VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

There’s a question on whether all this GPU hogging, and building capacity is not just a bubble waiting to pop, similar to the Telecom crash in the early 2000’s. Index Ventures also pointed out the potential of generative AI to disrupt vertical SaaS.

Generative AI 78

Generative AI ChatGPT Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 78

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter. It did not mean building a startup into a company to flip or hype on the market with no earnings or revenue, but building a company that had paying customers. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Last week the teams were testing their hypotheses about their Customers (who are the users, payers, buyers, etc.) For some of the teams their expectation was if they built the product customers will come. Week 5 of the class.

Customer 247

Customer Cloud EC2 Channel 247

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.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

Technology changes, culture changes, customer needs change, more agile competitors emerge, etc. Over the last 35 years venture capital has funded nimble new entrants (on a scale never imagined by Schumpeter ) who exist to exploit discontinuities in technology or customer behavior. However, no markets last forever.

Silicon Valley 164

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 164

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 16, 2012

As we have seen with the recent speed bumps at highfliers like Groupon and Zynga, taking “lean startups” from foundation to creating sustainable, scalable, profitable business models is a very rare and special task. In founding TripAdvisor, Kaufer wanted to take his hard core engineering skills and apply them to vertical search in travel.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE Software Review Costa Rica Technical Review 54

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

declined Microsoft’s offer (summer 2000) to be the first enterprise software company with a.NET product (a Microsoft employee came back from a follow-up meeting with Allen and said “He reminds me of a lot of CEOs of companies that we’ve worked with… that have gone bankrupt.”). Not close enough to the customer.

Software Review 79

Software Review Startup Technical Review Vesting 79