Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. We recruited two veteran Venture Capital partners to be part of the 10-week teaching team: Jon Feiber , at Mohr Davidow and John Burke of True Ventures. And they were hard at work at some real science. The class syllabus is here.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

The plan describes the execution strategy for addressing these “knowns.&# In the early days of venture capital, investors and entrepreneurs were familiar with the format of business plans from large company and adopted it for startups. Without much thought it has been used ever since.

Business Plan 312

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 312

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. Reply Why Startups are Agile and Opportunistic -- Pivoting the Business Model , on April 14, 2010 at 6:32 am Said: [.]

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

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

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. They build a minimum feature set.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

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 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

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. Brendan McManus said: “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [link] #startup #advice [.] Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [.]

Venture Capital 209

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2011

Venture Capital ; met with the local hardware/software venture capital firm. Incubators : toured the TechArb , the engineering student accelerator, and the Michigan Venture Center in the University’s Tech Transfer Office. You Can’t Start a Fire Without A Spark – A Lack of Venture Capital.

Michigan 307

Michigan Silicon Valley Venture Capital Incubator 307

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

MARCH 31, 2014

As the venture capital business has come roaring back in the last 5 years, startups are awash in available capital. These Key Performance Indicators and processes are what make a company efficient —but they are also the root cause of its inability to be agile and innovative. Act Like a Startup.

Private Equity 325

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

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.

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

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 290

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Business Model Balance Sheet 290

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

After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner. For example, when we taught the value of getting out of the building and agile development, we had Eric Ries talk about the Lean Startup. Over the summer we had both been impressed with Alexander Osterwalder’s Business Model Template work.

Business Model 226

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

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 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

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 258

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Business Model Balance Sheet 258

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. And they’ll do this using the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Filed under: Lean LaunchPad , Teaching , Venture Capital.

Engineer 278

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 278

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2018

In this case the entrepreneurs know something potential employers don’t – that nowhere on their resume does it show resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition, tenacity and having a passion for products. Venture capital flourished when the tax rates plummeted in the late 1970s.

Entrepreneur 336

Entrepreneur Business Model Capital Gains Aggregator 336

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 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. The Focus on Execution Versus Agility The product development diagram has a linear flow from left to right.

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA « Steve Blank (tags: startup) [.] Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA. Steve Blank, Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA: … entrepreneurs instinctualy realize that the best advocate for their careers is themselves [.] You’re Hired, You’re Fired. Reply Create.

Agile 245

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 245

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.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Jon Feiber at MDV is going to try investing in startups emerging from Universities with great engineering schools outside of Silicon Valley that have entrepreneurship programs, but minimal venture capital infrastructure.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

Steve Blank

MAY 12, 2015

The SBIR/STTR program made ~6,200 seed stage investments in 2014, dwarfing the seed investments made by venture capital. startups that don’t fit whatever’s hot in venture capital. The SBIR/STTR program represents a critical source of seed funding for U.S. In fact, half of all seed stages in tech companies in the U.S.

SBIR 120

SBIR Maryland Lean Seed Stage 120

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.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

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. How was this possible?

Silicon Valley 180

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 180

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. A business model competition would emulate the “out of the building” experience of real entrepreneurs executing the customer development / business model / agile development stack.

Business Model 263

Business Model Customer Development Utah Lean 263

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2019

In addition to Stanford I also teach at Columbia, and at these research universities – Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley, and others – they all now have an internal incubator, they have maker spaces, they have their own venture funds, they connect to the community, they connect to venture capital. It’s a big idea.

Incubator 331

Incubator Lean Programming Government 331

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (..)

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

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. Read: Steve Blank, “Lessons Learned – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch”, [link].

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. The first reaction from my CEO was, “that’s why you’re running the department.” And yes, we could have built a top-down, command-and-control hierarchy.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

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 Technology changes, culture changes, customer needs change, more agile competitors emerge, etc. And venture capital and entrepreneurship has made life even tougher for the modern corporation.

Silicon Valley 164

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 164

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) Initially your job is to understand each of the parts of your business model before you hire someone to do it. so at least some parts are being run by people who know what they are doing.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

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. Even for the smallest trade show, no one shows up without booth training. Messages, themes, demo’s.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

Forty years before Agile Development methodologies became popular, ESL had analysts from its &# customer&# sitting side-by-side with ESL engineers designing new equipment together. These would be the heart of ESL’s business. A-12 OXCART CIA Spyplane ESL found other ways to stay very close to its customers.

Silicon Valley 171

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 171

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. A few successful ones do all these things. But if you have a web based product the right answer may be 300-500. Thank you, Steve.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

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 135

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 135

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Incubators and accelerators like Y-Combinator have institutionalized experiential training in best practices (product/market fit, pivots, agile development, etc.); Filed under: Venture Capital. Today, every founder can read all there is to know about running a startup online.

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245