SoCal CTO
AUGUST 4, 2011
Almost every day I'm talking to early stage startup founders (see Free Startup CTO Consulting Sessions ) about what they plan to do. I tend to ask a lot of questions, challenge aspects, make suggestions. But I've often been very surprised by one aspect of these conversations. Many of these founders have talked with several developers or development firms about their plans.
Both Sides of the Table
DECEMBER 27, 2011
There are certain topics that even some of the best journalists can’t fully grok. One of them is profitability. I find it amusing when a journalist writes an article about a prominent startup (either privately held or preparing for an IPO) and decries that, “They’re not even profitable!” I mention journalists here because they perpetuate the myth that focusing on profits is ALWAYS the right answer and then I hear many entrepreneurs (and certainly many “normals”
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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
FEBRUARY 7, 2011
Consulting can be a great way to fund a startup or make a bunch of cash. It’s easy to start; Just pick an hourly rate and jump in. But someday soon you’ll notice there’s only so many billable hours in the day, and you’ll be tempted to expand. Maybe hire an employee for $30 per hour and re-bill them at $60. Easy money, right? Unfortunately the math doesn’t work that way.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 1, 2011
Not understanding and agreeing what “Entrepreneur&# and “Startup” mean can sink an entire country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. ——— I’m getting ready to go overseas to teach , and I’ve spent the last week reviewing several countries’ ambitious attempts to kick-start entrepreneurship. After poring through stacks of reports, white papers and position papers, I’ve come to a couple of conclusions. 1) They sure killed a ton of trees. 2) With one noticeable exception, governmen
Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic
Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in
Startup Lessons Learned
JUNE 14, 2011
Something interesting is happening in Washington, DC right now. It's not the usual partisan fights about the budget or the deficit. In fact, it doesn't fit any of our stock ideological categories very well. The Federal government is being transformed - initially, in small ways - by people I think should be recognized as entrepreneurs. They are leveraging the same kinds of new technology, management thinking, and big data to improve lives that we routinely use here in Silicon Valley.
ReadWriteStart
JANUARY 28, 2011
Garage48 Helsinki , the largest hackathon in the Nordics, took place last week. It gathered 120 hackers from Finland, Estonia and Latvia under the same roof and challenged them to go from zero to demo in 48 hours. Sixteen startups were created during the weekend. Together with Osma Ahvelampi (CTO, Sulake ) and Teemu Kurppa (co-founder, Jaiku ), I was a mentor to those teams.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Feld Thoughts
AUGUST 3, 2011
Yesterday there was solid progress on the Startup Visa Movement – specifically making it easier for foreign entrepreneurs to start their companies in the US. The WSJ had a good summary article titled U.S. to Assist Immigrant Job Creators that discusses two formal communications from the Obama administration. Press release from the Department of Homeland Security titled Secretary Napolitano Announces Initiatives to Promote Startup Enterprises and Spur Job Creation.
K9 Ventures
JUNE 22, 2011
This is how I remember it: It’s September 2005, and I was sitting in my office at Stanford in Gates 382. In walks Ren Ng , introduces himself and says something along the lines of “I hear you do startups, could we chat?” Ren, now Dr. Ren Ng, was a fellow PhD student with me at Stanford. His office was next door to mine. I didn’t know Ren personally, but I certainly knew him by reputation — as one of the smartest people around.
For Entrepreneurs
DECEMBER 15, 2011
Today’s application developers are faced with a broad set of architectural decisions that can make or break their company going forward. This presentation, which was given as a keynote for the MassTLC application development conference, highlights the major changes that are taking place in the world of application development. The Application Development Landscape – 2011 [.].
steveblank.com
JULY 8, 2011
Home Books for Startups Guide Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Tools Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Email Subscription Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Categories Air Force (12) Ardent (10) Audubon (1) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (39) Business Model versus Business Plan (26) California Coastal Commission (4) Conservation (3) Convergent Technologies (2) Customer Development (119) Customer Development Manifesto (26) E.p
SoCal CTO
SEPTEMBER 27, 2011
I was asked by a reader how much equity he should give out to early employees and to service providers in a very early stage startup. I'll get to service providers in a later post. Founders vs. Early Employees To help with this discussion, let me start with a definition of "early employee." Steve Blank divides the individuals associated with startups as: Founders Early Employees (Employees # 1-25) Later Employees (Employees # 26-125) The reality is that the definition of founder and em
Both Sides of the Table
OCTOBER 22, 2011
Today’s post courtesy of the Dave McClure school of vocabulary. About a month ago I was meeting with a seasoned entrepreneur. After 10 minutes I felt like we were old buddies because we had both been through the trenches of startup tech land and had had similar experiences. He was recounting one of his higher profile startups to me. He founded the company, raised a bunch of money, built the product and established a good reputation and market position.
thebarefootvc
DECEMBER 16, 2011
As a venture capitalist, I am privy to innovations long before they become mainstream, one of the things I love about my job. But even more exciting is when I see inflection points of adoption — which is why 2011 was a particularly exhilirating year for me. This was the year that the promise of technology to truly change the world and empower individuals (the reason I entered the tech world in 1994) reached global scale.
Steve Blank
SEPTEMBER 22, 2011
As part of our Lean LaunchPad classes at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and for the National Science Foundation, students build a startup in 8 weeks using Business Model Design + Customer Development. One of the problems they run into is building a web site. ——— If you’re an experienced coder and user interface designer you think nothing is easier than diving into Ruby on Rails , Nodes.js and Balsamiq and throwing together a web site.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 7, 2011
The Lean Startup Book launches in just under a week. How many copies will this book sell in its first week – real, hardcover, paper copies? If that number crosses some unknowable threshold, the book will debut as a bestseller, and then an awful lot of people are going to read it. People who would never bother with an entrepreneur’s blog, who may not even see themselves as entrepreneurs: shopkeepers and policy makers, CFO’s and private equity managers, and even future entrepreneurs.
ReadWriteStart
OCTOBER 13, 2011
I spent the month of September lecturing, and interacting with (literally) thousands of entrepreneurs in two emerging startup markets, Finland and Russia. This is the first of two posts about Finland and entrepreneurship. I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford's Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. (Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team for the fabulous logistics!
crowdSPRING Blog
MARCH 23, 2011
The right typeface is often the key to a great logo, graphic or web design. But there’s much confusion and misinformation about typefaces, fonts and the law. Many people do not understand the law governing the use of typefaces and fonts. Others incorrectly assume that they can freely use any typeface or font for any project. When you purchase a commercial font, you are purchasing a license to use the font software.
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak
MARCH 25, 2011
The following article details my personal top 10 methods to make money from the Internet. What makes this list unique is it’s based entirely on the methods I have personally used, so I can reveal to you what I did and what my results were. Bear in mind these methods represent ten years of working online, so I do not do all of them presently. At one point in my career however they were an income stream, and are still viable options for you.
K9 Ventures
APRIL 27, 2011
Note: All information contained in this post is based on my best understanding and perception of what transpired. I have confirmed with the founders that none of the information contained herein is deemed confidential and is therefore fair game for me to share in this post. In April 2008, I was introduced to Ugmode, Inc. (thanks to my advisor Terry Winograd ).
OnlyOnce
FEBRUARY 6, 2011
The Three Functions of a Management Team. After my quarterly Return Path exec team offsite last week, my team and I were rehashing the day’s conversation over dinner. Was it a good day or a bad day? An upper or a downer? We concluded that the day was as it should have been – a good mix of what I will now articulate as the three main functions of a management team.
Ben's Blog
MARCH 24, 2011
I’m going back to Cali, Cali, Cali. I’m going back to Cali…hmm, I don’t think so. —LL Cool J, Going Back to Cali. Lately, everybody seems to be talking about a new technology bubble. Many very smart CEOs, VCs, reporters, and analysts can’t seem to stop worrying about the second coming of the dot com bust. Are the prognosticators correct?
Aymeric Gaurat-Apelli
JUNE 6, 2011
That’s right, I prefer writing code than writing words and yet it’s been two months now that I started outsourcing the development of TaskArmy to someone in Ukraine. I spent the first 8 months developing the website myself until I proved to myself that my idea was a viable business idea. I was then ready mentally to spend more money into my idea. Anton is working full-time with me and I wouldn’t look back on that decision.
Both Sides of the Table
MARCH 17, 2011
This post originally ran on TechCrunch. Startups. We know the mantra: Team matters. Is this philosophy exaggerated? Overrated? Cliché? No. Team is the only thing that matters. Whatever you’re working on now, the half-life of innovation is so rapid now that your product will soon be out-of-date. Your existence is irrelevant unless you continue rapid innovation.
Duct Tape Marketing
JULY 18, 2011
5 Types of Content That Every Business Must Employ This content from: Duct Tape Marketing Marketing podcast with John Jantsch (Click to play or right click and “Save As&# to download – Subscribe now via iTunes or subscribe via other RSS device (Google Listen) Dawn Endico via Flickr The creation and distribution of content has become such a significant aspect of effective marketing that it requires a high place in the strategy conversation in most every business.
Steve Blank
JANUARY 4, 2011
I spent two weeks of December in Chile as a guest of Professor Cristóbal García, Director of EmprendeUC at the Catholic University of Chile , which just signed up a 3-year collaboration partnership with Stanford’s Technology Ventures Program. I did a keynote on innovation hubs at the newly created DoFuture program , spoke at Santiago’s Startup Weekend on Customer and Agile Development, and at a Conference in Patagonia supported by the Ministry of Economy’s Innovation Divisi
Startup Lessons Learned
MAY 19, 2011
This article is a guest post by Jeff Gothelf, Director of User Experience at TheLadders in New York City. Jeff has been promoting the use of Lean UX as an effective method to spur greater innovation, quality and productivity in startups as well as within teams in larger organizations. Jeff keeps a blog here ( www.jeffgothelf.com/blog ) with tweets available at @jboogie ( www.twitter.com/jboogie ).
ReadWriteStart
FEBRUARY 15, 2011
Just as the Human Genome Project aimed to crack the human code, the Startup Genome Project hopes to be able to drill down into some of the details of what it's calling the "innovation code.". The project has launched a survey to investigate "the science of startups," lessons from which it plans to incorporate into blackbox, a new seed accelerator that was created with the merger of techVenture, Cofounder Network, Founders First and Startup School.
A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks
AUGUST 15, 2011
I built this software for myself, and then it turned out a million people wanted it exactly how I originally envisioned it. After hiring a few people, being the CEO became a lot easier, and I was able to focus on high-level strategic plans instead of fighting fires. I wish we had spent less time talking to prospective customers before designing interfaces and writing code.
Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak
MARCH 31, 2011
In my first post titled, Why Leave A Six Figure Corporate Job For Internet Entrepreneurship? , I provided a brief background on who I am, what I do, why I know what I know and so forth. In my next two posts, I discussed just one of the several gigs mentioned in the initial post, which discussed how I started, grew and sold an e-commerce business for $250,000.
The Startup Toolkit
DECEMBER 1, 2011
The approach I follow is a combination of customer discovery and effectuation , constrained by lifestyle goals. Begin with constraints. Which parts of the business model do you care about? This takes a little bit of soul searching. Start with a business model canvas and fill in the boxes for which you have strong preferences. Here are my personal constraints right now.
Startup Professionals Musings
SEPTEMBER 6, 2011
A while back, when a startup founder mentioned to me that he wasn’t sure he had the personality to be an entrepreneur, I realized how important that insight was. My first thought is that if you are more annoyed than energized by expert advice, team suggestions, and customer input, then you should probably avoid this line of work. Actually, it’s more complicated than that, but that’s a good start.
Ben's Blog
OCTOBER 6, 2011
You’d better check yourself before you wreck yourself. —Ice Cube, Check Yo Self. Everyone in the technology industry seems to agree that people are paramount, yet nobody seems to be on the same page with what the people organization—Human Resources—should look like. The problem is that when it comes to HR, most CEOs don’t really know what they want.
YoungUpstarts
OCTOBER 11, 2011
Although a strong education is by no means a requirement for business acumen or success, many still saunter off to college and further hone what they’ve already got. Those walking on or logging onto campus with visions of profits and genius dancing in their heads shouldn’t relegate their learning within those boundaries exclusively. They should drink up any potentially valuable insight they can, and the venerable TED offers up one such conduit.
Both Sides of the Table
AUGUST 16, 2011
50 coffee meetings. It should stick in your head as a metaphor for networking. For getting outside of your comfort zone. For starting relationships today that won’t pay off for a year. It’s the entrepreneur’s equivalent of “ 10,000 hours.&#. Anybody who has spent any time with me in person will be tired of this advice because I give it so frequently.
Duct Tape Marketing
MAY 4, 2011
SIMPLE, EFFECTIVE AND AFFORDABLE SMALL BUSINESS MARKETING Home About Consulting Products Programs Workshops Blog Resources Contact Subscribe by RSS Subscribe to Duct Tape Marketing by Email Small Business Week 2011 Our winners! Mon – Justin Severidt Tues – Elizabeth Frederick Wed – Denise Sheehan Thurs – Nicholas Hammernik Fri – Jennifer Nagel Books by John Jantsch Duct Tape Marketing: The World’s Most Practical Small Business Marketing Guide – by John J
Steve Blank
MAY 29, 2011
In April 2010 I received an email that said, “I’m an incoming Stanford student in the fall and working on a project that a number of people suggested I get in touch with you about.&#. Ok, I get a lot of these. Is this some grad student or post doc who wanted to do some independent study? The email continued, &# The problem I’m working on is that many founders are either making uninformed decisions or inefficiently learning the new skills they need.
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