Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Now we needed to put the tactical programs in place to make this repositioning strategy happen. When the panicked manager of the magazine test lab would call under a last minute deadline, we would apologize profusely as we sent the cables over – with beer, pizza, and our product manager to help them through any testing “issues”.

Silicon Valley 124

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Growthink Blog

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

Get The Answers I am very excited to share with you the opportunity to meet the Managing Director of Growthink's new media and entertainment practice, Mr. Lee Muhl. He is a current member of the California State Bar, and the Hollywood Writers Guild. What is the future for good-old fashioned DVD rentals and sales? in History from UCLA.

Los Angeles 85

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Regarding the Atlas Developer Beta, John Gruber says that “Access to the beta program is $20″ — this is the new way and I like it. Reply Eran Shir , on November 21, 2009 at 9:35 pm Said: Steve, a great post is judged by the level of discussion it manages to spur, so in that metric, this is a fantastic one.

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

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. In 1964, Bill Perry, the head of the lab, frustrated with GTE’s management, quit (GTE, a phone company had bought Sylvania in 1959.)

Silicon Valley 171

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ReadWriteStart

MAY 12, 2011

Today, he has over a thousand, and he has chosen to focus on the realtor vertical. and a systematic affiliate marketing program. Then Taariq Lewis from San Francisco, California, presented Stanzr, a lightweight online events platform specifically focused on moving qualified leads generated through webinars towards a close.

San Francisco 125

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ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 16, 2010

The trends include Cloud computing, outsourcing, social Web, vertical and local Web, smartphones and tablets, online advertising, online video, online gaming, e-books, and bootstrapped entrepreneurship. Today, the company produces low carbon footprint fruits and vegetables and sells to distributors in California, Nevada and Arizona.

Senegal 117

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Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

If you can’t manage chaos and uncertainty, if you can’t bias yourself for action and if you wait around for someone else to tell you what to do, then your investors and competitors will make your decisions for you and you will run out of money and your company will die.

Silicon Valley 170

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan Foundation , the Sloan School of Management at MIT , the Sloan program at Stanford , and the Sloan/Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in New York. Sloan realized that the traditional centralized management structures (like General Motors had in 1920) were poor fits for the management of GM’s already diverse product lines.

Silicon Valley 156

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Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

I was asked to explain why a marketing program that cost $150,000 bucks literally generated nothing in revenue for the company. Historically, these were two guys with high testosterone. They hit each other with baseball bats until one of them dropped.) This first Zen moment happened at a SuperMac exec staff meeting.

Silicon Valley 120

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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. The company has a large press event, and Marketing launches a series of programs to create end-user demand (trade shows, seminars, advertising, email, and so on).

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

In times when venture capital is hard to get, investors extract high costs for failure (down-rounds, cram downs , new management teams, shut down the company.) Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.)

Lean 244

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

Terman proudly pointed out that only Stanford, MIT and Harvard had a military sponsored electronics program. The eventual goal of this program would have been to radar-map the Soviet Union. The crash program to produce the Lockheed U-2 aircraft was initiated when the balloon program was abandoned. By 1947 the U.S.

Silicon Valley 153

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Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Given the hardware I had worked on at ESL, learning microprocessors wasn’t that hard but figuring out how to teach hardware design and assembly language programming was a bit more challenging. Just as I was getting settled into Zilog, the manager of the training department got fired. (I

Silicon Valley 175

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Instead they managed rep firms (independent sales companies that carried multiple, non-competing products) that called on computer resellers that sold to the customers. Was our compensation program good, great? For the next three weeks I spent 8 hours a day calling customers and another 6 hours a day managing my new department.

Silicon Valley 185

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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. 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. We had a management offsite plan.

Iran 39

Iran Technical Review Non-Compete Lean 39

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. A similar thing happens when a software program is repeatedly ‘improved’ so people can “do more things&#.

Silicon Valley 205

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Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

I learned a lot at Convergent, going from product marketing manager in a small startup to VP of Marketing of the Unix Division as it became a public company. emotional rather than technical) and a lot harder to manage than a startup. Two of my role models for my career were in this company. (And The angst continues.

Entrepreneur 276

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 276

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 13, 2011

The venture capital industry is so heavily skewed to Northern California, which the remains spilled over Boston, New York & Southern California. A big thank you to my friend Josh Webb who provided the transcription for This Week in Venture Capital with Tige Savage , Managing Director and co-founder of Revolution.

Cofounder 277

Cofounder Merger Founder Venture Capital 277

Growthink Blog

JUNE 19, 2010

Get The Answers I am very excited to share with you the opportunity to meet the Managing Director of Growthink's new media and entertainment practice, Mr. Lee Muhl. He is a current member of the California State Bar, and the Hollywood Writers Guild. What is the future for good-old fashioned DVD rentals and sales? in History from UCLA.

Los Angeles 76

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Technical Review IP 76

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Ampex’s first customer was Bing Crosby who wanted to record his radio programs for rebroadcast (and had exclusive distribution rights.) Meanwhile on the West Coast – “The Group” 1950’s When Ampex was raising its money, in 1952, an employee of Fireman’s Fund in San Francisco, Reid Dennis , managed to put $20,000 in the deal.

Silicon Valley 125

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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.

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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.

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