Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

the “schedule fantasy factor,”) or his eleven rules of supercomputer design but also a real appreciation for how a technical visionary thinks. (I Reply steveblank , on October 5, 2009 at 2:08 pm Said: Chris, Ben was the founding VP of Engineering at Ardent. Wasn’t he a CTO or something? (He

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Posted on September 14, 2009 by steveblank Over the last 30 years Wall Street’s appetite for technology stocks have changed radically – swinging between unbridled enthusiasm to believing they’re all toxic. 2009 – Back to The Future The bad news is that since the bubble most VC firms haven’t made a profit. So what’s left?

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.) Computer hardware companies were faced with their customers asking for low-cost (relatively) desktop computers they had no experience in building.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Blog at WordPress.com.

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Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

Reply John Muldoon , on July 9, 2009 at 1:52 pm Said: This was really fabulous to watch. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building. How do I get in the room next time? Blog at WordPress.com.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. Reply gvb , on November 26, 2009 at 10:20 am Said: “Hopefully we won’t run into any wildlife bigger than us (other than our assortment of rattlesnakes, rabbits …).&#

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development | Tagged: Entrepreneurs « Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) Unintended Lessons » 6 Responses Twitter Trackbacks for Let’s Fire Our Customers « Steve Blank [steveblank.com] on Topsy.com , on September 24, 2009 at 7:19 am Said: [.]

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

In less than a month they designed a low-cost video-capture board that plugged into the Mac and allowed you to connect a video camera and VCR. Reply justingibbs , on May 11, 2009 at 11:29 am Said: Speaking of novelty, do you think Twitter could be the same? Reply steveblank , on May 11, 2009 at 4:07 pm Said: No.

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Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. For example, complex new semiconductor architectures, (i.e.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

Not surprising with a CEO with a PhD in Math, at ESL the engineers ran the company, pursuing bleeding-edge designs in antennas, receivers and microwaves – at times hand in hand with Stanford’s engineering department. could design and produce, and a good part of it was coming from Silicon Valley.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? Platform selection and technical design - if your business strategy is to create a low-burn, highly iterative lean startup, youd better be using foundational tools that make that easy rather than hard.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

The design was actually a negative drag on selling anything off a retail shelf. From grumbling skeptics, they all became packaging design converts. And for sure they were never going to win any design awards. We were on the bottom row – with an invisible box. We labeled this our “Black Hole of Packaging&# strategy.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog. Greetings from Crete, Greece Reply Jerry Ji , on April 10, 2009 at 11:09 am Said: Simply _THE BEST_ war story I’ve read in months. Reply How to close a term sheet quickly - Venture Hacks , on April 28, 2009 at 10:43 am Said: [.] The Sharp End of the Stick?

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Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

I distinctly remember this is the first time I head the phrases “features and benefits.&# And since I saw our ads (but didn’t quite understand them,) I knew marketing was the group that designed them, somehow to get customers to think our products were better than Intel and Motorola’s. But Intel was kicking our rear.

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

We talked about some simple design rules and I remember him thanking me for coming, saying we were the only chip company who cared enough to call on him (little did he know.) Long gone from Zilog I saw the picture of the original Macintosh design team. I thought nothing about the meeting until years later.

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Blog at WordPress.com.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

» 8 Responses Strategy versus Relentless Tactical Execution « Yet Another VC Blog , on April 2, 2009 at 6:19 am Said: [.] Reply Dave Goulden , on April 2, 2009 at 9:55 am Said: Thanks for the great stories! The numbers were in. Overwhelmingly. What a surprise.) Go ahead and spill the beans!

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Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Would love to read that whole thing at one go… Reply Alvin , on March 21, 2009 at 7:02 pm Said: Great stuff! Reply steveblank , on March 23, 2009 at 12:11 am Said: Alvin, you can buy the book online at [link] They ship to the Philippines. And why have you split this into so many parts?

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

So they systematically designed electronic devices called “jammers&# to shut down each part of the German air defense system. This post makes a lot more sense if you look at the earlier posts as well as the video and slides. Chaff used 3/4′s of all the aluminum foil in the U.S. invention of electronic warfare, part I and [.]

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Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Our company’s graphics boards were designed to speed up a key part of the Macintosh graphics operating system called QuickDraw. Getting B-52s through the Soviet Air Defense System » 20 Responses brantcooper , on March 26, 2009 at 3:52 pm Said: Great story, Steve. Glad to see you blogging!

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Source: Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation (in constant 2009 $’s) We’ll Do Great in the Next War Early in 1950, just months before the outbreak of the Korean War the Office of Naval Research asked Fred Terman to build an Applied electronics program for electronic warfare. military to rearm and mobilize.

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Someone from your company has to be designated the official competitive intelligence officer for this show. Someone from your company has to be designated the opportunity monitor, responsible for coordinating potential partner information and disseminating it in writing after the show. One of them is a loser.

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www.subelsky.com

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

Mike Subelskys Blog Wednesday, November 11, 2009 Lean startup tools for Rails apps A few months ago I was invited to dinner with the Geeks on a Plane crew when they stopped in Washington, and had the opportunity to meet one of my heroes, Eric Ries , author of the Startup Lessons Learned blog. November 30, 2009 11:09 AM Anonymoussaid.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

sgblank Lean Startup Cirle 111909 This movie requires Adobe Flash for playback. Reply Joe , on November 23, 2009 at 4:39 pm Said: This is an awesome post and I really appreciate the availability of the slides as well as the video. They were kind enough to sponsor a meet-up in San Francisco. The slides below go with the video.

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andrewchenblog.com

MARCH 10, 2010

However, there’s the other side of the coin, which is the product design. After you’ve added a ton of new features and stuck them all on the homepage, you create Product Design debt. Arguably, MySpace is a company that never paid down their product design debt, and their traffic has been impacted as a result.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. A few successful ones do all these things.

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Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

If you’ve never seen Eric’s Lean Startup presentation, take a few minutes to at least watch his part. Reply steveblank , on May 2, 2009 at 1:25 am Said: Your welcome. alancommike , on May 2, 2009 at 11:59 am Said: I’m glad the the presentation was recorded. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The slides are here.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

Reply Jamie Stephens , on June 5, 2009 at 1:17 pm Said: Great article. Reply Donna White , on June 6, 2009 at 1:40 am Said: I found this post through a comment on Fred Wilson’s blog. Reply faith and reason and startups « ginsudo , on June 6, 2009 at 11:23 pm Said: [.]

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. Everyone was using a road map that was designed for a very different location, yet they are surprised when they end up lost.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Nuclear Weapons Laboratories used supercomputers to run their hydrodynamics codes for nuclear weapon design and the National Security Agency used them to decrypt codes. I had the only farm capable of nuclear weapons design. I liked to fail fast, move on, and not look back. The reality was that the U.S. I bought the Cray.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

Finally, I’ll write about 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. Reply links for 2009-09-03 « Blarney Fellow , on September 3, 2009 at 6:09 pm Said: [.]

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 21, 2010

Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Blog at WordPress.com.

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Reply A real time story start-up | Failed Screenwriter , on April 8, 2009 at 6:33 pm Said: [.] Reply Best books for the lean product managers — Justin Gibbs , on April 28, 2009 at 2:44 pm Said: [.] It has been very helpful in addressing the importance of testing your assumptions before investing large sums.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 28, 2009

Filed under: Family/Career « Let’s Fire Our Customers Durant Versus Sloan – Part 1 » 3 Responses Twitter Trackbacks for Unintended Lessons « Steve Blank [steveblank.com] on Topsy.com , on September 28, 2009 at 10:04 am Said: [.] A replication matrix, so to say.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

Reply Ray Debs , on April 29, 2009 at 6:55 pm Said: Hi Steve, I am thoroughly enjoying reading your blog posts, and looking forward to more. Thank you, Ray Debs Reply steveblank , on April 29, 2009 at 9:03 pm Said: Ray, The glib answer is yes, it’s a great time to start a company for all the reasons you suggest.

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