Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

One of the things he mentioned was that when it came to decision-making he still tended to think and act like an engineer. Since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any engineering, customer or competitor problem, and you shouldn’t agonize over trying to find one. The same is true in your company.

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.) Their engineers hated us. Engineers as Salesmen I thought (and still do) that this sales guy walked on water.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

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

AUGUST 13, 2009

Since I wasn’t an engineer, my contribution was around the team-building and fund raising. 2-way search is still in the works but I have the semantic extracted tags (thanks to Zemanta) feeding in to many search engines (activate realtime frankensearch). I was an idiot. What type of feedback do you think I should go after?Obviously

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Yet startup companies have traditionally used this model to manage and pace not only engineering but also non-engineering activities. The flaw in this thinking is that “first customer ship&# is simply the date when engineering thinks they “finished” the 1.0 release of the product.

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

The Army offered Fred Terman, the Dean of Engineering at Stanford, a $5M contract to build an electronics countermeasures lab. When Terman said no, Sylvania, a tube company which built proximity fuse tubes in WWII, won the contract and set up its Electronic Defense Lab (EDL) in Mountain View California in the middle of an orchard.

Silicon Valley 171

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 171

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering. My office is in the Terman Engineering Building.

Silicon Valley 180

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 180

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money. Would you mind sharing them?

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2010

This week I’m at the California Coastal Commission hearing in Ventura California wearing my other hat as a public official for the State of California. BTW, “ Fishbon &# in the title slide is the name of the artists/engineers/writers collective that hosted the talk.

San Francisco 251

San Francisco California Startup Customer Development 251

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Since no benchmarks existed, we enlisted our engineering department in a serious software development effort and wrote our own. We listed the editors, writers, what they had previously had written, deadlines, what the competitive products were, how our benchmarks stacked up, what “upgrades” our boards needed from engineering to win, etc.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires. And our Director of Technical Marketing was superb at understanding customer needs and communicating them to engineering.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

He is also a Consulting Professor at Stanford in the Electrical Engineering Department and Editor-in-Chief of the AIAA Journal of Aerospace Information Systems. Prior to his investing and advisory career, Evangelos spent 20+ years in high-technology industries, in executive roles spanning operations, marketing, sales and engineering.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 120

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention. The real risk in markets like Web 2.0

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Companies are great at improving their existing business model and value propositions, but fall short when it comes to inventing entirely new business models, value propositions, and growth engines. That’s dangerous when it comes to developing new value propositions, business models, and growth engines.

Non-Compete 329

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 329

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

And I understood engineering since I interacted with them almost daily. And finally, I had a great working relationship with our engineers who designed the chips. I found that having a senior marketer responsible for business strategy surrounded by ex-engineers and domain experts makes one heck of a powerful marketing department.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

In addition he conducts research with Dr. Hsueh Chia Chang in Chemical Engineering. from University of California, Davis in Biomedical Engineering. For his doctoral work, his research focused on liver tissue engineering and stem cell differentiation. in Structural Engineering from Stanford University in 2006.

Cofounder 190

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 190

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Some students who were getting their engineering graduate degrees wrote masters and PhD thesis that were classified. Four years later Ayer and another Granger engineer would leave Granger and found one of the preeminent electronic warfare and ELINT companies: Applied Technologies. The future of the valley was clear – microwaves.

Silicon Valley 142

Silicon Valley RSS California Government 142

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2009

The test for non-obvious is: given the prior art at the time of the invention, would a typical engineer 1) identify the problem, and 2) solve it with the invention? Under California law, employers may own inventions that are “related to employer’s reasonably anticipated R&D.” Your invention must be “ non-obvious.” In the U.S.

Intellectual Property 213

Intellectual Property IP Software Review Non-disclosure Agreement 213

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Look for some “ skunk works &# project where the product developers are actively seeking alternatives to their own engineering organization. In Apple’s case Burrell Smith was designing a computer in a skunk works unbeknownst to the rest of Apple’s engineering.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

All of sudden what was an additional engineering and development effort now became a small, variable cost. We’re now piloting our application with Tree Farmers in California and working with crop specialists at U.C. This meant that Ceres didn’t need to build an aerial infrastructure – it already existed. Lessons Learned.

Customer 316

Customer Algorithm Customer Development California 316

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

Dino and I kept in touch as he moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Part 3: Engineering a Regional Tech Cluster. These people are important and useful in the engineering of a tech cluster; as startup coaches, angel investors and advocates for the community.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

In addition he conducts research with Dr. Hsueh Chia Chang in Chemical Engineering. from University of California, Davis in Biomedical Engineering. For his doctoral work, his research focused on liver tissue engineering and stem cell differentiation. in Structural Engineering from Stanford University in 2006.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

The Lean LaunchPad class teaches students how to build a Lean Startup using business model design, customer development and agile engineering. Over the last two years they used part of the National Science Foundation funds to send eight NYU faculty to California attend the Lean LaunchPad Educators program. Spread it Widely.

Lean 269

Lean New York City New York Customer Development 269

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

Before OpenGov, he built California Common Sense , the open data and government watchdog non-profit. We were mostly selling our product to engineers. Selling to an IT person or businessperson in the middle of Chicago is very different from selling to a LinkedIn engineer.

Cofounder 274

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

Before OpenGov, he built California Common Sense , the open data and government watchdog non-profit. We were mostly selling our product to engineers. Selling to an IT person or businessperson in the middle of Chicago is very different from selling to a LinkedIn engineer.

Cofounder 274

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 274

Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

Today, the first half of the Stanford Engineering Lean LaunchPad Class gave their final presentations. The goal is for them is to observe this class, then host and teach the next round of 50 NSF Innovation Corps scientist/engineer teams in July. Only in California! Here are the first five. It Feels Like 20 Years Ago Today.

Lean 256

Lean Business Model Agile United States 256

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Companies are great at improving their existing business model and value propositions, but fall short when it comes to inventing entirely new business models, value propositions, and growth engines. That’s dangerous when it comes to developing new value propositions, business models, and growth engines.

Non-Compete 120

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Combined with product costs, an engineering budget, and schedules, this results in a spreadsheet that faintly resembles the first financial plan in the company’s business plan. Engineering focuses on building the product; it designs the product, specifies the first release and hires a staff to build the product. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. The plan calls for selling in volume the day Engineering is finished building the product. While the product is being engineered, Marketing begins to create web sites, corporate presentations and sales materials.

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2011

On the way to the WorldAg Expo their Carrotbot (their research platform they built to gather data for machine vision/machine learning) hit the farm fields near Avenal , California. In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma it was the city engineer and director of public works. The videos of the robot in the field were priceless.

Revenue 213

Revenue West Virginia Oklahoma Oklahoma City 213

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

I am also a pilot, and computer engineer, and love to read stories about sigint and black aircraft programs. Besides it being harder to get funding, it seems like this would be a good time to get cheap labor, rent, and product. Also, it would be nice to do something that helps this country (but not solely for that reason).

Silicon Valley 170

Silicon Valley Iraq RSS Vietnam 170

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

Davis , a German applied Laser research group, a California organic farm er who wanted to be an Earlyvangelist , four service partners and three weed/pest management consultants. This week they broadened the discussion with interviews with the city planner in Mariposa, Texas and the city engineer from Rapid City, South Dakota.

South Dakota 217

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 217

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. I would generally say (we do) 50-50 (exclusive and non-exclusive licenses.).

Government 120

Government Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

Frederick Terman, Stanford’s Dean of Engineering, enlisted Stanford University as a major arms suppliers in this war. Stanford as a Center of Microwave and Electronics In 1946 after running the military’s secret 800 person Electronic Warfare Lab at Harvard, Fred Terman returned to Stanford as the dean of the engineering schoo l.

Silicon Valley 153

Silicon Valley RSS Europe Germany 153

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

We decided to work with our engineering department to create the Potreo benchmarks because we really wanted to see how our boards performed with the four applications customers told us that they used; Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator and PageMaker. These were applications we had never seen or ran before when the boards were designed.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley RSS Startup California 124

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.) Very few companies can make the “Four Steps to the Epiphany” work financially – this is one reason having engineering located in a cheaper country from day one is a major plus.&#

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

In a major break from the past, where the military designed all its own weapons, 10,000 scientists and engineers from academia worked in civilian-run weapons labs (most headquartered in universities) in an organization called the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD). In World War II the U.S. After the war the U.S.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Kuwait 120