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When It’s Darkest Men See the Stars

Steve Blank

Risk capital has emerged in China, India and other countries where risk taking, innovation and liquidity is encouraged, on a scale previously only seen in the U.S. The emergence of incubators and super angels have dramatically expanded the sources of seed capital. Entrepreneurship as It’s Own Management Science.

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Innovation, Change and the Rest of Your Life

Steve Blank

Continuous innovation requires the imagination and courage to challenge the initial hypotheses of your current business model (channel, cost, customers, products, supply chain, etc.) A unicorn is a startup with a market capitalization north of a billion dollars. The founders. VCs have now ceded more control to founders.

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Fund Raising is a Means Not an End

Steve Blank

When you take money from investors their business model becomes yours. Sigh… What I should have been hearing is the search for the business model, specifically the progress on product/market fit, but I hear the fund raising story first at least 90% of the time. But to achieve scale, startups need risk capital.

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Pitch Deck Month: “Is It Working?” (aka the “Traction” Slide)

View from Seed

Pre-launch customer development data is another way, sometimes in the form of user surveys for consumer companies or interviews with potential beta customers for B2B businesses. One of our portfolio investments, a B2B SaaS company, was a pre-product startup at the time of the seed round. B) Post-Product Companies.

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Fund Raising is a Means Not an End

Steve Blank

When you take money from investors their business model becomes yours. Sigh… What I should have been hearing is the search for the business model, specifically the progress on product/market fit, but I hear the fund raising story first at least 90% of the time. But to achieve scale, startups need risk capital.

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Crazy! 189 Answers To The Top Startup Questions On Your Mind

maplebutter.com

I’m not afraid to pick up the phone, cold call someone, use LinkedIn to find someone who’s recently left a company that might be considered competitive and ask them for advise around the business model and marketplace. Now our biz model is lighter, more flexible. I think quick, do something, then review what I’ve learned.