California, Engineer, Internet and Vertical

Ardent 1: Supercomputers Get Personal

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend. Forget the Hypertext idea and come on back to California. I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.”

North Carolina

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Touching the Hot Stove – Experiential versus Theoretical Learning.

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

It took me 8 startups and 21 years to get it right, (and one can argue success was due to the Internet bubble rather then any brilliance.) No internet, no blogs, no books on startups, no entrepreneurship departments in universities, etc. Since I wasn’t an engineer, my contribution was around the team-building and fund raising.

Silicon Valley

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Roundtable For Entrepreneurs: Check Out Stanzr

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 27, 2011

What appears clear to me today is how fundamentally the Internet is changing business processes, and the advent of nifty social media tools and technologies that plug into core business processes like lead nurturing are a powerful force. The next event will be on Tuesday, November 22, 2011, at 8:00 AM (PDT), register to attend here.

Entrepreneur

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SuperMac War Story 10: The Video Spigot « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

At the time no one (including Apple) knew exactly what consumers were going to do with multimedia, it was still pre-Internet. 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.

Video

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SuperMac War Story 5: Strategy versus Relentless Tactical.

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Since no benchmarks existed, we enlisted our engineering department in a serious software development effort and wrote our own. Our first thought was to spread the news ourselves, perhaps in a press release or a “white paper,” (remember this was pre-Internet.) None of this was an accident. It was all part of a strategy.

Silicon Valley

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The Customer Development Manifesto: Reasons for the Revolution.

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

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The Leading Cause of Startup Death – Part 1: The Product.

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.

Silicon Valley

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Lean Startups aren't Cheap Startups

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.) Preserve your cash: When you have unlimited cash (internet bubbles, frothy venture climate,) you can iterate on your mistakes by burning more dollars.

Lean

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SXSW Startups: AirPop Makes Healthy Air

Austin Startup

MARCH 4, 2018

We’re at a strategic point where our core business is experiencing solid growth and we’re ready to invest in significantly more advanced breathomics sensing and analytics into our roadmap, so we can begin to focus on the specific disease verticals that our data, reach and technology can have the greatest impact for. I attended in 2007.

San Francisco

San Francisco Startup China India

The Secret History of Silicon Valley Part VII: We Fought a War You.

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

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Customer Development is Not a Focus Group

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

As the engineers were busy rearchitecting the original Stanford MIPS chip into a commercial product, one of my jobs was to find out what features customers wanted. On the other hand, the Motorola 68000 microprocessor (used in the Sun and Apollo engineering workstations) and the IBM 360/370 mainframes were big-endian. What a great idea.

Customer Development

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The End of Innocence

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

The quintessential California couple, they stood out in our crowd as the engineer (in his late 20′s, respected by his peers and the customer) had hair down to his shoulders, sharply contrasting with the military crewcuts of the customers and most of the other contractors. Instead, this is a culture clash.

Silicon Valley

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Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA « Steve Blank

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

I packed up my life in Michigan and spent five days driving to California to start work. Since there was very little documentation my time was split between the design engineers who built the system and the test and deployment team getting the system ready to go overseas. You’re Hired, You’re Fired. Driving across the U.S.

Agile

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SuperMac War Story 2: Facts Exist Outside the Building, Opinions.

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

A large number of these customers had mailed back their registration cards (this was pre-Internet) with their names, phone numbers, job titles, etc. This was a company that had sold 15,000 graphics boards and monitors to consumers. So I asked the fatal question, “Has anyone ever looked at the customer registration cards?

Silicon Valley

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The Startup Pivot

Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

This pivot fundamentally changes your required organizational competencies, from Sales and Marketing to Engineering, Operations, and Support. We had engineering specialists and felt we had this unique technology. Peter, Max, Luke Nosek , and I held an off-site at my grandparents’ house in Gualala, California, to figure this out.

Startup

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Will Cities Be Ready for 5G?

Austin Startup

JANUARY 10, 2019

5G is the latest iteration of cellular technology, engineered to exponentially increase the speed (up to 100 times current levels ) and responsiveness of wireless networks. Most importantly for smart cities and communities, 5G is designed from the ground up to support the Internet of Things. So why are cities reluctant to embrace 5G?

San Francisco

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supermac War Story 7: Rabbits Out of the Hat - Product Line Extensions

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

Now we were faced with the fact that even though we were gaining market share daily, there was nothing coming out of Engineering. Instead of eight boards, Engineering was going to be able to deliver one new graphics board. One of the reasons I had joined the company was seeing these boards as hope for the future. What could we do?

Silicon Valley

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Ardent 3: Supercomputer Porn

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

When I learned that Cray users would be giving papers at the Society of Petroleum Engineering conference in Denver the next day, I got on a plane to listen and learn. The magazines got passed around to all the engineers until they were dog-eared and worn. But I was breathing heavy and it felt like I was looking at supercomputer porn.

Silicon Valley

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Think Your Start-up Is Venture Worthy? Think Again.

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Similarly, the bulk of the companies getting funding are still California-based. After Northern California and Southern California the biggest area of investment geographically was in international companies. The cost of money is steep, and only works in certain verticals, of which software is NOT one.

Venture Capital

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