YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 12, 2020

Venture capital firms have become more discerning where they put their limited funds to use, and banks have always been anti-startup in their business dealings. Most startups have been competent in managing their cash burn by determining how they spend and utilizing government subsidies to meet their goals.

Bankruptcy 165

Bankruptcy Startup Agile Technical Review 165

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

the wave of semiconductor startups in the 1960’s/70’s, the emergence of venture capital as a professional industry, the personal computer revolution in 1980’s, the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s and finally. The New Structure of the Venture Capital industry. Entrepreneurship as It’s Own Management Science.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

the wave of semiconductor startups in the 1960’s/70’s, the emergence of Venture Capital as a professional industry, the personal computer revolution in 1980’s, the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s and finally. Venture Capital used to be a tight club clustered around formal firms located in Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York.

Restful 243

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 243

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 26, 2022

Use agility to your advantage and make speed a team priority. For other mistakes to avoid as a product manager, check out my recent Linkedin post on the top 10 mistakes product managers make and read everything you can by Marty Cagan. 2021 gave us plenty of examples for bad governance in both startups and venture capital.

Founder 187

Founder Startup Valuation Pre-Money Valuation 187

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

student of our MS&E department at Stanford ,) where they are set on being a leader in developing the management science of entrepreneurship. This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Teaching , Venture Capital.

Business Model 283

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 283

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

The benefits of customer and agile development and minimum features set are continuous customer feedback, rapid iteration and little wasted code. Ironically it becomes the antithesis of agile. The old code is as good as dead the moment management introduces the word “rewrite.” As a consequence, the CEO has no fallback.

Part-Time VPE 323

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 323

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

These tools—Customer Development, Agile Engineering, and Business Model design—became the lean start-up methodology , a rigorous approach to testing hypotheses and building prototypes, and, on the basis of data and evidence, adjusting or pivoting to a variant of the original hypothesis. This is a really big idea.

Incubator 416

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 416

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2011

I spent two weeks of December in Chile as a guest of Professor Cristóbal García, Director of EmprendeUC at the Catholic University of Chile , which just signed up a 3-year collaboration partnership with Stanford’s Technology Ventures Program. Venture Capital. The country needs to build a deeper Venture Capital industry.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley Chile South America Venture Capital 335

Agile VC

OCTOBER 29, 2014

Most folks reading this will know that many startups were built in part with the help of venture capital. Some institutional investors simply aren’t big enough to have in-house employees to vet and manage a portfolio of VC funds. The first is a staff constraint. What Are These Intermediaries?

Venture Capital 279

Venture Capital LP Private Equity Institutional Investors 279

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

In July I got a call from Errol Arkilic , a program manager at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the $6.8-billion We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Some had their own labs managing large groups of researchers. This week we saw the results. Your Country Needs You.

Incubator 307

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 307

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2017

For example, if a chief executive officer manages the daily operation, a chief entrepreneur heads up innovation efforts. And the chief entrepreneur has a staff of chief portfolio manager, chief venture capitalist, and chief risk officer, right? I can't really give my manager feedback. I've never done that before.

Lean 245

Lean Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 245

BeyondVC

APRIL 4, 2018

Infrastructure market moves way too fast and more software needed to help manage this chaos. If you are looking for a story about how large enterprises digitally transform themselves into agile software organizations (to the extent they can), then I suggest reading Pivotal’s recently filed S-1 on Friday. Serverless technologies….

Cloud 60

Cloud Agile Architecture Azure 60

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2022

Supply chain management. AI applications are already appearing in predictive maintenance, risk management, procurement, order fulfillment, supply chain planning and promotion management. Automated Battle management – air and missile defense, army/navy tactical…. AI/ML in Collection. Carpe Diem. Want more Detail?

Artificial Inteligence 422

Artificial Inteligence Software Review Algorithm Technical Review 422

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

A founder’s lack of credibility/experience in growing and managing a large company hindered a company that wanted to go public. Incubators and accelerators like Y-Combinator have institutionalized experiential training in best practices (product/market fit, pivots, agile development, etc.); Filed under: Venture Capital.

Founder 274

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 274

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Named one of BusinessWeek’s Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech, Eric served as a venture advisor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers before moving on to advise startups and venture capital firms independently. He was named entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School in 2010 and is currently an IDEO Fellow.

Lean 120

Lean Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder Channel 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

But the world you lead will be much different from the one your professors knew or your predecessors managed. As the venture capital business has come roaring back in the last 5 years, startups are awash in available capital. To manage these employees companies create metrics to control, measure and reward execution.

Private Equity 329

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 329

www.bothsidesofthetable.com

MAY 13, 2012

Raising Venture Capital. The best technologists often aren’t amazing people managers. They work on their own schedule and are often hard to manage. The VP Engineering aspires to manage teams. They are sticklers about managing unit tests , system tests and regression tests. Start-up Advice.

Fractional VPE 89

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Fractional CTO CTO Hire 89

Cracking the Code

MARCH 29, 2022

One of the benefits of the cloud is that it gives development teams more agility and flexibility, but with increased flexibility comes the downside of a loss of control and visibility. That said, some large sectors like financial services and healthcare only started to migrate their core workloads and data to the cloud more recently.

Cloud 62

Cloud Cofounder Architecture Technical Cofounder 62

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

By the late 1930′s when HP started, a small group (measured in hundreds) of engineers who made radio tubes were building the valleys’ ecosystem for electronics manufacturing, product engineering and technology management. And since there was no Venture Capital in the 1950′s/’60′s where was the money coming from?

Silicon Valley 297

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 297

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. Lean Startups aren’t Cheap Startups « Steve Blank (tags: startup product-management strategy) [.]

Lean 260

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

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. Too often, CEOs and small business managers suffer from analysis paralysis. This happens for any number of reasons.

Silicon Valley 307

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 307

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Venture Capital Cafe > Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). Task Management. Project Management Tools. Subscription Payments / Management. Managing APIs. Customer Relationship Management. Contractor Management. Private beta invitations & management: Prefinery. About VC Cafe.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Austin Startup

AUGUST 30, 2019

On August 14–15, the Air Force, through AFWERX , hosted a two-day Spark Collider event at Capital Factory to bring newly awarded 19.2 SBIR Phase I companies together with relevant Air Force and venture capital stakeholders. The more successful Jeff became, the more assistance he needed to organize his day-to-day schedule.

SBIR 48

SBIR Government Venture Capital Startup 48

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner. As the Stanford entrepreneurship program for the engineering school sits in the Management Science and Engineering Department , most of our TA’s are students in the MS&E PhD program. They set up and keep the class web site updated.

Business Model 235

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 235

Agile VC

JULY 11, 2012

I happen to be fascinated by the history of the VC industry, and one of the things we discussed at a recent offsite are the common threads behind the rise and fall of great venture capital firms. The fixed ~2% management fees of course scale directly to AUM but the performance based ~20% carried interest also scales with AUM.

Silicon Valley 240

Silicon Valley Carried Interest Cofounder Boston 240

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

While this signaled that investments in technology companies could be very lucrative, both Shockley and Fairchild could only be funded through corporate partners – there was no venture capital industry. government backed venture firms and limited partnerships. A wave of innovation was about to meet a pile of risk capital.

Engineer 311

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 311

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.) This Stanford class will introduce management tools for entrepreneurs. We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack.

Wiki 316

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 316

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 11, 2012

Better Agile Than Smart – [link]. The Scarcest Resource at Startups is Management Bandwidth – [link]. What I learned from raising venture capital – [link]. Better Agile Than Smart – [link]. Web Tool of the Month: crowdSPRING – [link]. So what exactly is a tech company? – [link].

Social Media 92

Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

They will realize that you have built a startup that’s agile, resilient and customer-centric. Good to see someone with authority advocating an approach to building startups that we at Agile Entrepreneurs focus on, week after week. Your presentation doesn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development.

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

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. It means someone who organizes, manages, and assumes the risks of a business. The question was: what did the founders want to do?

Hockey Stick 299

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 299

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Every startup has some methodology for product development, launch and life-cycle management. Yet startup companies have traditionally used this model to manage and pace not only engineering but also non-engineering activities. The Focus on Execution Versus Agility The product development diagram has a linear flow from left to right.

Customer Development 244

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 244

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 29, 2017

I like his list of competencies, with my tips on how to highlight them, to score certain people as potential business leaders to peers and investors: Agility in learning. Agility in learning is the ability to diagnose the need for new skill sets and to acquire them quickly, despite incessant business pressures of change and no time available.

Agile 141

Agile Non-Compete Angel Groups Venture Capital 141

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.

Venture Capital 303

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 303

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

Congratulations to all of you who actually managed to slog through it.). Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA……………… 5. Lessons Learned – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch……… 52. I never imagined more than a few hundred copies would be sold to my students.

Silicon Valley 228

Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 228

Agile VC

OCTOBER 23, 2012

It’s true that FoFs provide LPs a way to purchase VC funds in a basket, but by design these are comparatively narrow actively-managed investment funds rather than broad-based passive vehicles. The same is not true for venture capital of course, since the underlying startups VCs invest in aren’t publicly selling their equity.

LP 176

LP Accredited Investor Carried Interest Portfolio 176

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. Jonathan Swift.

Silicon Valley 297

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 297