Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Every startup has some methodology for product development, launch and life-cycle management. Yet startup companies have traditionally used this model to manage and pace not only engineering but also non-engineering activities. Read the preceding sentence again. It’s a big idea.) before you ship.

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Successful pinball companies didn’t hire Hollywood talent. Meanwhile our company was pouring an enormous amount of dollars into building tools and video compression technology, while also hiring a lot of high-priced Hollywood talent like art directors, and script and story editors. I know what’s great and what’s not.

Silicon Valley 207

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Forget the Hypertext idea and come on back to California. Supercomputers get Personal Back in Sunnyvale my friend had not only been hired but had convinced the team that we should be building hardware – making a new class of computers not a software application. Glad you two called, we were trying to get a hold of you guys.

North Carolina 125

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

By the late 1930′s when HP started, a small group (measured in hundreds) of engineers who made radio tubes were building the valleys’ ecosystem for electronics manufacturing, product engineering and technology management. Who would have known? Armstrong was a god!

Silicon Valley 270

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

When I asked our trade show manager she looked at me like I was the house idiot and said, “Steve, don’t you know that my job is to set up our trade show booth?” But my favorite was when the public relations manager said, “we’re here to write press releases and answer the phone in case the press calls.” This is a big idea.

Silicon Valley 259

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Finally, since no one would believe a set of benchmarks named after our company, we needed a façade of independence, so we named them after the street the company was headquartered on in Sunnyvale California – they became known as the Potrero Benchmarks. Theoretically, that’s why I hired them. You don’t delegate life and death.

Silicon Valley 124

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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. Page views drive his ad revenue, which is probably CPM based.

Silicon Valley 184

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Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

Our small training department had been without a manager for months and finding a replacement didn’t seem to be high on the VP of Sales list. Then it hit me – no one else wanted to be manager – what was the worst that could happen? What’s the Worst that Can Happen? All I had to do was ask.

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service.

Silicon Valley 131

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

If your don’t have enough employees on the payroll, hire relatives, friends, or part-timers and train them. And that most of the post on trade shows was describing how to prepare and manage a physical presence in a trade show booth. You’ll never have to do it again.) Trade Show Post Mortem Evaluate the experience.

Silicon Valley 128

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject. It was a management problem. We had been outsourcing an important part of our demand creation strategy – packaging – to an outside agency without having the expertise to judge or manage the results.

Sales 120

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Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

We hired an interior designer and a great facilities person to manage the process. If the management team is thinking they’ve made it, the new building is just symptomatic of a company heading for a crash. We need our own cafeteria so employees don’t have to leave the building.

Silicon Valley 205

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Reid Hoffman

MARCH 2, 2021

Dara manages Uber’s fast-growing business in 63 countries around the world and leads a global team of more than 22,000 employees. And I had hired and fired two people who didn’t work out. The way that Travis had set up Uber was a kind of vertical stack, very loosely coupled efforts, and any GM was essentially the CEO of their own city.

Iran 39

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Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

And it hires very smart people from the best schools. BTW, by the standards mentioned in the Times article, the following people would never have been interviewed or hired at Google. Google is looking to hire workers. When recruiting was hard the functional managers started looking at 2.8-9s. I love Google. GPA or better.

Silicon Valley 327

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steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan. Engineering focuses on building the product; it designs the product, specifies the first release and hires a staff to build the product. None of mine did.)

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

I believe it’s just like a family trait, which starts from the characteristics of the top C-level executives and cascades all the way down, from the type of mid-management they hire, to who the mid-management hires, and then the way everyone is supposed to walk and talk.

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

In hindsight it appeared clear that startups that survive the first few tough years do not follow the traditional product-centric launch model espoused by product managers or the venture capital community. Through trial and error, hiring and firing, successful startups all invented a parallel process to product development.

Silicon Valley 127

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Whitney Company by writing a personal check for $5M and hiring Benno Schmidt as the first partner (Schmidt turned Whitney’s description of “private adventure capital&# into the term “venture capital”). Several wealthy families in the U.S. set up companies to do just that – find and formalize investments in new and emerging industries.

Silicon Valley 159

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

It got bigger by inventing new test and measurement equipment and it hired people who knew how to execute that strategy. General managers of divisons are compensated on division P&L not long term innovation. You cannot say it is the people (owners, manager or workers). What is a company anyway?

Silicon Valley 164

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Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

Have a loud product demo; give away pieces of candy; hire a masseuse and offer free back rubs. Get yourself into the booth selection meetings and get to know the manager. Offer a free bestselling book in your industry (can you have the author there to autograph it?); Don’t tell me “that’s where they put all the small booths.”

Silicon Valley 178

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

With that implicit assumption, startups hire a VP of Sales with a great rolodex and call on established mainstream companies while marketing creates a brand and buzz to create demand and drive it into the sales channel (web, direct salesforce, etc.) Reply » Should you be in an Existing Market? make-or-break.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

Every marketing communication hire couldn’t wait to produce the next great ad or PR program. Very useful way to think about “Management By Objectives.&# While this may seem obvious to anyone not in sales and marketing, trust me, in a technology company this is a conceptual breakthrough.

Silicon Valley 126

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