Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Agile – you may find the real opportunities for your company was somewhere else. Can you recognize and capitalize on them? This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile. How quickly will you recover? Creative / Pattern Recognition – can you think “out of the box?

Cofounder 223

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 241

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Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

Back from a family humanitarian trip/vacation to one of the last bastions of Communism where “marketing&# isn’t even a profession and entrepreneurship is a crime. After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner. ——————-.

Business Model 230

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

Finally, I’ll write about how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. Morale in Sales and Marketing starts to plummet. Blame it On Marketing In the next 3-6 months, a new VP of Sales is hired.

Customer Development 228

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

What Markets? My job was to figure out what markets Ardent should target, who were the key customers in these markets and what applications these customers had to have. The one thing I did know is that we were probably going to be running some of the same applications as the market leader Cray.

Silicon Valley 151

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SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Build your own Startup Death Clock - A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks , November 1, 2010 A few months ago I created a fun device at WPEngine to focus everyone's attention the most important thing. Competing To Win Deals - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 7, 2010 The venture capital business is highly competitive.

Technical Review 175

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. what Market Type is your startup? Making sales calls with him taught me what a world class salesperson was like.

Technology 139

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Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

And even better, marketing got to design the graphics for the lobby and hallway (bright and colorful neon) to better represent the color graphics business we were in. While our competitors furiously worked on regaining market share, we were arguing about whether the carpets should be wool or nylon. I was great at “office wars.”)

Silicon Valley 212

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

At the same time we were educating the press , we began to educate our own marketing department about what exactly we were supposed to be doing inside the company. During the first few weeks I asked each of my department heads what they did for marketing and the company. Titles are not the same as what your job is. This is a big idea.

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www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Venture Capital Cafe > Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). Whether you’re wondering what site search you should use or what is the best email marketing tool, knowledge is power. Inbound Marketing vs Interruption marketing. Email marketing. Market Research. Promotions/Marketing.

Software Review 53

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

And in hindsight, we seemed a bit more agile and innovative in WWII.) Yet decades later the military lacked the agility to write a spec in two years, let alone get 10′s of thousands of new systems deployed on aircraft as Terman had done. My first business trip to the valley was to visit California Microwave.

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steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Home Books for Startups Guide Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Tools Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Email Subscription Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Categories Air Force (12) Ardent (10) Audubon (1) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (39) Business Model versus Business Plan (..)

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Maybe It’s Me When I got to the SuperMac, our Marketing Communications group told me about our “award-winning&# retail packaging for our graphics boards. Her packaging class was so good that we sent every new marketer at SuperMac to take it. Yet when I saw our retail package, I was confused.

Sales 120

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

If you’re in markets that still exhibit at them (semiconductors, communications, enterprise software, etc.,) ———— T o: Marketing Department From: Steve Subject: Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters Generating Leads Ownership If your company is going to a show to generate leads, then sales owns the show. .

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

When Terman said no, Sylvania, a tube company which built proximity fuse tubes in WWII, won the contract and set up its Electronic Defense Lab (EDL) in Mountain View California in the middle of an orchard. In five years, ESL went from a plucky startup to the market leader in Sigint and telemetry intercepts.

Silicon Valley 176

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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 302

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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. Ultimately you want to see if you can find customers and a market for the product as specified – as early as possible. Innovation – Business Model?

Vertical 123

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

Customer Development 203

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. As a result different market types modify what you do in in each step of Customer Development.

Customer Development 246

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 246

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

The original Hewlett Packard which made test and measurement products was spun-out and renamed Agilent. Agilent is a $5.8 However, no markets last forever. Technology changes, culture changes, customer needs change, more agile competitors emerge, etc. billion dollar test and measurement company.

Silicon Valley 169

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Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2009

Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley « Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA Rocket Science 2: Drinking the Kool-Aid » 2 Responses Ben , on July 1, 2009 at 2:31 pm Said: Great post Steve. It’s interesting that the NY Times obituary makes no mention of Ted Hall.

Silicon Valley 136

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2009

Rapid Scan/High Probability of Intercept – Stanford’s contribution In the last post we described Stanford’s high power, electronically tuned microwave tubes (the Backward Wave Oscillator ) which made high power, frequency agile airborne jammers possible. He sold the company to Teledyne in 1965.

Silicon Valley 158

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. In the next few posts that follow, I’ll describe how thinking of a solution to this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – that offers a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

Customer Development 220

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Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

You don’t get grades for having resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition and tenacity. There’s a big difference between being an employee at a great technology company and having the guts to start one. You just get successful. Steve Blank [.] Midas Oracle.NET , on August 30, 2009 at 11:53 pm Said: [.]

Silicon Valley 329

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 6, 2009

Air Force also needed improvements in frequency agility to protect its cold war bombers. Frequency agility can be best described by what happened over Germany in WWII. B-47 - primary Strategic Air Command Bomber in the 1950's As a result, to protect its bombers flying over the Soviet Union the U.S.

Silicon Valley 147

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Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

At some point in my career as I began to formulate thoughts about mission and intent , I started to think about the broader role of marketing in a growing technology company. It became clear to me that the mission of marketing in most companies has to be to support sales.

Silicon Valley 127

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

It would have been easy for marketing to skip all of this and just write a set of benchmarks that made us look good. I teach teams various Agile techniques, and occasionally get told some particular trick is cheating. The goal was to make our boards run really fast on customer applications – the benchmarks just reflected that.

Silicon Valley 124

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Steve Blank

MAY 13, 2009

From steveblank.com: Part of marketing is the ability to communicate a message to thousands of people and convince them [.] Gravity Will be Turned Off Part of marketing is the ability to communicate a message to thousands of people and convince them to believe your [.] [.] guy is smart. Thanks for typing the story up.

Silicon Valley 215

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Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2009

The reality is that independent electric vehicle startups will win over time (closer to the customer, more agile, etc.) The Chinese auto market currently treats all other cars as an open platform to build off of anyway (without paying any royalties). with the auto bailout. But they’re smart, let’s see what happens.)

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

MARCH 28, 2009

Reply Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA « Steve Blank , on June 29, 2009 at 7:02 am Said: [.] I was always curious about, and asking about, the big picture. Reply dispatches from TJICistan » Blog Archive » a secret history , on April 27, 2009 at 7:25 am Said: [.]

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