Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

One of the things he mentioned was that when it came to decision-making he still tended to think and act like an engineer. Each and every decision he made was carefully thought through and weighed. Speed = Execution Now General George Patton said, “A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.”

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO.

Silicon Valley 125

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

A Phone Call After I left MIPS Computers I was in New York tagging along with a friend (a computer architect whose products at Apple a decade later would change the shape of personal computing) who was consulting for a voice recognition startup. We were on the University of North Carolina campus to meet with Fred Brooks and Henry Fuchs.

North Carolina 125

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Posted on September 14, 2009 by steveblank Over the last 30 years Wall Street’s appetite for technology stocks have changed radically – swinging between unbridled enthusiasm to believing they’re all toxic. You have to wonder: does the VC you have on your board today have the right skill set to help you succeed in today’s economic environment?

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Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Customer/Market Risk Versus Invention Risk One day I was having lunch with a VC sharing what I learned from my students. Steve,&# he said, “you’re missing the most interesting part of vertical markets. Markets with Customer/Market Risk are those where the unknown is whether customers will adopt the product.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

This post makes a lot more sense if you look at the earlier posts as well as the video and slides. My office is in the Terman Engineering Building. He was the professor who helped his students Bill Hewlett and David Packard start a company in 1939. In World War II he headed up something called the Harvard Radio Research Lab.

Silicon Valley 180

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 180

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. This was just before the IBM PC hit the desktop so there were no “standard” operating systems or applications for desktop platforms.

Technology 138

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

At the same time we were educating the press , we began to educate our own marketing department about what exactly we were supposed to be doing inside the company. During the first few weeks I asked each of my department heads what they did for marketing and the company.

Silicon Valley 259

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. Dancing Around the Question Union Square Ventures was kind enough to sponsor a meetup the night before my class. It’s an impressive portfolio.

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, November 4, 2008 Principles of Lean Startups, presentation for Maples Investments Image via Wikipedia Steve Blank and I had the opportunity to create a presentation about lean startups for Maples Investments. Theyve invested in many great companies , including IMVU , Digg , Kongregate , Twitter.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Was SuperMac attempting to introduce radically new products and create a new market ? No, not really. Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? And we lost money when we did so. Therefore, no, we weren’t really equipped to be the low cost provider. I had found that the numbers 1.7x

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Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

In this one month we had learned more about desktop publishing on the Mac than any one of our competitors. Now the question was what to do with it. First I need to make sure what we really learned was information we could base a company strategy on. First, I presented what I had learned.

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blog.chrisomeara.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

A CEO friend of mine recently asked my opinion about Tony Karrers Startup CTO or Developer article. I think the part time CTO could work. From a development and operations perspective, the common element in successful software businesses seems to be the technical leader. They tend to have the knack for architecture. Its about leading by example.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Posted on December 7, 2009 by steveblank In my 21 years of startups, I had my ideas “stolen” twice. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious. As a reminder, this post is not legal advice, it’s not even advice. It’s just a story about what happened to me. Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company.

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

And I got to experience a type of customer buying behavior I had never seen before – the Novelty Effect. Present at the Creation It was early 1991 and Apple’s software development team was hard at work on QuickTime , the first multimedia framework for a computer.

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Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

I even had time to find a girlfriend who was a contractor to the company. One of her first comments was, “I didn’t know you even worked here. Where were you hiding?&# If she only knew. What’s the Worst that Can Happen? We four instructors would grumble and complain to one another about our lack of leadership.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

We had thought really hard about “ market type ” and decided to reposition the company from a technology provider to a solutions provider. Now we needed to put the tactical programs in place to make this repositioning strategy happen. Well yes, I understand that, but this is a startup, what else do you want to do? “I I just want to do strategy.”

Silicon Valley 124

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

They’ll make much more sense if you read some of the earlier ones for context. From 1946 until 1950, Stanford’s Electronic Research Lab conducted basic research in microwave tubes. The labs basic research was done by graduate students or Ph.Ds military to rearm and mobilize. military to rearm and mobilize.

Silicon Valley 142

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

He’s Only in Field Service When I was at Zilog, the Z8000 peripheral chips included the new “ Serial Communications Controller &# ( SCC ). I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. I thought nothing about the meeting until years later.

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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. A few successful ones do all these things.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

One of the key tenets of entrepreneurship is that you start your company with insufficient resources and knowledge. Faith-based Entrepreneurship At first, entrepreneurship is a Faith-based initiative. You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance.

Silicon Valley 212

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

SuperMac sold our graphic boards for the Macintosh through multiple distribution channels: direct sales to major accounts, national chains, independent rep firms, etc. But the computer retail channel was a large part of our sales. Yet when I saw our retail package, I was confused.

Sales 120

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

This product development diagram had become part of the DNA of Silicon Valley. What was the difference here? Were all startups the same? Were startups failing because of product failures or was there some other failure mode? And even more importantly, was there any way to reduce risk in early stage ventures?

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Part 1 of this post offered some suggestions on going to trade shows to generate awareness. This post offers suggestions if you are going to a trade show to generate leads. Ignore This Post The same caveat applies as in the first post; If you’re selling via the web, and trade shows seem hopelessly anachronistic, ignore this post.

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Alone in a ski cabin with the snow coming down outside, and my wife and daughters out on the slopes all day, I started collecting my thoughts by writing a series of “lessons learned” stories that I had hoped would become my memoirs. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Redemption 126

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Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Technology | Tagged: Customer Development , Tips for Startups « The Sharp End of the Stick Love/Hate Business Plan Competitions » 2 Responses links for 2009-05-06 « Blarney Fellow , on May 6, 2009 at 5:17 pm Said: [.] that only serve to further entrench an existing mindset.

Analytics 121

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

Two years out of the Air Force, serendipity (which would be my lifelong form of career planning) found me in Silicon Valley working for my first company: ESL. If you’re an entrepreneur, ESL is the most important company you’ve never heard of. If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

He had just filmed the second of a series of videos called, Speaking to the Big Dogs: How mid-level managers can communicate effectively with C-level executives (CEO, VP’s, General Managers, etc.) As we were plotting marketing strategy, I mentioned that the phrase “Speaking to the Big Dogs” might end up as his corporate brand.

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Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

Thanks to Dave McClure and Leonard Speiser for the opportunity to speak. The Customer Development talk can be seen here. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The slides are here. If you’ve never seen Eric’s Lean Startup presentation, take a few minutes to at least watch his part. It starts at ~40:30 in the video. steve Customer Development is Hard.

Customer Development 139

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.” An existing market is one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. Me – “Have you used Company x’s product? Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, April 29, 2010 Video update on the Startup Visa Act The Startup Visa Act continues to gain momentum on Capitol Hill, thanks to grassroots support of all of you. On our most recent trip to DC, the Startup Visa team produced two new videos to encapsulate our work to date, and hopefully inspire future action.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

I’ll try to mix the topics up during the week. BTW, keep the comments coming, they’re read and appreciated. And Steve’s got a new blog. [.] Reply Patrick Barthelow , on April 18, 2009 at 9:47 am Said: Hello Steve, Thanks for the fascinating tales.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

This book may be the Iraq war equivalent of “ Dispatches &# which defined Vietnam for my generation. Campbell describes how he tried to instill in his troops the proper combat mentality. I’ve paraphrased his speech into the language of a startup. It’s eerily similar. Startups are inherently chaos. It may not be for you.

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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.” They never understood Market Type.

Customer Development 196

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. In the next few posts that follow, I’ll describe how thinking of a solution to this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – that offers a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Joseph Campbell’s insight of the repeatable patterns in mythology is equally applicable to building a successful startup. All startups (whether a new division inside a larger corporation or in the canonical garage) follow similar patterns—a series of steps which, when followed, can eliminate a lot of the early wandering in the dark.

Silicon Valley 127

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Or, if youd prefer to do it by video, you can upload to YouTube - just use the "startup visa" tag. Whether youre a US citizen or an immigrant, entrepreneur or investor, founder or employee, theres something you can do. This is especially true if you live outside the echo chamber of Silicon Valley. There are four ways to get involved below.

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