Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 16, 2015

I still have to tell some entrepreneurs that even with the best idea, they have to move to Silicon Valley to find the investors they need, or they need to move to the U.S. Also, investors from the super-hubs (Silicon Valley, New York, or Boston), won’t assume anyone outside their domain has the savvy and resources to make it happen.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Las Vegas Phoenix Montana 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Todd Branchflower took my Lean LaunchPad class having been entrepreneurial enough to convince the Air Force send him to Stanford to get his graduate engineering degree. True to his word, fast-forward three years and Todd is now Captain Todd Branchflower , teaching computer engineering at the Air Force Academy. ——-.

Lean 262

Lean Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 262

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ), Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique. Steve Weinstein , 30-year veteran of Silicon Valley technology companies and Hollywood media companies. He runs H4X Labs.

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

Many people don’t realize that the majority of the monetization of the Internet originated in Los Angeles but was perfected in Silicon Valley. The monetization engine of the Internet that powers the most profitable business perhaps in history was invented and perfected in Los Angeles and is what you now know as Google Ad Words.

Los Angeles 376

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Seattle 376

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 4, 2020

Though the trend in the startup world seems to be relocating to Silicon Valley (a choice that some angel investors and ven­ture capitalists now call mandatory) and knocking on the doors of venture capital, this path doesn’t make sense for all businesses, and it’s not acces­sible to many entrepreneurs because of their life circumstances.

Entrepreneur 180

Entrepreneur Venture Capital Silicon Valley Bandwidth 180

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

As the emeritus Chief Technology Officer of the United States, he still connects government and Silicon Valley. He was a very early employee of Facebook , and engineering director there through the moment it blew up. Now he’s VP of engineering at Dropbox , where he’s seeing similar growth.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Version One Ventures

MAY 24, 2016

Just a few years ago, if you wanted to do something big, you needed to go to Silicon Valley. If we try to dissect the magic of Silicon Valley, I think there are five key factors at play: Great schools. You’ve got a great number of senior level talent in engineering, sales, marketing, etc. Great senior talent.

Silicon Valley 113

Silicon Valley San Francisco Startup Seattle 113

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

Given the tech-centricity of Stanford and Silicon Valley, Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I thought it was natural to design a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy. As we described how the U.S.

Technology 436

Technology China Russia Silicon Valley 436

Steve Blank

APRIL 8, 2022

We pointed out that Silicon Valley and Stanford have done this for 50 years. We combine the unique strengths of Stanford and its location in Silicon Valley to solve problems across the spectrum of activities that create and sustain national power. The technology insights and expertise of Stanford Engineering.

Security 217

Security Silicon Valley China Private Equity 217

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

After this initial success, Airbnb then reverse-engineered Craiglist forms with a tool that allowed users to repost their listings: By communicating benefits and removing barriers to success, they gave users a reason to get involved. Acquisition. Let’s look at each stage of the framework and how to use it to drive and measure growth.

Retention 113

Retention Marketing Acquisition Channel 113

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. Steve Weinstein 30-year veteran of Silicon Valley technology companies and Hollywood media companies. He runs H4X Labs.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2020

Google, at the time, was overhauling the back end of their search engine. They built their search engine 20 years ago. Bigger jets, bigger engines, bigger ships, as opposed to the small changes that can make an enormous difference. When I sat down with Admiral Selby , we talked about Google. Three Solutions.

Technical Review 322

Technical Review Taiwan Technology Design 322

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. But the spirit of Billy Durant would rise again in what would become Silicon Valley. But not for Durant.

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

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

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 9, 2010

First, there are two primary aspects that have to be managed: inventory financing and customer acquisition costs. I asked him about his customer acquisition strategy and heard the word "advertising" a lot: Facebook advertising. Well, all that costs money, I would like to see a more cost-effective customer acquisition strategy.

Silicon Valley 117

Silicon Valley Malaysia India China 117

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.) Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

It is no longer Silicon Valley's exclusive domain. The bulk of our discussion today was around scaling and customer acquisition strategies. Then Gerard McDonald from Dublin, Ireland, discussed CustomerDiscovery, a concept-stage venture around online marketing services using social media mechanisms for customer acquisition.

Ireland 124

Ireland Silicon Valley India Entrepreneur 124

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 17, 2011

Founded by three Silicon Valley veterans - Tim Brady, Alan Louie, and Geoff Ralston - Imagine K12 will support early stage ed-tech startups through a funding and mentorship program. The problems of product development and customer acquisition are just a few of the barriers that ed-tech startups face.

Incubator 116

Incubator Technical Review Silicon Valley Cofounder 116

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 But he left to work on what he told me he came to do - crack the innovation code of Silicon Valley and share it with the rest of the world.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

The Next Web

OCTOBER 17, 2012

Or its software engineering team could be the target, if Apple was impressed by their work. If true, and our sources are very well placed, the acquisition helps end a tumultuous period of Color’s existence. Color said that it had six patents pending at the time of its funding, including its ‘elastic’ social.

Los Angeles 161

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Media Startup 161

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 19, 2010

First is that there are, perhaps, a thousand people in the world of entrepreneurship who know what they are doing when it comes to dealing with issues like financing, positioning, market sizing, customer validation, customer acquisition and other seemingly obvious topics that all entrepreneurs need to deal with.

Silicon Valley 114

Silicon Valley Startup Technical Review Early Stage 114

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

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 20, 2007

Reading the articles and the comments is probably worth it, but I personally think that the NY Times is overstating the advantage of being in Silicon Valley with a couple of exceptions. Of course, thats probably even more true in Silicon Valley. eHarmongy) as an acting CTO. in Computer Science.

Technical Cofounder 150

Technical Cofounder Southern California Los Angeles CTO Hire 150

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2020

Given the tech-centricity of Stanford and Silicon Valley, Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I thought it was natural to design a class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy. As we described how the U.S.

Technology 228

Technology China Russia Silicon Valley 228

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 16, 2011

Bizosys Technologies, a Bangalore, India based software engineering company was founded in 2009. The first is HSearch, a NoSQL technology based search engine for big data that aims to break the barrier of scale of growing information and accessing it across information silos. Toward that end, they have created two products. Discuss.

India 123

India Bootstrapping Non-Compete Entrepreneur 123

Diego Basch

JUNE 21, 2012

I believe that Silicon Valley is like Las Vegas, except they make you pass a number of tests before they let you gamble. The purpose of this post is to analyze the folowing problem: Joe Founder comes to Silicon Valley with a laptop full of dreams, but no money. What should Joe do? In other words, money problem solved.

Silicon Valley 78

Silicon Valley Las Vegas San Francisco Vesting 78

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2014

We graduate more engineers in our greater region than anywhere else in the US. We have top 25 engineering schools than anywhere else, too. I never wanted to be a derivative of Silicon Valley. We have a large number of highly talented engineers and entrepreneurs now developing companies in our local market.

Los Angeles 318

Los Angeles Silicon Valley LP Warrant 318

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

Kayak was started here in my backyard of Boston… co-founder & CTO Paul English and the product/engineering team is based here in Concord MA. Now that Google’s acquisition of ITA is closed, following lenghty FTC review, it would appear Kayak is poised to proceed with their IPO in the coming months. =.

Pre-Money Valuation 113

Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 24, 2011

Chris is primarily trying to assess his customer acquisition strategy, which requires that people see the game being played. His customer acquisition strategy, however, needs a lot of work. She has a master's degree in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Photo by nazreth.

Illinois 114

Illinois Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Chicago 114

Reid Hoffman

JULY 23, 2020

Companies make acquisitions based on strategic goal that are aligned with their inner workings. This strategic value-oriented approach is one of the things that gives Silicon Valley its crazy reputation among traditional investors, who live and die by financial metrics. You can’t just roll up and say, “I’ve got one of X.

IPO 36

IPO Exit Strategy Acquisition Technical Review 36

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. If you can’t see the presentation click here.

Artificial Inteligence 318

Artificial Inteligence Lean Exit Strategy Startup 318

Haystack

DECEMBER 29, 2018

And as more economies worldwide seek to shift their investment strategies offshore and seek out technology, hubs like Silicon Valley and Shanghai, among others, have reaped the benefits. Governments blocking acquisitions, the curtailment of company expansion, more scrutiny on overseas operations of U.S. 3/ Crypto Hibernation.

Technical Review 165

Technical Review Venture Capital Russia China 165

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 7, 2019

Both Yahoo and Excite were search engines from Stanford, but Yahoo’s first-scaler advantage gave it a head start that Excite could never overcome. One of the standard Silicon Valley plays is to move from an app to a platform so that you can attract people to build on and to your platform. Often, the answer is more blitzscaling.

Silicon Valley 45

Silicon Valley Acquisition Mobile Early Stage 45

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 27, 2014

But if we assume that Icahn really does care about creating long-term stockholder value, as he insists, then the true issue here isn’t what sort of short-term pop he can engineer for eBay’s stock price, or what size premium PayPal might fetch from another company. The Innovation Culture of Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley 57

Silicon Valley Software Review Stock Due Diligence 57

Steve Blank

JANUARY 26, 2016

Introducing Hacking for Defense – Connecting Silicon Valley Innovation Culture and Mindset to the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. Hacking for Defense is a new course at Stanford’s Engineering School in the Spring of 2016. They don’t need an office in Silicon Valley to figure out what’s out there.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley North Korea Lean Agile 120

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 1, 2011

Our discussion today was around prioritization of the next few critical steps around customer acquisition and validation. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant, she writes the blog Sramana Mitra On Strategy , and is author of the Entrepreneur Journeys book series and Vision India 2020. Report Bee.

India 119

India Guerilla New Zealand Entrepreneur 119

The Next Web

DECEMBER 12, 2013

Myth #2: You can bolt on community, once the commerce engine is going. It’s easy, especially in Silicon Valley, to get hung up on all the whizbang new technologies available to developers. Modi also says startups should invest internally to inspire employees to have empathy for each other and for their customers.

Mobile 136

Mobile Silicon Valley Viral Technical Review 136