Steve Blank

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Is the Lean Startup Dead?

Steve Blank

Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. It helped that in the nuclear winter that followed the crash, 2001 – 2004, startups and VCs were extremely risk averse and amenable to new ideas that reduced risk.

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Why GE’s Jeff Immelt Lost His Job – Disruption and Activist Investors

Steve Blank

After the dot.com crash in 2001 and the financial crisis of 2008, traditional investors who previously held their shares for the long-term — public pension funds, institutional investors and money managers — are now more interested in short-term gains. Large public companies like Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, etc.

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Why Tim Cook is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

Steve Blank

If the Microsoft board was managing for quarter to quarter or even year to year revenue growth, Ballmer was as good as it gets as a CEO. Between 2001 to 2008, Jobs reinvented the company three times. Large companies and their boards live in fear of losing what they spent years gaining (customers, market share, revenue, profits.)

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Why Tim Cook is Steve Ballmer and Why He Still Has His Job at Apple

Steve Blank

If the Microsoft board was managing for quarter to quarter or even year to year revenue growth, Ballmer was as good as it gets as a CEO. Between 2001 to 2008, Jobs reinvented the company three times. Large companies and their boards live in fear of losing what they spent years gaining (customers, market share, revenue, profits.)

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Can You Trust Any vc's Under 40?

Steve Blank

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. There was now a public market for companies with no revenue, no profit and big claims.

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New Rules for the New Internet Bubble

Steve Blank

VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter. With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit. 2001 – 2010: Back to Basics: The Lean Startup. The New Exits.

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How Customer Development Failed Us

Steve Blank

Well, it just so happens that we’ve fitted Ross’s 2001 Subaru with a flux capacitor, gotten our hands on some plutonium and we’re about to hit eighty eight miles per hour! Focus on revenue from day one. Temptation to focus on growth and worry about revenue later. Here’s what we plan to say: Write it Down. Fail Fast and Move On.