Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

via SuperMac War Story 5: Strategy versus Relentless Tactical Execution — the Potrero Benchmarks « St… [.] Reply SuperMac War Story 6: Building The Killer Team – Mission, Intent and Values « Steve Blank , on April 9, 2009 at 5:02 am Said: [.] I bought one for Linn and she has never forgotten that.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

For a startup Speed and Tempo need to be an integral part of your corporate DNA. Great startups have a tempo of 10x a large company.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Greetings from Crete, Greece Reply Jerry Ji , on April 10, 2009 at 11:09 am Said: Simply _THE BEST_ war story I’ve read in months. Reply Process for the Enterprise » Blog Archive » People, Staffing, and Steve Blank’s SuperMac Series , on April 17, 2009 at 11:40 am Said: [.]

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Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Facts are the rock on which you build your strategy and tactics In a startup second-hand facts are almost as useless as opinions.

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

The Cinepak codec was written by the engineer who would become my cofounder at Rocket Science Games.) At the time *very* few people knew how to find/encode, tag, and transfer an mp3 file. And I got to experience a type of customer buying behavior I had never seen before – the Novelty Effect. It was fun watching it happen.

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Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

And the odds in your favor are even higher, as most of your peers wouldn’t even get into the game due to some unspoken belief that in a meritocracy, good things will come to those who wait. Just reading the “war stories&# doesn’t do justice to the experience, I keep feeling like I missed out.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

It’s a war you probably never heard of since most of it was classified, and both parties never wanted it public lest it got out of hand. Yet it was a war in which tens of thousands of Americans fought and hundreds died. Yet it was a war in which tens of thousands of Americans fought and hundreds died.

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 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 (..)

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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. Both reminded me why National Service would be a very good idea.) Campbell describes how he tried to instill in his troops the proper combat mentality. It may not be for you.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 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 (..)

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Eighty some pages later I realized that a) I had some great war stories as a good marketeer and failed CEO, b) I’d have to pay my wife and kids to read them, c) the three of them were probably the entire total available market, and d) when I looked at what I had done and what other entrepreneurs had done at their startups, that there was a pattern.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

Posts are going to be a mix of topics: entrepreneurship, secret history and conservation. I’ll try to mix the topics up during the week. BTW, keep the comments coming, they’re read and appreciated. Reply Customer Development and Start-up Models « Market By Numbers - Brant Cooper , on March 26, 2009 at 3:06 am Said: [.]

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Steve Blank

MARCH 28, 2009

The Vietnam war was winding down. The B-52 – When it Absolutely Had to Get There the Next Day During the Cold War, the B-52 bomber was one-third of what was called our strategic triad – meaning, it made up one-third of the U.S.’s s strategic weapons: ICBMs, nuclear submarines, and manned bombers. Then think some more.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

war fighting strategy known as the “ OODA Loop &# articulated by John Boyd and adopted by the U.S. armed forces in both Gulf Wars – and by others. Filed under: Customer Development , Customer Development Manifesto | Tagged: Customer Development « Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40? carry on reading.

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Steve Blank

MAY 1, 2009

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.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

tags: startup productivity) [.] Reply Process for the Enterprise » Blog Archive » The Role of Corner Cases in BPM , on May 5, 2009 at 3:40 pm Said: [.] Any startup that’s striving for consensus on corner cases instead of speed and tempo will be out of business. Yep, that’s what I meant.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

Thailand: Bats, Moths and John Scoggins I was 19 in 1973 and in Thailand in the Air Force working on electronic warfare equipment on fighter planes, gunships and Wild Weasels, at the tail end of the Vietnam War. I remember asking out of the blue one day, “Where does our equipment come from, what is exactly that we’re doing?”

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Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , SuperMac | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Early Stage Startup « Killing Innovation with Corner Cases and Consensus The Secret History of Silicon Valley Part VI: Every World War II Movie was Wrong » 7 Responses David , on April 23, 2009 at 8:58 am Said: Excellent!

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Steve Blank

MAY 13, 2009

Gravity Will be Turned Off « Steve Blank (tags: humor) Comments (0) [.] Reply Ashleighs Dump » Blog Archive » Turning off gravity , on September 6, 2009 at 11:19 pm Said: [.] Some 2 million students have trained there since it opened in 1942. T hink of it as the ultimate vocational training school.

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

link] steve Manual da Startup » Blog Archive » Bem-vindos - Just another WordPress weblog , on November 30, 2009 at 10:31 am Said: [.] It is the path that is hidden in plain sight. Reply steveblank , on November 29, 2009 at 5:42 pm Said: Eduardo, Others have had success using Cafepress to get the book.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Changing the game your industry is playing to one that better serves the customer is the kind of cheating I’m entirely in favor of. It’s the decisions that you make that might cost you an order, a sale or a higher stock price. Do the right thing. It pays off in the end. Reply Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential?

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Microwave Valley – the 1950′s and ’60′s There isn’t much written about Silicon Valley during and after World War II. The story of the valley post war, through the 1950′s, is mostly about the growth of the tube companies and the rise of Hewlett Packard. Who would have known? Very informative.

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Software By Rob

AUGUST 11, 2009

Remember: while you’re not going to win a feature race against an open source competitor, you’ll do even worse in a price war. How to Compete Against Open Source Competition | Software by Rob (tags: software business) [.] #35 " (tags: opensource software programming business marketing) [.] #40 at 9:05 pm [.]

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Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Judging by the ink we had gotten, we were the hottest company in the game business, with stories in Fortune, Forbes, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, and the cover of Wired magazine. Everyone Else is an Idiot The theme of our press blitz was all about how we were going to show the old tired game companies the right way to make video games.

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Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Video Games At SuperMac , Peter Barrett was the witty and creative 24-year old Australian engineer who had designed several of our most successful products, culminating with the software for the Video Spigot. I asked Peter what kind of company he had in mind and was surprised and dismayed by the answer, “I want to make video games.”

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

AKPC_IDS += "376,"; (No Ratings Yet) Loading … Posted in Leadership | Tagged Amp, [.] Thx for sharing (and researching)! However, the CEO as the “Rock Star&# always reminded me of why I fired any PR agency that was getting more press than the company it represented. on June 24, 2009 at 4:31 pm Said: [.]

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Their national technical means of verification made the world a safer place and hastened the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War.) nuclear armaments industry during the cold war, so I guess that sort of fuzzy thinking might be a necessity. Is this behavior an outlier or is it the norm in the PR industry? Just a hard problem.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Kind of like the game of telephone you played as a kid. Instead they managed rep firms (independent sales companies that carried multiple, non-competing products) that called on computer resellers that sold to the customers. The result is usually hilarious.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

This turned into a dispute over the “right way” and led to war – just like it did for generations of computer architects. Customer Development is Not a Focus Group « Steve Blank (tags: entrepreneurship startups) [.] One group ate from the little end first – little-endians while the other ate theirs from the big end – big-endians.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

Or if you have kids, it will get asked when you’ve missed another one of their plays, soccer games or school events because you were too busy finishing that project or on yet another business trip. Your work is of great service to those who do not live in the Valley and thus do not get access to WAR stories in real-time.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , ESL , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , ESL « Convergent Technologies: War Story 1 – Selling with Sports Scores A Wilderness of Mirrors » 17 Responses Michael F. Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA « Steve Blank (tags: startup) [.]

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Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Filed under: Marketing , Technology , Venture Capital | Tagged: Steve Blank , Venture Capital , Entrepreneurs , Early Stage Startup , Tips for Startups « Customer Analytics – From Those Who Should Know SuperMac War Story 10: The Video Spigot » 14 Responses Michael F.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2009

Here I was, a very junior employee of ESL, a company with its hands in the heart of our Cold War strategy. Clueless about the chess game being played in Washington, I was just a minion in a corporate halfway house in between my military career and entrepreneurship. Here was a real-world example of the Cold War “ offset strategy.&#

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Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

I was great at “office wars.”) And there was lots of discussion of what style of furniture is appropriate. Our exec staff spent time worrying about who had the corner office, and what departments had the “prime&# location. (I There was lots of talk about the importance of natural lighting and maybe we needed our own cafeteria.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 6, 2009

——– The Korean War catapulted Stanford University’s Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) into a major player in electronic intelligence and electronic warfare systems. During a nuclear war in the 1950′s the Strategic Air Command was going to fly its bombers with nuclear weapons into the Soviet Union.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2009

Keep in mind that 32 of these planes were shot down in the Cold War.) So at times multiple ELINT planes would fly on a mission – one to run at the Soviet border appearing to attack, the other to pick up the signals from the air defense network as it responded to the intrusion. Fred Terman was just getting warmed up.

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Steve Blank

JULY 23, 2009

National Efforts In World War II the U.S. During the cold war, the U.S. The 1970’s and ‘80’s were the endgame of the cold war, and the U.S. While it may seem like an easy choice, few people who love technology and who work on black projects leave. These projects are incredibly seductive. Let me explain why.

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