Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

And he recognized it was making his startup feel and act like a big ponderous company. Most decisions in a startup must be made in the face of uncertainty. One of the things he mentioned was that when it came to decision-making he still tended to think and act like an engineer. The same is true in your company.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2013

While these may be necessary for funding, they may not be sufficient to make your startup the great success embodied in your vision. In the last couple of years, perhaps in reaction to some business atrocities leading to the recent Recession, I am seeing a renewed focus on other less tangible attributes which can set your startup apart.

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Mucker Lab

OCTOBER 12, 2016

Just six months ago, VCs were publishing white papers extolling the virtue of non-bank lending startups, but now no one will touch them with a 10-foot pole. Vertical integration of different funding risks. Whatever happened to IoT after Nest? The average (or even above average) horse never wins. The road ahead for entrepreneurs.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

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Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 28, 2012

While these may be necessary for funding, they may not be sufficient to make your startup the great success embodied in your vision. Relevancy for an early-stage company is the discovery and understanding of the real addressable market for a product or service. A startup needs to find a voice relevant to its ecosystem.

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Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 17, 2016

While these may be necessary for funding, they may not be sufficient to make your startup the great success embodied in your vision. In the last few years, perhaps in reaction to the business integrity issues leading to the recession back in 2008, I am seeing a renewed focus on other less tangible attributes which can set your startup apart.

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Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

In a deep ocean of early stage investors, it’s important to signal to the market that you have specific areas of interest, even if you look to invest in everything. In the early days, I focused on anything data science related, then healthcare, and now I proactively look at climate/energy. Be a generalist and a specialist.

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Hippoland

OCTOBER 16, 2016

In this post, I’m going to very *simplistically* dive into some high level categories and talk about how early stage investors consider each. If your startup is in this category, you’ll need to craft a story around: Hypergrowth How this hyper growth is happening organically? Do you have virality built into the product?

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Startups and Sales If you read this post you can come away with the impression that every startup with a direct salesforce needs a consultative sales team. what Market Type is your startup? Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

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. An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.” Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

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View from Seed

JUNE 23, 2022

Long-term: Influencers across the world with 10K+ followers and across all major verticals (e.g. About a year and a half after starting my own eCommerce businesses, I realized the opportunity to do this for other creators and at a much larger scale and started Influencer Direct. And your least? Looking Ahead .

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David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

I’ve been a traditional equity VC for 8 years, and I’m now researching new business models in venture capital. This positions F1stcp to be the largest revenue-based investor platform addressing the funding gap for service-based, small businesses led by underserved and underrepresented founders.” Repaid over 3–5 years”.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

There is no certainty about a startup on day-one. You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. At each startup I couldn’t wait to do this. Faith-based Entrepreneurship At first, entrepreneurship is a Faith-based initiative.

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Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

The myth about pivots is that they are an exception: something undesirable that happens because a startup went seriously awry, and which you should strive to avoid. Actually, startups, like all businesses, work because of a cycle of invention and reinvention. Business model evolution is the rule, not the exception.

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Lightspeed Venture Partners

APRIL 13, 2015

SaaS is no longer a new business model. I believe most of the greenfield opportunities in SaaS today are beyond the traditional horizontal/vertical enterprise software areas. But surprisingly, to me, one area where on-demand startups haven’t focused enough is the enterprise segment.

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David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

VI: Revenue-based financing: The next step for private equity and early-stage investment. VII: Flexible VC, a New Model for Companies Targeting Profitability. With a portfolio that includes food, tech, and services, the fund is industry-agnostic and focused on the overlooked and underrepresented with high-margin business models.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. What are Early Stage VC’s Really Asking?

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Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

The best entrepreneurship textbooks and blogs assume that advice to startups is generalizable. But as I learned from my students this “one-size-fits-all” approach does not work for all startups. Different market opportunities present radically different startup risks and costs.

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David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

See Bessemer Venture Partners’ A comprehensive guide to security for startups. Data companies focused on early-stage startups include Aingel , fundsUP , Preseries , PredictLeads , and Sploda. For more on gathering data and using it to assess companies, see How to Assess Startups Using Machine Learning. 2) Market .

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Rob Go

FEBRUARY 5, 2012

Usually financial metrics are pretty sparse at early stages and investors have a hard time giving companies “credit” for steady, linear progress. The reason is that the next MAJOR and OBVIOUS value-inflection point is evidence of a repeatable and scaleable business model. Or, just go for exceptional growth.

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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. Its strength is its rigor and flexibility.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

For the first 25 years HP’s business model was static. Of course HP did ship new products and innovate, but their center of innovation was sustaining innovation , around the core of their existing business. Elephant Graveyard Reinvention of large companies, while making for great case studies are rare.

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Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Almost every university, region and car wash now has a business plan competition; the rules, who can participate, how large the prizes and who are the judges vary by school. Over scrambled eggs and diet coke, I listened to this seasoned startup veteran describe the excitement of his students who came to the U.S. to compete.

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Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Reply Mark Essel , on July 2, 2009 at 9:14 am Said: Reality distortion field isn’t the basic technique covered in startups 101? Reply Wyatt ODay , on July 2, 2009 at 8:18 am Said: Great post, Steve. I love all these war stories. If entrepreneurs can’t imagine and convince us that we can achieve the impossible, who will?

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

It’s why all of you operated so well in the unpredictable environment that all startups face.” What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. I couldn’t figure out if I was more perturbed about how casual the comment was or how insightful it was.

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Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Hype before shipping any product is an obvious flaw, but what about hyping products that have shipped but have zero business model? era&# , but really interested in your take on these “free&# models through the prism of Customer Development. Rocket Science seems to be a bit of an extreme case though.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

It’s Episode 3 my little “ Loveline for startups. ” Introduced a few months ago as an Austin event, I’m now doing this live audio advice column to the web, taking phone calls from startups around the country. My co-hosts were Bob Walsh and Patrick Foley , hosts of the well-known Startup Success Podcast.

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View from Seed

AUGUST 2, 2017

Others take bets on certain verticals or business models, such as marketplaces, SaaS, or enterprise technology. There are countless B2B startups that are enabling this digital transformation and how consumers experience the Everyday Economy. Early-stage investing is still the only thing we do.

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Rob Go

JULY 11, 2013

I was asked recently how NextView evaluates such early stage companies for investment. As a seed fund, we tend to layer in “ capital efficient beginnings ” to the mix given our investing model and belief about the best way to build internet and software businesses. So what are some examples of distribution advantages?

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 22, 2009

Getting Out of the Building Wasn’t Entertainment – Discovery and Validation Now that I was the master of the “facts” about customer needs in these specialized vertical markets , and with my team of vertical marketers , I thought I had achieved absolution and redemption. But there was one fatal flaw.

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techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Researchers divided the portfolio companies into six stages and startups are still operating a loss in each of the first four. That means the vast majority of privately held companies are still very dependent on venture money to stay in business. Startups that DO receive VC money ultimately atrophy. dasein Yeah, I agree.

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VC Cafe

JUNE 19, 2020

“As big businesses begin to measure their impact, they begin to show it is fundamental to their future business models.” There are around 200 Impact Tech VCs in the world, about a quarter are impact tech startups valued at $100 million or more. Sir Ronald Cohen. Cecile Blilious and Leehe Skuler.

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