Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. Yet even with all these tools, early stage startups still need to physically meet with advisors and investors. Victor Hugo.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

Unfortunately, they are disinterested in doing the hard work to help early stage entrepreneurs and companies. My startup business (web development) is being shunned by virtually every other potential investor I approached thus far. The only folks who invested in me were the ones who barely understood the business plan.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Certainly venture-backed startups don’t have this luxury – every business plan has a model in it. 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. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. The goal of their startup in this stage becomes “getting funded.”

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

To some extent this can be good and agile. Scaling a business is often about the boring stuff that doesn’t excite the early-stage entrepreneurs. Each sales person tends to slot in their own slides to win deals or to position things in their own words or style in order to win deals.

Non-Compete 296

Non-Compete Sales Hiring France 296

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

It starts with “Plan-As-You-Go” instead of detailed, formal business plans. Lean Planning started with Tim Berry ‘s 2008 “ Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan ” which was a new way for entrepreneurs to think about planning. The business plan should no longer be just a single event.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? This is the usual reason given for a marketing launch, but for most early stage startups, its a failure. Combining agile development with customer developm.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Step 1: Start with a lean plan. Instead of sitting down to write a 40-page business plan, start with a one-page pitch. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Up and Running

AUGUST 19, 2014

If you’re lucky, and an angel’s (investors or groups) interest is piqued by your initial short pitch, they will want to schedule more time with you to get to know you and your team, and to dig deeper into your business plan (i.e. Angels vs. venture capitalists. Angels differ from venture capitalists in many ways. 51 percent). .

Angel Investor 161

Angel Investor Technical Review Due Diligence Startup 161

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. I see a lot of early-stage entrepreneurs waste too much time chasing money rather than figuring this out first.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

The Next Web

MARCH 2, 2014

Failure plagues those who believe in the traditional business plan; the long-term planning model; the belief that sales and marketing numbers are facts. It teaches you just how mundane the everyday existence of an early-stage startup is. Bill Gates. Steve Jobs. Jeff Bezos. Hiten Shah. And there’s no shame in that.

Europe 163

Europe South Korea San Francisco Portugal 163

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

We agreed that all her founding CEOs seemed to have the same set of personality traits – tenacious, passionate, relentless, resilient, agile, and comfortable operating in chaos. I coach agile teams for a living, and I do most of my work with start-ups. I said, “well for me you’d have to add coming from a dysfunctional family.”

Founder 297

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 297

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

After I retired, I began teaching Customer Development , a theory of how to reduce early stage risk in entrepreneurial ventures. The first time I taught the class at the Haas Business School, U.C. Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA……………… 5. And now they’re a book of their own.

Silicon Valley 202

Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 202

OnlyOnce

MAY 13, 2013

This is one of the best books I’ve read that encapsulates most of the contemporary thinking and writing about product development in the early stages of a startup’s life from thought leaders like Steven Gary Blank and Eric Ries. This is an essential read for entrepreneurs just starting a business.

Lean 79

Lean Early Stage Agile Business Plan 79

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 7, 2007

A Word on Strategy Every good business begins with a solid understanding of the proposition and business plan - in short, your strategy. Its worth reading Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint ; it’ll provide you with an idea of what should be included in your business plan and strategy.

Web 40

Web AJAX Software Review Development Team Review 40

Agile VC

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

There are more similarities with early-stage VC than public investing, but in these asset classes you still see somewhat more uniform access to investment opportunities and less information asymmetry. Also these are typically more mature assets that can be analyzed and understood in broader ways than a de novo startup.

Seed Stage 100

Seed Stage Framework Silicon Valley Early Stage 100

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

VC Cafe covers early stage Israeli and European tech & mobile startups. Updated Business tools for Startups. Agile project management tool that enables real time collaboration. Agile project management. agile product management. agile product management and Scrum tool. Agile eLearning.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53