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. We had a killer team and all the right skillsets.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

I used to be in startups where I was dealing with engineers designing our microprocessors or selling supercomputers to research scientists solving really interesting technical problems. Or is it something that can grow to a size that will result in an acquisition or some liquidity event?

Cofounder 325

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 325

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

Our students, a mix between international policy and engineering, will be the ones in this fight. We described the theory versus current practice of defense requirements, acquisition and budgeting in Slides 28-32. Best comment from a student, “It strikes me that our acquisition system isn’t broken – it’s obsolete.

Technology 436

Technology China Russia Silicon Valley 436

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

But in 1904, after his first time seeing a car in Flint, Michigan, he was one of the first to see that the future was going to be in a radically new form of transportation powered by internal combustion engines. Unlike Durant, Musk has engineered his extended tenure and this year got his shareholders to give him a new $2.6

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

Steve Blank

JANUARY 18, 2022

As the chief engineer of the Navy, he was the master of engineering the large and the complex. “Data is the new oil and software is the new steel” The systems engineering process we have built over the last 150 years is not optimal for software-based systems.

Agile 369

Agile China Artificial Inteligence Taiwan 369

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 Research and Engineering. Reorganize DoD Acquisition and Sustainment. It is learning and adapting on the fly. China has made the leap to a “whole of nation” approach.

Ukraine 273

Ukraine China Taiwan Russia 273

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ) Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. And our course advisor – Tom Byers , Professor of Engineering and Faculty Director, STVP.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

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

APRIL 8, 2022

The technology insights and expertise of Stanford Engineering. 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.

Security 217

Security Silicon Valley China Private Equity 217

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

MAY 6, 2015

Founders assumed they understood customer problems/needs, wrote engineering requirements documents, designed the product, implemented /built the hardware/software, verified that it worked by testing it, and then introduced the product to customers in a formal coming out called first customer ship.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

Our students, a mix between international policy and engineering, will be the ones in this fight. We described the theory versus current practice of defense requirements, acquisition and budgeting in Slides 28-32. Best comment from a student, “It strikes me that our acquisition system isn’t broken – it’s obsolete.

Technology 228

Technology China Russia Silicon Valley 228

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

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Max entered Stanford in the fall of 2010 as a freshman, took as many of the engineering entrepreneurship classes as he could and independent study with me. (He We found 4 different major groups of startups that all have very different behavior regarding customer acquisition, time, product, market and team. I was feeling pretty old.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

We just finished our Lean LaunchPad class at UC Berkeley’s engineering school where many of the teams embedded machine learning technology into their products. Most often the first acquisitions in a hype cycle are for the “shiny objects” – the technology, the team and the tools.

Artificial Inteligence 318

Artificial Inteligence Lean Exit Strategy Startup 318

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

Doing so meant they would have to take risks for IP acquisition and customer/market risks outside their experience or comfort zone. I earnestly believe that large corporations should emulate Lean Startups (Business model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering.) Lessons Learned.

Programming 265

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 265

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

One of the Pivot’s positive consequences for the startup team is realizing that a lack of scalable revenue is not the fault of Sales or Marketing or Engineering departments – and the solution is not to fire executives – it’s recognizing that there’s a problem with the assumptions in the initial business model.).

Business Model 332

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 332

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

The launch of the Xbox and Kinect, and the acquisitions of Skype and Yammer happened on his shift. It wasn’t that Microsoft didn’t have smart engineers working on search, media, mobile and cloud. If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job. Yet a very smart CEO missed all of these.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

The launch of the Xbox and Kinect, and the acquisitions of Skype and Yammer happened on his shift. It wasn’t that Microsoft didn’t have smart engineers working on search, media, mobile and cloud. If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job. Yet a very smart CEO missed all of these.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 13, 2018

This document, combined with the split of Acquisition and Logistics, (the office responsible for buying equipment for the military), f rom Research and Engineering will enable the DoD to better connect with private industry to get technology integrated into the defense department. …A on page 10.

Employee 322

Employee Agile Artificial Inteligence China 322

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s engineered financial transactions, working with entrepreneurs to brand, hype and take public un profitable companies with grand promises of the future. Tech IPOs were a receding memory, and mergers and acquisitions became the only path to liquidity for startups. Thus began the 5-year dot-com bubble. The New Exits.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention. In contrast, customer acquisition, brand, reputation, etc.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

JANUARY 26, 2016

Hacking for Defense is a new course at Stanford’s Engineering School in the Spring of 2016. All while we’re still writing a Request for a Proposal from within the US Government procurement and acquisition channels. These acquisition and procurement “silos” of excellence are virtually impenetrable by new ideas and requirements.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley North Korea Agile Lean 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

The first hint lies in its name; this is a product development model, not a marketing model, not a sales hiring model, not a customer acquisition model, not even a financing model (and we’ll also find that in most cases it’s even a poor model to use to develop a product.) release of the product.

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

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 133

Technology Afghanistan Iraq Vietnam 133

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

For the first 75 years of the 20 th century, when capital for new ventures was scarce, the smartest engineering talent went to corporate R&D labs. Capital is returned to these investors through liquidity events (originally public offerings, but today mostly acquisitions). Google has bought close to 160 companies in the last decade.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

We just finished our Lean LaunchPad class at UC Berkeley’s engineering school where many of the teams embedded machine learning technology into their products. Most often the first acquisitions in a hype cycle are for the “shiny objects” – the technology, the team and the tools.

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Lean Exit Strategy Startup 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2019

All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. And our course advisor – Tom Byers , Professor of Engineering and Faculty Director, STVP. All the presentations are worth a watch. Team: Panacea.

Oakland 266

Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 266

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2013

Todd Branchflower was one of my Lean LaunchPad students entrepreneurial enough to convince the Air Force send him to Stanford to get his graduate engineering degree. Fast-forward three years and Todd is now Captain Todd Branchflower , teaching electrical engineering at the Air Force Academy. He promised that one day he would fix that.

Silicon Valley 255

Silicon Valley Colorado Lean Connecticut 255

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

It ultimately failed because she was focused on engineering the product, but didn’t validate the rest of her business model (product/market fit, distribution channel, customer acquisition, etc.). Her first startup, Pencil You In, grew from a personal need to schedule hair appointments.

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 2, 2013

Kent Quirk was director of engineering at Playdom and director of engineering at Linden Labs. And they discovered that: device makers were spending $500-$800 in Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) to acquire a customer. A Five-sided Market. device makers own customers would stay their customers for 10 years (i.e.

Customer 323

Customer Churn Rate Customer Development Lean 323

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2016

That if we could get teams to rapidly discover the real problems in the field using Lean methods, and only then articulating the requirements to solve them, could defense acquisition programs operate at speed and urgency and deliver timely and needed solutions. of Management Science and Engineering. https://vimeo.com/169155566.

Agile 120

Agile Security Audio Video 120

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2019

At Stanford, Tom Byers , who runs the innovation and entrepreneurship program inside the engineering school, has made that a big deal and it’s now part of the curriculum. What does it take to get from that demo into your engineering group, to be delivered as a product into your existing sales channel?

Incubator 331

Incubator Lean Programming Government 331

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

Sales (and/or customer acquisition in a multi-sided market) becomes achievable by a sales force (or network effect or virality) without heroic efforts from the founders. Customer acquisition and activation are understood and Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) and Life Time Value (LTV) can be estimated for the next 18 months.

Startup 120

Startup Lean Venture Capital Advisory Board 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

In a major break from the past, where the military designed all its own weapons, 10,000 scientists and engineers from academia worked in civilian-run weapons labs (most headquartered in universities) in an organization called the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). In World War II the U.S. Lessons Learned.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Kuwait 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2013

Todd Branchflower was one of my Lean LaunchPad students entrepreneurial enough to convince the Air Force send him to Stanford to get his graduate engineering degree. Fast-forward three years and Todd is now Captain Todd Branchflower , teaching electrical engineering at the Air Force Academy. He promised that one day he would fix that.

Silicon Valley 151

Silicon Valley Colorado Lean Connecticut 151

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

I’ve introduced a new class at Stanford to teach engineers, scientists and other professionals how startups really get built. ——————– Engineering 245. What are your hypotheses around customer acquisition costs? We’re going to be teaching it for the first time in January.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311