Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks , turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. 19 of the 21 teams are moving forward in commercializing their technology. We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

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. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. That’s why startups are agile. Startups that are agile have mastered one other trick – and that’s Tempo – the ability to make quick decisions consistently over extended periods of time.

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. 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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

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 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. 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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. Electron-based Venture Capital. Here’s why.

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Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

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. While that’s not true, it is a fact that entrepreneurs only have one word for “startup.” .

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Lets take venture capital and grow this thing into a real business.”. They used Customer and Agile development to search for a scalable and repeatable business model to become a large company. Typically the size of their opportunity and company doesn’t lend itself to attracting venture capital.

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Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

If you take funding from a venture capital firm or angel investor and want to build a large, enduring company (rather than sell it to the highest bidder), this isn’t the decade to do it. The collapse of the IPO market and dysfunctional math in the venture capital community has stacked the odds against you. Here’s why.

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Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Over time, open source software the rise of the next wave of web startups and the embrace of Agile Engineering meant that startups no longer needed millions of dollars to buy specialized computers and license expensive software – they could start a company on their credit cards. Filed under: Technology , Venture Capital.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

In my last post I described my approach to one of the three classes I teach at Stanford in the engineering school: Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship. After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner. . ——————-.

Business Model 226

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Each region had two of the finest research universities in the United States, Stanford and MIT, which were building on the technology breakthroughs of World War II and graduating a generation of engineers into a consumer and cold war economy that seemed limitless. government backed venture firms and limited partnerships.

Engineer 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. Here’s how.

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. It provides private funds for untested and unproven technology and entrepreneurs. And they’ll do this using the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack.

Engineer 278

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 278

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. 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. on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2011

Students ; presented to entrepreneurship classes teaching technology-driven Scalable startups as well as students interested in Social Entrepreneurship. Venture Capital ; met with the local hardware/software venture capital firm. You Can’t Start a Fire Without A Spark – A Lack of Venture Capital.

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Michigan Silicon Valley Venture Capital Incubator 307

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. Here’s how.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

After these slides, these VC’s recognized that this company had dramatically reduced risk and built a startup that was agile, resilient and customer-centric. The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Your “Customer Development Process&# has really resonated for me.

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Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. The process they use to guide their search is customer development. They would: Blog their Customer Development progress as a narrative. It might be possible to create Virtual Valley Ventures.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

For the first 75 years of the 20 th century, when capital for new ventures was scarce, the smartest engineering talent went to corporate R&D labs. But starting in the last quarter of that century and accelerating in this one, a new form of financing – risk capital (angel and venture capital) — emerged.

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Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

When venture capital teamed up with technology entrepreneurs in the 1960’s they brought with them the canonical MBA planning tool – the business plan. Business Plan vs. Business Model + Customer Development. But you can’t fake a business model/customer development presentation. The Business Plan ?-

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Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 263

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering. How was this possible?

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Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 180

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms. While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. At ESL Military Intelligence Was No Longer an Oxymoron Perry not only took his best managers, but he also took his customers, and his desire to build a company culture that was the antithesis of working for a phone company.

Silicon Valley 171

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 171

Steve Blank

MAY 12, 2015

The Small Business Innovative Research ( SBIR ) and Small Business Technology Transfer ( STTR ) programs are startup seed funds created by Congress to encourage U.S. The SBIR/STTR program made ~6,200 seed stage investments in 2014, dwarfing the seed investments made by venture capital. SBIR/STTR Program and Startup Seed Funding.

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SBIR Maryland Lean Seed Stage 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand. Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it.

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Everyone should have a chance to walk the floor looking for deals, technology, distribution, customers, etc. Everyone should be articulate and agile in describing and demoing the products.) For bigger booths a good rule of thumb is to have two to four staffers for every 100 square feet of exhibit space. What didn’t?

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.) We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. to optimize this search. What are hypotheses?

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Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

It makes you appreciate that the Silicon Valley technology-centric culture-bubble has little to do with the majority of Americans.) I was living the dream – working 80 hour weeks and all the technology I could drink with a fire hose.) Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA « Steve Blank (tags: startup) [.]

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Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 245

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. This should not deter you.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

“After the crash, venture capital was scarce to non-existent. Ditch the business plan and when assumptions are proven wrong, pivot Customer Development: Build a product your customers want (vs. Agile Development: launch an MVP early and iterate quickly.

Lean 214

Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

The other revels in the world as we all know it will be someday: limitless distribution enabled by new technologies, the importance of collaborative filters, and on-demand availability of all content for end-users. But the same technologies that make life difficult for traditional marketers also offer them unprecedented new opportunities.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

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 After failing dismally at making disposable digital cameras in 2003 Pure Digital Technologies reinvented their company in 2007 to make the Flip line of camcorders. However, no markets last forever.

Silicon Valley 164

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 164

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. I can’t get this one out of my head. during World War II.

Silicon Valley 135

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 135

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 122