Steve Blank

APRIL 3, 2018

Others join startups to strike out on their own. Most great technology startups – Oracle, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Tesla – were built by a team led by an entrepreneur. Some of these world-class innovators get recruited by large companies like professional athletes, with paychecks to match.

Technical Review 334

Technical Review Entrepreneur Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 334

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

And he recognized it was making his startup feel and act like a big ponderous company. Most decisions in a startup must be made in the face of uncertainty. One of the things he mentioned was that when it came to decision-making he still tended to think and act like an engineer. The same is true in your company.

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. As much as I loved the magazine, there was little in it for startups (or new divisions in established companies) searching for a business model.

Technical Review 327

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 327

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. And the magnitude of the problem increases exponentially with the success of the company.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2017

By coincidence, the CEO was an intern at one of my startups more than two decades ago.) Before the rapid rise of Unicorns, (startups with a valuation over a billion dollars), when boards were still in control, they “encouraged” the hiring of “adult supervision” of the founders after they found product/market fit. Adult Supervision.

Part-Time VPE 308

Part-Time VPE Liquidity Event Stock Engineer 308

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

It’s time to update Build, Measure, Learn to what we now know is the best way to build Lean startups. Only after shipping and attempting to sell the product would a startup hear any substantive feedback from customers. Best practices in software development started to move to agile development in the early 2000’s.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

How do you figure out what’s the right mix of skills for the co-founders of your startup? I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup. I told Radhika this is a perennial question for startups. ——-.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2014

A startup is not just about the idea, it’s about testing and then implementing the idea. This startup was broken at multiple levels. In fact, it wasn’t even a startup. There were three problems with Dave’s startup. A Startup is Not Just About a Good Idea. Coding is the DNA of a Web/Mobile Startup.

Cofounder 336

Cofounder Founder Technical Cofounder Coder 336

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. As much as I loved the magazine, there was little in it for startups (or new divisions in established companies) searching for a business model.

Technical Review 219

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 219

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Customer Development , Family/Career.

Agile 332

Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 332

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

What’s A Startup? We’ve been teaching that the difference between a startup and an existing company is that existing companies execute business models, while startups search for a business model. (Or This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack.

Business Model 275

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 275

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Once upon a time every great organization was a scrappy startup willing to take risks – new ideas, new methods, new customers, targets, and mission. What had previously been a strength – their great management processes – now holds back their ability to respond to new challenges. Companies Run on Process. Process Versus Product.

Government 315

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 315

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Eric Ries , entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Lean Startup. The focus of our first segment with Eric was, “What is the Lean Startup” and how did it start? Origins of the Lean Startup.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

By the end of the 20th century entrepreneurship education fell into two categories: 1) starting small businesses and 2) starting high-growth, high-risk scalable startups. The case method and business plans are the antithesis of how entrepreneurs create startups. Neither cases nor business plans replicate the actual startup experience.

Lean 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

The Energy Storage division is acting like a startup, and Prescott Logan its General Manager, has lived up to the charter. He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley. They’ve gained as good of an insight into customer needs and product feature set than any startup I’ve seen. You couldn’t be more wrong.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

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. The Innovation Corps Startup Team. We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. This week we saw the results. It was an extraordinary effort.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities. Now the company is in crisis mode.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

Then we saw the great alignment between the Customer Development Model and the Agile software development methodologies so we decided to create the course IIC3515 “Workshop of Entrepreneurship with Software” that applies both models to develop real software products with customers from the startup ideas of the students.

Chile 235

Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 235

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

In the last few years we’ve recognized that a startup is not a smaller version of a large company. We’re now learning that companies are not larger versions of startups. But paradoxically, in spite of all their seemingly endless resources, innovation inside of an existing company is much harder than inside a startup.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2010

If we use our “startup to large company,” diagram, we can see that sustaining innovations occur within a large company’s existing management structures. Just like a startup. The diagram for managing disruptive innovation in large company looks suspiciously like starting from square one as a startup. different processes.

Search 242

Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 242

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

If you’re an early employee at a startup, one day you will wake up to find that what you worked on 24/7 for the last year is no longer the most important thing – you’re no longer the most important employee, and process, meetings, paperwork and managers and bosses have shown up. I know a change is going to come. That doesn’t scale.”

Part-Time VPE 333

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 333

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2020

Given that software is central to every major DOD mission and system, we need to acquire and deliver software with much greater speed, agility, and cyber security. How would your organization increase collaboration between industry and government, especially at the startup and small company level?

Acquisition 284

Acquisition Technical Review Technology Security 284

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

You think startups are hard? 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.

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ), Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique. I observed that teaching case studies and/or how to write a business plan as a capstone entrepreneurship class didn’t match the hands-on chaos of a startup.

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

Over the last three years our Lean LaunchPad / NSF Innovation Corps classes have been teaching hundreds of entrepreneurial teams a year how to build their startups by getting out of the building and testing their hypotheses behind their business model. The next customer segment we tried was startup founders.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

Everyone knows what a startup is for – don’t they? In this post we’re going to offer a new definition of why startups exist : a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. In your startup’s business model, the boxes will have specific details of your company’s strategy.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Starting in the 1950’s, Stanford’s engineering department became “outward facing” and developed a culture of spinouts and active faculty support and participation in the first wave of Silicon Valley startups. It has replaced how to write a business plan with hands-on Lean Startup methods. That has changed in the last few years.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

I suggested that they first might want to read my post on why business plans are a poor planning and execution tool for startups. A startup is not executing a series of knowns. A simple way to think about it is that in a startup no business plan survives first contact with customers. Business Plan Versus Business Models.

Business Plan 312

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 312

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

The Lean LaunchPad class uses the three “ Lean Startup ” principles: Alexander Osterwalders “ business model canvas ” to frame hypotheses. Agile Engineering” to have teams prototype, test, and iterate their idea while discovering if they have a profitable business model.

Intellectual Property 281

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 281

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2020

The pandemic has upended the business models of most startups and existing companies. While the Lean Startup was built with Business Model Canvas, Customer Development and Agile Engineering, there’s an additional tool — the Market Opportunity Navigator — that can help entrepreneurs discover new opportunities. .

Customer 436

Customer Marketing Customer Development Lean 436

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of this century with the observation that startups aren’t smaller versions of large companies – large companies at their core execute known business models, while startups search for scalable business models. Worksheet 3: Design your agile focus strategy.

Lean 333

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 333

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 13, 2018

If you read these quotes, you’d think they were from a CEO who just took over a company facing disruption from agile startups and a changing environment. Instead the focus is on global and rapid maneuver capabilities of smaller, dispersed units to “increase agility, speed, and resiliency. And you’d be right. on page 10.

Employee 322

Employee Agile Artificial Inteligence China 322

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2017

06:30 The difference between large companies and startups. 07:13 The Lean Startup Lightbulb moment. 08:18 Agile Development and Lean – Eric Ries. 13:05 Startup Capital at Scale threatens large Companies. 13:58 Startups operate with alacrity, agility and at times a death wish.

Agile 232

Agile Lean Government Stock 232

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. Product Development Diagram 1. Where Are the Customers?

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. Startups, are not about executing a plan where the product, customers, channel are known. – not just web-based startups.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

Just look at the disruptive challenges that businesses face today– globalization, China as a manufacturer, China as a consumer, the Internet, and a steady stream of new startups. Perhaps that’s because where established companies might see risks or threats, startups see opportunity. Building Innovation Internally is Hard.

Private Equity 325

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

In every startup I did, every new course I created, and everything I’ve taught, the phrase “make every day count” took on new meaning when I knew how many were left. When I retired after 21 years working in 8 startups, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the business school at the University of California Berkeley.

Lean 221

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 221