article thumbnail

Why The Government is Isn’t a Bigger Version of a Startup

Steve Blank

Indeed, Silicon Valley was born as a center for weapon systems development and its software and silicon helped end the Cold War. Within a decade, the rise of venture capital in Silicon Valley enabled startups to find commercial customers rather than military ones. So, the question is: What’s next?

article thumbnail

Use agile budgeting to manage your cash

David Teten

So here’s the solution I have recommended to some of my portfolio companies: “ agile budgeting ”, i.e., monitoring a few key variables while giving managers significant flexibility. Entrepreneur Jeff Magnusson provides a sample agile budgeting workbook. Regardless of whether you take a traditional or agile budgeting approach, Robert A.

Agile 60
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

The Secret History of Silicon Valley Part VI: Every World War II.

Steve Blank

—————- 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. What Does WWII Have to Do with Silicon Valley?

article thumbnail

The Government Starts an Incubator: The National Science Foundation Innovation Corps

Steve Blank

We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. The gamble was that we could train Professors doing hard-core science, who had never been near a startup or Silicon Valley, to get out of the building and talk to customers and Pivot as easily as someone at a web startup.

Incubator 301
article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 6, 2008 Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile I thought Id share an interesting post from someone with a decidedly anti-agile point of view. Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective.

Agile 76
article thumbnail

Hear how the Lean Startup began — and helped one company find success: Episode 2 on Sirius XM Channel 111: Eric Ries and Jon Sebastiani

Steve Blank

— On Agile Development : “ We get customers involved in the development of products as soon as possible and to build everything in an experimental way so that we treat every feature, every ounce of energy that we invest in our startup as an experiment to help us understand what our customers really want. ”. . It put us on the map.”.

Lean 120
article thumbnail

Is the Lean Startup Dead?

Steve Blank

The mantra of “ first mover advantage ,” the idea that winners are the ones who are the first entrants in their market, became the conventional wisdom of investors in Silicon Valley.“ Lean was designed to inform the founders’ vision while they operated frugally at speed. Every startup is in a race against time.

Lean 335