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Why Startups are Agile and Opportunistic – Pivoting the Business Model

Steve Blank

Finally, when everyone else had their turn, the grey-haired VC turned to the founder and said, “If you do what we tell you to do and fail, we’ll fire you. The Search for the Business Model. A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Pivoting the Business Model.

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Why Founders Should Know How to Code

Steve Blank

I was driving home from the BIO conference in San Diego last month and had lots of time for a phone call with Dave, an ex student and now a founder who wanted to update me on his Customer Discovery progress. His inability to attract a co-founder who could code was a troubling sign. Customer Discovery. And second, learn how to code.

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How To Find the Right Co-Founders?

Steve Blank

How do you figure out what’s the right mix of skills for the co-founders of your startup? Surprisingly if you’ve filled out the business model canvas you already know who you need. She started by sketching her business model canvas on a napkin, but somehow the conversation quickly shifted to what was really on her mind.

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The 47th (-46) International Business Model Competition

Steve Blank

The most visible step was the first International Business Model Competition , hosted by the BYU Rollins Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology. We’ve been teaching that the difference between a startup and an existing company is that existing companies execute business models, while startups search for a business model.

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Is the Lean Startup Dead?

Steve Blank

Jeff Katzenberg has a great track record – head of the studio at Paramount, chairman of Disney Studios, co-founder of DreamWorks and now chairman of NewTV. To be fair, in the 20 th century, there really wasn’t a model for how to build startups other than write plan, raise money, and execute – the bubble was this method, on steroids.

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Why Build, Measure, Learn – isn’t just throwing things against the wall to see if they work

Steve Blank

While it sounds simple , the Build Measure Learn approach to product development is a radical improvement over the traditional Waterfall model used throughout the 20 th century to build and ship products. Best practices in software development started to move to agile development in the early 2000’s. Generating Hypotheses.

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Am I a Founder? The Adventure of a Lifetime. « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

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