David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

I thought it would be helpful to compile my past articles in one place. Just as with any company, the most important issue is the team; see “ How to Negotiate a Partner Role at a Venture Capital or Private Equity Firm “ . See How Private Equity and Venture Capital Investors Are Eating Their Own Dogfood. .

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

I thought it would be helpful to compile my past articles in one place. Just as with any company, the most important issue is the team; see “ How to Negotiate a Partner Role at a Venture Capital or Private Equity Firm “ . See How Private Equity and Venture Capital Investors Are Eating Their Own Dogfood. .

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2013

The Harvard Business Review is offering free reprints of the May 2013 cover article, “ Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything “ Available here.

Lean 331

Lean Venture Capital Customer Development Startup 331

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2013

The Harvard Business Review is offering free reprints of the May 2013 cover article, “ Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything “ Available here.

Lean 223

Lean Venture Capital Customer Development Startup 223

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 126

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

David Teten

MARCH 28, 2012

Best Practices in Venture Capital Portfolio Company Value Creation. Lowering that failure rate would be highly impactful on venture capitalist returns, if we could figure out how to do it. This is the first in a series of articles as our research findings unfold. I’ve also posted this at Betabeat.).

Portfolio 144

Portfolio Private Equity Venture Capital Early Stage 144

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Andy Wright , on October 19, 2009 at 7:25 am Said: Thanks for the insights, but I have one question — do you have any articles or blog posts that talk about what’s in “Steve’s one month MBA course for engineers.&# I look forward to your future articles, probably the most insightful reading I’ve done all year.

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 205

The Next Web

MAY 4, 2013

Editor’s note: This is a guest post by Stefano Bernardi, who is on the founding team of Betable , where he heads Customer Development. Previously, he worked in venture capital in Europe. You can check out his blog and follow him on Twitter. Usually this will be for a small Series-A.

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San Francisco Europe Technical Review Due Diligence 159

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. .&# See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious. Good stuff too.

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Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 232

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile. You’re not joining a big company.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 223

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 280

Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Reply Hazem Awad , on March 21, 2009 at 10:12 pm Said: Hi Steve, Thanks a lot for these articles. I particularly liked the simple idea of “everyone going to call customers twice a week&#. Nothing replaces first-hand experience, first-hand facts, and being in touch with what your internal and external customer wants.

Silicon Valley 136

Silicon Valley Customer RSS Philippines 136

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And the results weren’t the traditional PR metrics of number of articles or inches of ink. his next article on SuperMac, “Building the Killer Team – Mission, Intent, and Values&# , Steve further pounds the table on some principles of leadership that I think are [.] I couldn’t care less about those.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

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

David Teten

APRIL 8, 2013

. - A snapshot of various VC portfolio operators, and ways they offer their portfolio companies support, beyond just capital. In response, Stefano Bernardi, (Customer Development at Betable and a former VC/500 Startups alum) wrote a thoughtful blog post on the future of Venture Capital.

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Private Equity Hungary IRR Venture Capital 114

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

steve Mark , on July 27, 2009 at 11:46 am Said: Thanks for the article Steve. I’ve built my company using the Customer Development Model from Day One. I recently completed the Validation step (less the industry analyst presentations) and am ready to move on to Customer Creation.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 4, 2012

This article ( Business Plans Are An Historical Artifact ) first appeared last week in the Wall Street Journal The Accelerators Column , which I’m contributing to on a regular basis. . By 1997, when I started investing as a venture capital investor, I was no longer reading business plans. Related articles.

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Business Plan Lean Cofounder Venture Capital 193

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

On the surface, it might seem difficult to quantify the value of good design – however, as per your article, I don’t see any reason why contracts with designers wouldn’t be structured in such a way that target conversion rates, bounce rates, and other metrics would drive the compensation level.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Stanford had a Customer Development loop going on inside their own lab. The discoveries in tube and circuit research suggested new electronic intelligence and countermeasure techniques and systems; in turn the needs of the Applied Lab pushed tube and circuit development.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley RSS California Government 144

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

It’s structured around a model that Steve has become famous for—the Customer Development Process. You can find out more information about what this looks like in our article on writing a business plan in an hour. It’s particularly good if you’re interested in venture capital funding and angel investment.

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Curation Lean Software Review Finder 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 7, 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 (..)

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Thailand Vietnam RSS 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

Steve my name is Donald xx, and I’m the head of external affairs of the CIA’s venture capital firm and we’d like you to keynote our conference.” And you’d like me to do my talk on Customer Development and startups?” “No, we’re the other CIA.” I read an article by an author whom equated economies to energy.

Silicon Valley 253

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Venture Capital 253

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

Customer Development This strategy of starting on faith, and quickly turning them into facts is the core of the Customer Development process. Reply Jamie Stephens , on June 5, 2009 at 1:17 pm Said: Great article. Employ customer development. Iterate your product until you get bankable [.]

Silicon Valley 219

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 219

Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

Customer Development.) In the article he even states that it’s good to hear the corner cases. Dion Hinchliffe pointed to an article this morning – Killing Innovation with Corner Cases and Consensus – I assumed I knew what it was about, and wanted to read [.] Yep, that’s what I meant.

Silicon Valley 182

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 182

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. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 263

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Retired for a year, I ran across an article that said, “ $35 Million Dollar Supercomputer For Sale for Scrap.” Cray called two years ago and bought it back for parts for an unnamed customer still running one. For whatever reason, I hated that particular Cray that got installed in Pittsburg. Closure Fast forward 15 years.

Silicon Valley 191

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 191

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

PS1- I run a small software startup in Brazil and just found out about Customer Development and your blog (I’ve been reading and listening to everything I can get my hands on online, like Venturehacks and Ries’ blog). Reply Brad the Wordpress Consultant , on November 9, 2009 at 11:21 am Said: Awesome article.

Silicon Valley 327

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 327

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2019

This article previously appeared in VentureBeat. The cycle of creative destruction of the old being replaced by the new continues, fueled by angel and venture capital. I just had a coffee with Mei and Bill, two passionate students who are on fire about their new startup idea.

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Bandwidth Database Venture Capital Demand 287

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. Competing To Win Deals - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 7, 2010 The venture capital business is highly competitive.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2009

Worries from the garage One of the worries I hear from entrepreneurs (not just my students) is that Customer Development means getting out of the building and sharing what you are working on. Great article. Posted on December 3, 2009 by steveblank In my 21 years of startups I’ve had my ideas “stolen” twice.

Silicon Valley 152

Silicon Valley RSS Startup California 152

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

Don’t confuse your passion for your tools with why your customers will buy your product. Your only solution is adding some form of interactivity with the movies, though as you covered in this article, those types of games haven’t been very successful.

Silicon Valley 142

Silicon Valley RSS California Video 142

www.instigatorblog.com

MARCH 2, 2010

Venture capital firms like to see CEOs with strong support (beyond the Board of Directors) and that’s what the Advisory Board is there to do. This is a brief of your article. This is a brief of your article. Thanks for your advices. link] recep ivedik “Be selfish. Thanks for your advices. link] Ken Great post.

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Advisory Board Startup Cofounder Equity 40

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. Seed-stage investors are learning the metrics of traction, and are getting better at identifying those companies that are really achieving validated learning about customers. August 24, 2009 10:21 PM Hal Higdon said.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Spencer Fry

APRIL 17, 2017

Having started and sold 3 successful bootstrapped businesses, and am now running 1 venture capital backed business ( Coach ), this is a topic I know a thing or two about. I was known as "the bootstrapper" for years and have written numerous articles about it, spoken on panels, and more, but 2017 presents a whole new set of challenges.

Bootstrapping 63

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

If you don’t know how to define your target market, read Tim Berry’s article on how to do it, or read this article that explains what target marketing is and how to use it to your advantage. If you want to learn more about how to develop your own unique tone of voice, check out this article by branding expert Elicia Putnam.

Software Review 74

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