Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2020

We have an acquisition arm and Congress is probably going to give us acquisition authority this year. And we own the AI autonomous weapon systems ethics and policy for the DOD. And we have a missions team headed up by a one-star Flag Officer with six O-6 level officers (Colonels and Navy Captains) heading up the different missions.

Artificial Inteligence 388

Artificial Inteligence Fractional CTO Technology CTO 388

Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

Not for some short-time “lets flip the company” strategy but an eye for who, how and when you can make an acquisition happen. Step 3: List the names of the business development, technology scouts and other people involved in acquisitions and note their names next to the name of the target company. Square, Uber, Palantir, Fitbit, etc.)

Liquidity Event 120

Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2015

Time horizons for Return on Investment from a VC investment may be 7+ years, ROI from the acquisition of an earlier stage company, 4-5 years and the ROI from acquisition of a mature company, 2-3 years.) In Stage 2, the corporation adds venture capital and/or mergers-and-acquisition teams to provide these functions.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Incubator Acquisition Business Model 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2020

Acquisition, technology, and logistics. In some of our class sessions you’ve heard about how acquisition in the Department of Defense hasn’t kept up with new threats, adversaries, and new technologies. But Will Roper who runs Air Force acquisition, technology and logistics, gives lie to that assertion. The future is predictable.

Technology 388

Technology China Agile Acquisition 388

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2020

Acquisition, Primes, Requirements and the DoD. We’ve tried in the form of giving special acquisition authority to the services. DoD Program Acquisition Costs by Weapon System. We have a very brittle defense industrial base. It’s highly concentrated among five or six companies. Now we’ve tried.

Technical Review 235

Technical Review Technology China Taiwan 235

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2022

Reorganize DoD Acquisition and Sustainment to create and buy from new 21st century arsenals – new shipyards, drone manufacturers, etc. Today, the average Department of Defense major acquisition program takes anywhere from nine to 26 years to get a weapon in the hands of a warfighter. ” Acquire at Speed.

Ukraine 277

Ukraine China Private Equity Russia 277

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2021

For example, our requirements and acquisition systems are driven by a 70-year-old model predicated on predicting the future (both threats and technology) and delivering solutions decades out; and optimized for lifecycle costs, not rapid innovation or disposable systems. Some hints of the future force came from multiple speakers.

Technology 387

Technology China Artificial Inteligence Acquisition 387

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2020

Changing Acquisition. Then write requirements to what we think it’s going to look like and then throw a lot of money at industry to deliver that future on very long timelines. Shockingly” many of those things are irrelevant when they show up, if they ever show up at all.

Technical Review 361

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Technology United States 361

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

Existing contractors have learned how to master the arcane defense acquisition system and live with the slow decision-making and payment processes. Startups recognize that when new circumstances arise, they can pivot — make substantive changes to their products without any new contracts.

Government 308

Government Artificial Inteligence Silicon Valley North Korea 308

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 29, 2020

And we need to do all of this with a finite defense budget, most of which is being spent on legacy systems in 88 major defense acquisition programs. Our current requirements and acquisition system ( Planning-Programming-Budgeting System ) is built on assuming certainty. Slides 10-13). Institutional inertia is a social problem.

Technology 335

Technology North Korea Silicon Valley Artificial Inteligence 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 19, 2023

Ukraine’s military is not burdened with the DoD’s 65-year-old acquisition process and 20th-century operational concepts. Reorganize DoD Acquisition and Sustainment. It is learning and adapting on the fly. China has made the leap to a “whole of nation” approach. that can make 1,000s of low-cost, attritable systems.

Ukraine 273

Ukraine China Taiwan Russia 273

Steve Blank

JANUARY 5, 2023

” Team 3: Acquisition. Jason Kim : “ This course doesn’t just discuss U.S. national security issues. It teaches students how to apply an influential and proven methodology to rapidly develop solutions to our most challenging problems.” Original Problem Statement: How can the U.S.

Technical Review 353

Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Technology China 353

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

We described the theory versus current practice of defense requirements, acquisition and budgeting in Slides 28-32. is still using a McNamara-era requirements and acquisition system designed by financial managers from Ford and imposed on the DOD in the early 1960s. And they’re even making an end-around to a broken acquisition system.

Technology 228

Technology China Russia Silicon Valley 228

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 23, 2023

CEOs seek their advice (and often must seek their formal approval) for major strategic decisions such as acquisitions, major budget changes, hiring of C-level executives, etc.) It provides governance and financial oversight to the company. They can vote to hire and fire the CEO. Formal Board positions are harder to come by.

Government 212

Government Advisory Board Salary Sales Cycle 212

Steve Blank

JANUARY 11, 2022

Original Problem Statement: The Space Force must leverage commercial innovation and establish a trained, experienced acquisition workforce that will deliver innovation impact that the Space Force requires. And we and they would end up with something quite valuable. Team Apollo.

Technical Review 281

Technical Review Technology Taiwan Venture Capital 281

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

Or is it something that can grow to a size that will result in an acquisition or some liquidity event? Is it a lifestyle business while you’re keeping your other job? Is it a small business that hits $4 million in revenue in four years and $8 million in ten years?

Cofounder 325

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 325

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2022

While the DoD Office of Inspector General is responsible for these financial audits of trillions of dollars of assets and liabilities, the Defense Contract Audit Agency is responsible for auditing the hundreds of billions of dollars of acquisition contracts. They have the same issues.).

Advisory Board 328

Advisory Board Artificial Inteligence SBIR Government 328

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 6, 2020

Two Acquisition Paradigm Shifts Raj Shah, former head of the Defense Innovation Unit, pointed out that men and women in uniform have signed up to support national security with the equipment that they are given and must make do with what you give them. How we prepare for and fight future wars must reflect these new realities of modern war.

Technology 397

Technology Afghanistan Iraq Vietnam 397

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2020

Everybody that comes into the space force will learn coding and adopt digital engineering standards as our as our standard for acquisition. It’s all the way from requirements, to acquisition, to developing the capability, to testing the capability, to operating the capability. We’re also focusing on partnerships.

Technology 284

Technology United States Iraq Operations 284

Steve Blank

APRIL 8, 2022

Until we have new vendors on the Major Defense Acquisition Program list , all we have in the DoD is innovation theater – not innovation. Today, the average DoD major acquisition program takes 9-26 years to get a weapon in the hands of a warfighter. Acquire at Speed.

Security 217

Security Silicon Valley China Private Equity 217

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2021

Some are actively pursuing acquisition of weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, chemical, biological). They are a persistent, survivable threat unconstrained by traditional geopolitical checks (irrational actor). They are capable of regional and international terror attacks.

Technical Review 275

Technical Review North Korea Iran Russia 275

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2020

I’m not going to talk about reforming the acquisition process, which many of your class speakers have mentioned and does need to get done. Your adversary, who is taking those risks, who is working through the nine failures to get to then 10 th iteration, the one that works. Three Solutions.

Technical Review 322

Technical Review Taiwan Technology Design 322

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Facebook’s ~$20 billion acquisition of WhatsApp, a 5-year-old startup that had $10 million in revenue, made no sense until you realized that Facebook was paying to acquire 300 million new users.). This means that liquidity for today’s investors often doesn’t require the long, patient scaling of a profitable company.

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 9, 2021

Today, the DOD requirements and acquisition systems are driven by a sixty-year-old model predicated on 1) predicting the future (both threats and technology), 2) delivering solutions decades out optimized for lifecycle costs and 3) assuming that government labs and incumbent prime contractors drive technological innovation.

Technology 269

Technology China Government Artificial Inteligence 269

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

We wanted to show that if we could get teams to rapidly discover the real problems in the field using Lean methods, and only then articulate the requirements to solve them, defense acquisition programs could operate at speed and urgency and deliver timely and needed solutions.

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2021

Instead, their solutions must still compete for funding in a formal budgeting and acquisition process before being eligible for widespread adoption. If confirmed, Brown could accelerate much needed reforms to military acquisition processes. Startups that successfully fulfill innovation contracts don’t automatically scale.

Artificial Inteligence 326

Artificial Inteligence Marketing Startup Silicon Valley 326

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

In 2010 it got worse with an Act in parliament about the Monitoring of Foreigners’ Corporate Acquisitions. When MySQL was sold for $1B and the cleantech company the Switch got acquired for $250M, one would have expected the country to celebrate that they had built these world-class companies.

Finland 324

Finland Naming Russia Government 324

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

Most often the first acquisitions in a hype cycle are for the “shiny objects” – the technology, the team and the tools. The irony is that the acquisitions made later in the hype cycle – when companies have built real products that customers want, are the ones that generate revenue and profit for the acquirer.

Artificial Inteligence 318

Artificial Inteligence Lean Exit Strategy Startup 318

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

While our teams have mentors, socialize a lot and give great demos, the goal of our class final presentations is “ Lessons Learned ” – about product/market fit, pricing, acquisition/activation costs, pricing, partners, etc.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Tech acquisitions went crazy at the same time the IPO market did. The Rise of Mergers and Acquisitions -– March 2003 -2008 After the dot.com bubble collapsed, the IPO market (and most tech M&A deals) shutdown for technology companies. And some companies didn’t even have to go public to get liquid. billion.) So what’s left?

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 21, 2012

Either way, the “hurdle” for successful, scalable startups is high, and it gets higher every day as customer acquisition challenges continue to increase. While statistics are weak on startup success rates, the worst one I’ve seen suggests that 2 in 1000 venture backed startups will ever achieve $100-million or more in valuation.

Startup 332

Startup Cofounder Customer Development Viral 332

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2014

Module 5, Customer Acquisition and Archetypes. 3:35: Matching Archetypes to Acquisition. 7:35: The Biggest Mistake in Customer Acquisition. 0:38: What to Test, Why to Test and How to Test. 2:05: You’re Not Building a Product … You’re Getting Customer Feedback. 2:53: Use MVPs to Run Experiments.

Intellectual Property 328

Intellectual Property Lean Customer Development Acquisition 328

Steve Blank

AUGUST 19, 2013

For exits, acquisitions are the rule and IPOs the exception. In the last six years half the VC’s in the space have disappeared , unable to raise new funds, and the number of biotech and device startups getting first round financing has dropped by half.

Venture Capital 301

Venture Capital Startup Lean Philadelphia 301

Steve Blank

AUGUST 25, 2021

And then she fought with the acquisition folks to buy the trivial amount of additional hardware needed to connect it. It was a development process that would’ve taken three weeks in a startup, but inside this agency took 10 months (which was considered fast.)

Non-Compete 436

Non-Compete Government Incubator Design 436

Steve Blank

APRIL 25, 2016

The team made progress understanding the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) acquisitions process in slides 3-5 and mocked-up an MVP. They are starting to understand the beneficiaries in the Coast Guard; however, they are stymied in trying to find the right people to talk to about commercial data acquisition at the National Geospatial Agency.

Afghanistan 120

Afghanistan Iraq Technical Review Social Media 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 25, 2016

The team made progress understanding the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) acquisitions process in slides 3-5 and mocked-up an MVP. They are starting to understand the beneficiaries in the Coast Guard; however, they are stymied in trying to find the right people to talk to about commercial data acquisition at the National Geospatial Agency.

Afghanistan 120

Afghanistan Iraq Technical Review Social Media 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 15, 2024

The speed, depth and breadth of these disruptive changes happen faster than the responsiveness and agility of our current acquisition systems and defense-industrial base. Department of Defense traditional sources of innovation ( primes , FFRDCs , service labs ) are no longer sufficient by themselves to keep pace.

China 182

China Artificial Inteligence Afghanistan Ukraine 182