Steve Blank

JUNE 21, 2017

I was in Boston and was interviewed by The Growth Show about my current thinking about innovation in companies and government agencies.The interviewer was great and managed to get me to summarize several years of learning in one podcast. 6:22 What’s Customer Development. 7:11 Agile Engineering – Eric Ries.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Lean Government Boston 222

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2009

This is the first of two posts about the rise of “risk capital” and how it came to be associated with what became Silicon Valley. ———————– Building Blocks of Entrepreneurship By the mid 1950’s the groundwork for a culture and environment of entrepreneurship were taking shape on the east and west coasts of the United States.

Silicon Valley 159

Silicon Valley Securities and Exchange Commission Venture Capital RSS 159

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

This week, the startup tribe from Harvard Business School is making their annual trek to Silicon Valley. It’s a common refrain around Silicon Valley to disparage the role of MBA’s in entrepreneurship. They’ll hear from a variety of experts and get to see many startups firsthand. I also frequently see the reverse.

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Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

It ultimately failed because she was focused on engineering the product, but didn’t validate the rest of her business model (product/market fit, distribution channel, customer acquisition, etc.). Entrepreneurship stretches from Main Street to Silicon Valley, from startups to big companies.

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Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

In my last post I described my approach to one of the three classes I teach at Stanford in the engineering school: Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship. One part of Silicon Valley culture that doesn’t get enough credit is the generosity of entrepreneurs and VC’s who are willing to share their time with students.

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Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Its easy to take Silicon Valley for granted. Ive written a little bit about the origins of Silicon Valley because I think its important for us to understand how we got here in order to make sure we preserve what is best about our community. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Continuous Deployment 113

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 2, 2008 Paul Graham on fundraising I have found no better primer on the current realities of starting a new technology company in a startup hub like Silicon Valley than Paul Grahams essays. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. They work hard to keep their house in order at all times, and there are strict rules and guidelines in place that prevent engineers and teams from doing things their own way. Amazon PostRank

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Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, November 11, 2008 Where did Silicon Valley come from? I think the absolute best reading on this subject is a book called Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee Saxenian. And what were they doing beforehand?

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. What is customer development?

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Id like to call special attention to Kurt Carr s perspective (lets hope he finishes his five-part series): Now that I’m back in Ohio (I was one of the token foreigners in a room full of Silicon Valley residents), I have found myself reliving and rethinking much of what I saw there. We all owe him our thanks for persevering.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

After years of engineering effort, changing these assumptions was incredibly hard. Without conscious process design, product development teams turn lines of code written into momentum in a certain direction. Worse was the large staff in departments appropriate to a mainstream-scale product, especially in customer service and QA.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. For customer development, start with Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany or take a look at his recent Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lecture.

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Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Its why, at my previous job, we were able to get a new engineer completely productive on their first day. Most engineers would ship code to production on their first day. Let me show you what this looked like after a few years of practicing five whys in the operations and engineering teams at IMVU.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

Finding great engineers is hard; figuring out whos good is even harder. For software engineers, I think this absolutely has to be a programming problem solved on a whiteboard. I have found this quite rare in engineers. Many of us engineers are strong introverts, without fantastic people skills.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

At Toyota , they are called Chief Engineer : Toyota realizes that the Chief Engineer job is probably the most important one in the company because the Chief Engineer listens to the customer and then determines what the functions need to do to address the customer’s desires. What is customer development?

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, December 7, 2008 The hackers lament One of the thrilling parts of working and writing in Silicon Valley is the incredible variety of people Ive had the chance to meet. And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time!

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Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

For example, should we invest a week of engineering time into making our website more failure-proof (which were pretty sure will pay off right away) or into experimenting with a new technology (that might pay off in months, years, or never)? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: Five Whys Where did Silicon Valley come from? What is customer development? Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Take a look: This full-day Master Class focuses on how to build a startup from the ground up to focus on customers, markets, and speed of iteration. Im working on a future post where Ill share the details of how I used customer development to shape both the content and packaging of this event, so look for that soon.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

I plan to apply these models to my own ventures, especially within new contexts separate from software and web development. The problem is that the most authentic innovators and entrepreneurs are in the Valley. I want more than anything to come to Silicon Valley after I graduate and join the vibrant ecosystem.

Lean 76

Lean San Francisco Web Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, June 9, 2009 The Lean Startup Tokyo edition I had a blast speaking at Startonomics Tokyo , which was organized to foster ties between the startup cultures in Japan and Silicon Valley. Yet its one of those features thats only ever requested by investors and engineers - never by customers.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Im not offering extensive studies or research to support this conclusion; the evidence from my peers right here in the innovation capital of America, Silicon Valley, is absolutely overwhelming. Asked to help, I am confident that Silicon Valley and every other innovation center will step up. They are nerds.

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Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

This is especially true in Silicon Valley. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thats all helpful for recruiting, retaining, and ramping-up a new employee. You dont have to guess who their mentor will be. Youre not competing with every other company in town.

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

Much of what makes the USA, and Silicon Valley in particular, such a great place to start a company is the result of good government policy. I started my last company with 100% off-shore resources because I could never have completed Customer Development at a reasonable cost of money or regulatory burden had I employed US Citizens.

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DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 20, 2010

Heres an excerpt: Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster - WSJ.com Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and venture capitalists often churn out how-to business books and fancy themselves as management gurus, but few see their methodologies adopted. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Lean 153

Lean San Francisco Arlington Continuous Deployment 153

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

Prior to that, she spent 12 years at Stanford; worked at Monsanto and Sigma Chemical as a research scientist; administered a dialysis clinical trial at University of California; and taught chemistry and basic engineering courses. Prior to joining Columbia, Orin spent seven years with the Boston Consulting Group’s New York office.

Government 120

Government Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2009

In hindsight this list looks pretty organized but in reality we made it up as we went along, accompanied with all the husband and wife struggles of being married and trying to raise a family in Silicon Valley. Most Silicon Valley startups have great policies for having your dog at work but not your kids.) Long vacations.

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Entrepreneur Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development 331

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Most publishers are still caught up in an outdated “vision vs. metrics&# argument, which is already obsolete here in Silicon Valley. The world is generally not as tech-savvy as Silicon Valley and will continue to rely on traditional mechanisms for content distribution for the foreseeable future. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Do some Customer Development instead. IMVU was a top-1000 website in the world, with millions of customers and making millions of dollars without getting any significant press coverage. In fact, we often felt frustrated when new startups with a fraction of our success got terrific write-ups in Silicon Valley-centric venues.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: Five Whys Where did Silicon Valley come from? What is customer development? Amazon PostRank

Campaign 84

Campaign San Francisco Lean Agile 84

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 9, 2010

The event is being produced in partnership with Charles Hudson, who puts on many of Silicon Valleys top events, including the forthcoming Freemium Summit. The event is being produced in partnership with Charles Hudson, who puts on many of Silicon Valleys top events, including the forthcoming Freemium Summit.

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 151

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 15, 2010

His posts are born of tremendous research into the secret history of Silicon Valley , and if you haven’t read those essays, you should. His posts are born of tremendous research into the secret history of Silicon Valley , and if you haven’t read those essays, you should. Amazon PostRank

IPO 166

IPO San Francisco Lean Silicon Valley 166

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

If youre used to pitching your company in a startup hub, like here in Silicon Valley, you may suffer from a debilitating disease: the inability to describe your product to normal people. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

This is especially true if you live outside the echo chamber of Silicon Valley. This is especially true if you live outside the echo chamber of Silicon Valley. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? There are four ways to get involved below.

San Francisco 118

San Francisco DC Startup Lean 118

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: Five Whys Where did Silicon Valley come from? What is customer development? Amazon PostRank

Advertising 60

Advertising San Francisco Media Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: Five Whys Where did Silicon Valley come from? What is customer development? Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 60