Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2013

Instead the list is dominated by the big technology winners of the past 20 years that have built innovation into their DNA (Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, Microsoft), and a lot of smaller, newer start-ups. Finding a viable business model is not a linear, analytical process that can be guided by a business plan.

Business Model 332

Business Model Technical Review Business Plan Search 332

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

This article previously appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Disruption today is more than just changes in technology, or channel, or competitors – it’s all of them, all at once. They’ll use government regulation and lawsuits to keep out new entrants with more innovative business models.

Government 315

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 315

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 15, 2010

In previous posts I’ve talked about what the combination of Business Model Design, Customer Development and Agile Methodologies mean to startups and intrapreneurs in large companies; it’s the beginning of entrepreneurship as a science with its own rules and methodologies. Teaching In the Big Apple.

Customer Development 270

Customer Development Business Model Developer Design 270

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

Alexander Osterwalder and I spent last week in Salt Lake City, Utah as judges at the 2 nd Annual International Business Model Competition , hosted by Professor Nathan Furr , and his team at the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship. The Business Plan ?- Business Plan vs. Business Model + Customer Development.

Business Model 263

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 263

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

But as Carlota Perez has so aptly described, all new technology industries go through an eruption and frenzy phase, followed by a crash, then a golden age and maturity. Then the cycle repeats with a new set of technologies. Some have labeled this period as irrational exuberance. Every startup is in a race against time.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. Convergent Technologies was one of those OEM suppliers. Their engineers hated us.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

Over the last three years our Lean LaunchPad / NSF Innovation Corps classes have been teaching hundreds of entrepreneurial teams a year how to build their startups by getting out of the building and testing their hypotheses behind their business model. Technology in search of a market.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2023

Rent seekers are individuals or organizations with successful existing business models who use government regulation and lawsuits to keep out new entrants that might threaten their business models. We competed with other technology companies, and, like Bill Gurley, largely ignored whatever was going on in Washington.

Washington 271

Washington Government Marketing Silicon Valley 271

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

For decades this revered business magazine described management techniques that were developed in and were for large corporations – offering more efficient and creative ways to execute existing business models. Business-as-usual management techniques focused on efficiency and execution are no longer a credible response.

Technical Review 219

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 219

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

Services (Cloud, ads, music) have a very different business model. Ballmer and Microsoft failed because the CEO was a world-class executor (a Harvard grad and world-class salesman) of an existing business model trying to manage in a world of increasing change and disruption. How to Miss the Boat – Five Times.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

Services (Cloud, ads, music) have a very different business model. Ballmer and Microsoft failed because the CEO was a world-class executor (a Harvard grad and world-class salesman) of an existing business model trying to manage in a world of increasing change and disruption. How to Miss the Boat – Five Times.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Dino Vendetti a VC at Bay Partners, moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Today with every city, state and country trying to build out a technology cluster, following Dino’s progress can provide others with a roadmap of what’s worked and what has not.

Early Stage 286

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 286

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2013

Instead the list is dominated by the big technology winners of the past 20 years that have built innovation into their DNA (Apple, Google, Amazon, Samsung, Microsoft), and a lot of smaller, newer start-ups. Finding a viable business model is not a linear, analytical process that can be guided by a business plan.

Business Model 224

Business Model Business Plan Technical Review Search 224

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

—— I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. It’s hard enough to pick which existing companies with known business models to aid. This is the first of two posts about Finland and entrepreneurship.

Finland 324

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 324

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

The trick is we use the same Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum — and the same class structure – experiential, hands-on– driven this time by a mission -model not a business model. Several will join the new Stanford Gordian Knot Center which is focused on the intersection of policy, operational concepts, and technology.

Lean 385

Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

As we prepared for the new Hacking for Defense class at Stanford, we had to stop and ask ourselves: How do we use the Business Model Canvas if the primary goal is not to earn money, but to fulfill a mission? In other words, how can we adapt the Business Model Canvas when the metrics of success for an organization is not revenue?

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

Entrenched Innovation Model Issues : Qualcomm’s existing innovation model – wireless products were created in the R&D lab and then handed over to existing business units for commercialization – was wildly successful in the existing wireless and mobile space. Venture Fest was not integral to their success.

Programming 265

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 265

Steve Blank

APRIL 8, 2010

I thought his technology was was potentially a killer app. He said, “After we graduated we took our great idea, holed up in my apartment and spent months researching and writing a business plan. Why a business plan is different than a business model. So do you mean I should never have written a business plan?”

Business Model 328

Business Model Business Plan Customer Cap Table 328

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 22, 2011

The 21 NSF teams had been out of the classroom for just 15 hours as they filed back in with their business model canvas presentations. Their assignment appeared (to them) to be deceptively simple: Write down their initial hypotheses for the 9 components of their company’s business model (who are the customers?

Business Model 234

Business Model Intellectual Property Lean Wiki 234

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2020

The pandemic has upended the business models of most startups and existing companies. Suppliers are going out of business or requiring cash-up-front terms. Revenue models and forecasts are no longer valid. In sum, whatever business model you had at the beginning of the year may be obsolete.

Customer 436

Customer Marketing Customer Development Lean 436

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. Startups are in fact only temporary organizations, organized to search –not execute–for a scalable and repeatable business model.

Lean 298

Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

After helping build the first Ethernet switch startup, I was attracted by Asynchronous Transfer Mode 25Mbit/sec technology, (ATM25) which was 2.5x The result: great success of my third startup, a load balancing technology for web servers back in the late 1990’s. I am confident we will see real startups and business emerge soon.

Japan 292

Japan Customer Development Developer Customer 292

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2011

After 50 years of technology entrepreneurship it’s still an art. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Market Types. For the less than 10% of startups that do succeed, most encounter several near death experiences along the way.

Software Review 292

Software Review Early Stage Technical Review Startup 292

Steve Blank

AUGUST 21, 2013

What we found is that during the class almost all of them pivoted - making substantive changes to one or more of their business model canvas components. For example when one team found the right customer, they changed the core technology (the basis of their original idea!) Some of these teams made even more radical changes.

SBIR 314

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 314

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

19 of the 21 teams are moving forward in commercializing their technology. We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. First, we brought all 21 teams to Stanford for 3-days of 10 hour-a-day classes in business model design and customer development. billion U.S.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. The young entrepreneurs I met are bringing impressive energy and intelligence to their goal of building one of Europe’s leading technology hubs in Helsinki.

Finland 324

Finland Naming Russia Government 324

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

corporation – starting a new technology division bringing disruptive technology to market at General Electric. One of GE’s new divisions – GE’s Energy Storage – has been given the charter to bring an entirely new battery technology to market. He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

The first, the notion of the “ ambidextrous organization ” from O’Reilly and Tushman , posits that companies that want to do continuous innovation need to execute their core business model while innovating in parallel. Horizon 1 activities support existing business models. Horizon 1 is the company’s core business.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 14, 2022

A world undergoing climate change, supply chain disruptions, political instability and continual technology innovation and disruption. Trends – The rate of technological disruption shows no sign of slowing down. Our students will be facing the challenges of a world that’s rapidly changing, chaotic and uncertain.

Lean 332

Lean Cofounder Community Global 332

Steve Blank

APRIL 19, 2023

Both are wakeup calls that victory and deterrence in modern war will be determined by a state’s ability to both use traditional weapons systems and simultaneously rapidly acquire, deploy, and integrate commercial technologies (drones, satellites, targeting software, et al) into operations at every level. The DoD has not done either of these.

Ukraine 273

Ukraine China Taiwan Russia 273

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

Sloan transformed corporate management into a real profession, and its stellar example was the continuous and relentless execution of the GM business model (until its collapse 50 years later). When technology changes are rapid you want the founder to continue to run the company. What Does GM Have to Do with Tesla And Elon Musk?

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

But for the last 40 years, it has provided the financial fuel for a revolution in Life Sciences and Information Technology and has helped to change the world. If you’re using the business model canvas , you’ve already figured this out when you articulated your revenue streams and noted where they are coming from. The Bad News.

Liquidity Event 120

Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Eric Ries in Times Square For any model to be useful it has to predict what happens in the real world – including the web. I realized the Customer Development model needs to be clearer in what exactly a startup is supposed to do, regardless of the business model. “What is the “Business Model” of your startup?&#

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2010

They start with an innovation, search for a repeatable business model, build the infrastructure for a company, then grow by efficiently executing the model. Over time, innovations outside the company (demographic, cultural, new technologies, etc.) outpace an existing company’s business model.

Search 242

Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 242

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

The first will be commodity businesses that are valued for their ability to execute their current business model. The second class will be firms with a demonstrated ability to continually innovate and reinvent their business models. These innovations do not require change in a company’s existing business model.

Private Equity 325

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

This week they were testing who the customer, user, payer for the product will be (and discovering if they have a multi-sided business model , one with both buyers and sellers.) as well as channel partners and cloud industry technology consultants. The Business Model Canvas is a great way to diagram it out.

Customer 234

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 234

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of this century with the observation that startups aren’t smaller versions of large companies – large companies at their core execute known business models, while startups search for scalable business models. out there for commercializing your technology or unique abilities?

Lean 333

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 333