Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 27, 2014

Many have disappeared, and others have forgotten how to be agile and innovative. VCs tend to carry their partners much longer, in hopes of a big public offering (IPO) that could produce a windfall. It’s the right way to get money without giving up too much equity or control of your business.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. Fairchild Semiconductor became the progenitor of a flood of Silicon Valley chip companies and at the same time the adoption of the limited partnership as the model for Venture Firms gave VC’s their own profitable business model.

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Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

The collapse of the IPO market and dysfunctional math in the venture capital community has stacked the odds against you. Most of the startups they invested in either died by running out of money before they found a scalable business model or ended up in the “land of the living dead” by never growing (failing to Pivot.).

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Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

This all changed in 1980 with the Genentech IPO. In 1980 Genentech became the first IPO of a venture funded biotech company. Large companies execute known business models. In 1973, two scientists, Stanley Cohen at Stanford and Herbert Boyer at UCSF, discovered recombinant DNA, and Boyer went on to found Genentech.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said. What made them exceptional?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

What matters is proving the viability of the company’s business model, what investors call “traction.&# Of course this is not at all true of many profitable small businesses, but they are not what I mean by startups.) And what of the product development team? Go on an agile diet quickly.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 27, 2009

It uses principles of agile software development, open source and web 2.0, and lean manufacturing to guide the creation of technology businesses that create disruptive innovation. This presentation will empower entrepreneurs and managers to: -Identify a profitable business model faster and cheaper than your competitors.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

— Unremarked and unheralded, the balance of power between startup CEOs and their investors has radically changed: IPOs/M&A without a profit (or at times revenue) have become the norm. In the 20th century tech companies and their investors made money through an Initial Public Offering (IPO). Board Control.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

One way to conceive of our goal in an early-stage venture is to incrementally “fill in the blanks&# for the business model that we think will one day power our startup. For example, say that your business model calls for a 4% conversion rate – as ours did initially at IMVU. Expo SF (May. Try About the author.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2010

That process involves rapid hypothesis testing, validated learning about customers , and a disciplined approach to product development. What differentiates them is their disciplined approach to determining when to spend money: after the fundamental elements of the business model have been empirically validated.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

It was still a year away from its IPO. The original Hewlett Packard which made test and measurement products was spun-out and renamed Agilent. Agilent is a $5.8 For the first 25 years HP’s business model was static. But first some background.) Its latest product was an oscilloscope, the HP 150a.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

Many startups don’t innovate at all in the product dimension, but use other kinds of innovation: repurposing an existing technology for a new use, devising a new business model that unlocks value that was previously hidden, or even simply bringing a product or service to a new location or set of customers previously underserved.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

Heres the pitch: a group of 10 companies would meet once a month for six months to develop their capacity to run lean. Each company would enroll two leaders in the series, one on the technology side, one on the business side. I love the business model. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

No business model, either. Almost all of them got scooped up by pre-IPO Google this time. Almost all of them got scooped up by pre-IPO Google this time. That year, right before the IPO, those months mattered a great deal in terms of financial outcomes. So, the idea of starting without a business model is good ?

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

It requires separating the product launch from the marketing launch (see Dont Launch ) as well as other staple Lean Startup tactics: minimum viable product, split-testing, customer development and the pivot. That is customer development. That is the essence of proving the business in micro-scale.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 17, 2009

Identify a profitable business model faster and cheaper than your competitors. 4. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. Expo SF (May. Want to learn more about me?

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. Thats what business is designed to do.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# Constructing a working business model is a form of ecosystem design.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Do some Customer Development instead. You have to know your business model. Most startups launch before theyve figured out what business theyre in. Hold yourself and your PR agency accountable for developing a high level of understanding of these questions ahead of time. Help you raise money. But dont be too sure.

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San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

Initially, IMVU sought to quickly build a product that would prove out the soundness of their ideas and test the validity of their business model. For one, it required us to keep our developer sandbox setup procedure simple and automated. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

Agile VC

APRIL 13, 2012

And going even further back there have been a few random ones have been built before like Salesforce.com and e-tailer RedEnvelope (IPO’d in 2003 though now defunct as a company). If my memory serves me, <10% of our pre-IPO employees at PayPal lived in SF and literally 1 of the first 40-50 folks at LinkedIn were city-dwellers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, January 28, 2009 Refactoring yourself out of business Let me start out by saying I am a big fan of refactoring , the ongoing process of changing code so that it performs the same behaviors but has more elegant structure. Its an essential discipline of good software development, especially in startups.

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Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

Defense and Intelligence organizations drove the pace of innovation in Silicon Valley by providing research and development dollars to universities, and defense companies built weapons systems that used the Valley’s first microwave devices and semiconductor components. and there were no books, blogs or YouTube videos about entrepreneurship.

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Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 243

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. s helpful to find an developer tool that allows you to write html/css and renders the view in real time, so you donâ??t Firebase : Are all your developers front-end engineers? s easier to use/develop with. Mobile Tools: If you are a web developer, you donâ??t Codeacademy.

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Software Review Technical Review Startup 53