SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

But founders need to know how to ask for their advice and when to ignore it. Startup Insights From Paul English, Co-Founder of Kayak - OnStartups , May 10, 2010 I’m just wrapping up several weeks of attending conferences across both coasts. They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers.

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Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

By the end of the 20th century, case studies and business plans had reached an evolutionary dead-end for entrepreneurs. The Rise of Business Schools – Management as an Occupation. The business school was invented in the first decade of the 20th century in response to a massive economic transformation in the U.S.

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Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley , was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. It might be its most important. ———-. Cold War Spin Outs.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

And while startups and entrepreneurship courses are now being added to the curriculum, “How to write a business plan” seems to be the state of the art. Though they’re familiar with technology in the valley, I picked up some important cultural difference from students and startup engineers I talked to. Entrepreneurial Culture.

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China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ) Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. It Started with an Idea.

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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. The key things I want students to take from the class are: Understand that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a profitable business model.

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Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

And while startups and entrepreneurship courses are now being added to the curriculum, “How to write a business plan” seems to be the state of the art. Though they’re familiar with technology in the valley, I picked up some important cultural difference from students and startup engineers I talked to. Entrepreneurial Culture.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2012

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models ? Don’t Throw the Tomatoes.

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viniciusvacanti.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

Home About Contact Me How To Make It as a First-Time Entrepreneur Vinicius Vacanti Guide to Finding a Technical Co-Founder September 7, 2010 | View Comments Steve Job's Technical Co-Founder “I’ve got this HUGE idea. I just need to find a technical co-founder.&# I was in this situation and we barely escaped.

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Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Ruby 43

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

A month or two before the QuickTime public announcement in May, the SuperMac hardware engineers (who had a great relationship with the QuickTime team at Apple) started a “ skunk works ” project. So SuperMac engineering also developed video compression software, called Cinepak. The software was idiot proof.

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Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need. Writing a business plan that doesn’t allow for trial and error.

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Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2010

This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. When founders discover their assumptions are wrong, as they inevitably will, the result isn’t a crisis , it’s a learning event called a pivot — and an opportunity to update the business model.

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Agile Business Model Customer Development Lean 250

Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2019

Our keynote speaker was Palmer Luckey , founder of Oculus and the designer of the Oculus Rift. He’s now the CEO/founder of the AI-focussed defense contractor Anduril Industries. Followed by an 8-minute slide presentation follow their customer discovery journey over the 10-weeks. Presentation Format. Team: Panacea.

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Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 266

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

And I understood engineering since I interacted with them almost daily. I also knew our customers. And finally, I had a great working relationship with our engineers who designed the chips. I’ve built my company using the Customer Development Model from Day One. In reality it would be another 20 years.)

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Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. The process they use to guide their search is customer development. for a business model.

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Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

He argued that software engineers don’t finish what they start, and that you’re better off paying a technical person than partnering with one. Twelve months into my startup journey I had four half-built websites that had been built by my four ex-technical co-founders. He was a delegator, not a doer. There’s the team.

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2010

Most competitive analyses are: 1) sales documents for investors and/or 2) an attempt to rationalize the founders assumptions. It’s Part of the Plan. While most investors don’t actually read your business plan for a first meeting, a summary of your competitive analysis usually ends up as a slide or two in your PowerPoint presentation.

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Customer Development Metrics Differentiation Engineer 259

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Startups built every possible feature the founding team envisioned (using “Waterfall development,”) into a monolithic “release” of the product taking months or years to build a first product release. The Business Plan (Concept- Alpha-Beta - FCS ) became the playbook for startups. Thus began the 5-year dot-com bubble.

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Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

You would think that would be enough to get wrong, but entrepreneurs and investors compound this problem by assuming that all startups grow and scale by executing the Revenue Plan. Reality Meets the Plan. They told the CEO (who was the technical founder) that the sales team should focus on “other markets.” They don’t.

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Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 230

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 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

A veteran board can bring 50-100x more experience into a board meeting than a first time founder. From a founder’s point of view there are three reasons for board meetings. 2) Founders who have a great board do recognize the uncanny pattern recognition skills that good VC’s bring. Wastes Founders Time.

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Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

A veteran board can bring 50-100x more experience into a board meeting than a first time founder. From a founder’s point of view there are three reasons for board meetings. 2) Founders who have a great board do recognize the uncanny pattern recognition skills that good VC’s bring. Wastes Founders Time.

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Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Michael Ingle , founder of Clean Sleep mattress sanitizing service. Graeme Gordon , founder of Sneak Guard , creator of safe responsible storage containers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2010

For the many entrepreneurs that send me cold emails asking for me to review a business plan or answer a strategic dilemma: Im much more likely to answer if youve already tried getting an answer on the mailing list. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Lean San Francisco Wiki Startup 146

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

We just had our app support a few tens of thousands of customers, and it did well. Some combination of the dot-com crash and a just terrible business plan prevented us from having to take our scalability problems to the next level. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

I think this idea is particularly appealing to those of us from an engineering background. Certainly venture-backed startups don’t have this luxury – every business plan has a model in it. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

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 244

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

As a founder you need to prepare yourself to think creatively and independently, because more often than not, conditions on the ground will change so rapidly that the original well-thought-out business plan becomes irrelevant. I’ve paraphrased his speech into the language of a startup. It’s eerily similar.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

My startup business (web development) is being shunned by virtually every other potential investor I approached thus far. The only folks who invested in me were the ones who barely understood the business plan. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. And I tried to evaluate the idea and figure out: What did the founder really need here? Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? call to arms.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

Ali G meets with business leaders and investors on Wall Street to learn how to create a new company around a new product idea. After some general lessons, he then proposes his first product idea, complete with flip charts, business plan, and marketing plan. Labels: customer development 3comments: Anonymoussaid.

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San Francisco DC Continuous Deployment Lean 104

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

But instead of spending the time and money to develop products on spec, TPGTEX creates mocked-up webpages that list the features of a potential new product -- such as a system for making radio-frequency identification, or RFID, labels -- along with its price. The key ideas are customer development , the pivot , MVP, and root cause analysis.

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San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 137

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. What’s the worst case?

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Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Step 1: Start with a lean plan. Instead of sitting down to write a 40-page business plan, start with a one-page pitch. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

We still have some collective scar tissue: the idea conjures up the hordes of dot-com hopefuls that descended on VC’s and angel investors with little more than a business plan. We also cavalierly lampoon the “suits” that get brought in to run startups after the founders are fired by callous VC’s. And there’s a worse fate, too.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 4, 2013

During my senior year, I took “Startup Essentials for Software Engineering” (taught by Zach Nies of Rally Software) and I can confidently say it was the best class I ever took at CU. We learned how to do customer development, conduct empathy interviews, and build a real MVP (not just an alpha version). for more questions.

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Startup Vesting Cofounder Lean 130