the peninsula somewhere.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley San Francisco San Jose Startup 185

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2012

2000 – Digital Video Recorders (DVR) like TiVo allowing consumer to skip commercials was going to be the end of the TV business. Ironically, it was Valenti’s skill in hobbling competitive innovation that negated any need for studios to develop agility, vision and technology leadership. DVR’s reignite interest in TV.

Silicon Valley 336

Silicon Valley Distribution Washington Channel 336