Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Union Square Ventures The next morning I got to spend time with Brad Burnham , partner at Union Square Ventures talking about their investment strategy and insights about web-based businesses. Bill and his partner Fred Wilson have invested in ~30 or so companies with 27 still active.

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Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Each VC firm/partner has a different spin on what to weigh more.) These types seem dangerous, yet are often the ones needed on board to get the fund to invest in the first place, seeing that the younger partners naturally have less pull during the Monday round-ups. I find the same still going on with a few firms and partners.&#

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

Evangelos Simoudis’ is the founder and managing director of Synapse Partners. His investing career started 15 years ago at Apax Partners and continued with Trident Capital. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

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Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2016

Michael Mondavi , founder and coach of Folio Fine Wine Partners. In Silicon Valley for three decades, spent eight years as a partner at US Venture Partners. In 2004, he launched Folio Fine Wine Partners with his wife Isabel and their children, Rob, Jr. Before that, restaurateurs would never compare California with France.

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Silicon Valley California Entrepreneur Cofounder 139

Steve Blank

APRIL 21, 2011

Their goal is to deploy CarrotBot this week in the farm fields in Avenal, California, on the way to the World Ag Expo. This team spoke with 10 more customers and potential channel partners. (They got help from another student researcher in robotics and machine learning in the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Lab.).

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Channel Artificial Inteligence San Francisco Business Model 215

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2016

Michael Mondavi , founder and coach of Folio Fine Wine Partners. In Silicon Valley for three decades, spent eight years as a partner at US Venture Partners. In 2004, he launched Folio Fine Wine Partners with his wife Isabel and their children, Rob, Jr. Before that, restaurateurs would never compare California with France.

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Silicon Valley California Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Or at times an even more honest answer, “My senior partners say this is the only way to do it.” Why change something that has worked so well over the last three decades?” Or, “Look at our returns, its always worked for us.” That’s a better return than having 10 out of 10 companies succeed and each return 2x our money.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 19, 2014

As a bonus it meant the 1,400 aerial applicator companies could be a potential distribution channel partner. We’re now piloting our application with Tree Farmers in California and working with crop specialists at U.C. All of sudden what was an additional engineering and development effort now became a small, variable cost.

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Customer Algorithm Customer Development California 316

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

The second was when a Southern Californian aircraft company decided to break into the missiles and space field by partnering with Stanford electronics expertise. The Navy informs Terman that, “money was not a problem but time was.” and the Soviet Union had nuclear weapons at this point.)

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Silicon Valley RSS California Government 142

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2015

My guests this past week on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Pete Newell , managing partner of BMNT Partners. John Kuhn , who works at BMNT Partners. Pete is managing partner for BMNT Partners and serves on the Board of Directors for Solace Power and Savonix.

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Channel Japan Bosnia Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2019

The goal would be six-fold: Integrate adjuncts as partners with their entrepreneurship centers . I’ve been an adjunct for almost 18 years, and I still remember the onboarding process at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Create repeatable and scalable processes for onboarding adjuncts.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Lean Reputation Programming 142

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. The Week 7 Lecture: Partners. Our lecture this week covered Partners. Which partners and suppliers leverage your model? The pressure was on.

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Revenue West Virginia Oklahoma Oklahoma City 213

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

This week they were testing their hypotheses about Partners. Partners are the external companies whose product or service combines with your Value Proposition to create a complete customer solution or “whole product&# to satisfy customers. They worked on understanding their partners. The Nine Teams Present.

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South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 217

Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

Only in California! This team spoke face-to-face with 50+ end users, 3 manufacturers, 25 potential partners, 22 domain experts and surveyed an additional 115 customers. They had face-to-face interviews with 252 customers + 10 partner interviews + 76 surveyed. And do it in 8 weeks. Team EngineKites. A kite-boarding startup?

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Lean Business Model Agile United States 256

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 20, 2014

In 2012 NYU partnered with the City University of NY (CUNY) and Columbia University, and in early 2013 they won a grant from the National Science Foundation to build the Innovation Corps in New York City and jointly create the the NYC Regional Innovation Node (NYCRIN).

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Lean New York City New York Customer Development 269

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Dino and I kept in touch as he moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Bend needed its own venture firm.

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Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

So I got out out of the building to meet and understand our customers and distribution partners. I remember after a month or two of talking to 14-22 year old male gamers (our potential target market,) I realized that for the first time in my career I had no emotional connection to my customers or channel partners.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Video 139

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You leave the comfort of your existing job, convince a few partners to join you and you jump off the bridge together. You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. At each startup I couldn’t wait to do this. Great, sign me up.

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Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 212

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

Partners Booths While your booth may be small, some of your potential or existing partners may have much larger ones, in much more visible locations. For a small company this is like throwing your tradeshow money on the floor. Look for locations near entrances, food concessions, rest rooms, seminar rooms, or close to major exhibitors.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 178

Steve Blank

JUNE 24, 2013

The banks lobbied regulators in Louisiana , New York , California, and Idaho and soon they were issuing injunctions forcing PayPal to delay their IPO. Ally with some larger partners who see you as a way to break the incumbents lock on the market. As the company grew larger, incumbent banks forced PayPal to register in each state.

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North Carolina New Jersey New York Government 335

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

Andrew read the Four Steps to the Epiphany , tracked me down at California Coastal Commission hearing in Santa Barbara, and had me meeting with him in a stairwell during a break in my day-long meeting. We’re also charging customers and partners right off the bat for our services. This guest post is from Andrew Elliott of Lottay.

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Customer Development Developer Customer California 230

Steve Blank

JUNE 24, 2013

The banks lobbied regulators in Louisiana , New York , California, and Idaho and soon they were issuing injunctions forcing PayPal to delay their IPO. Ally with some larger partners who see you as a way to break the incumbents lock on the market. As the company grew larger, incumbent banks forced PayPal to register in each state.

North Carolina 227

North Carolina New Jersey New York Government 227

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

Their VC firm, In-Q-Tel , has been in business for 10 years, and like most VC firms they have an annual event where they show off their new portfolio companies to their limited partners and other VC partners. And I could have sworn they all had the same badge.)

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Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Venture Capital 247

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Did the partner have a good or bad day, etc. We were able to raise a Seed round from Bessemer Venture Partners on a powerpoint idea, and never found the repeatable customer model. Anything that is not a standard VC dozen format will get thrown away by a junior associate with MBA before it is ever seen by a partner.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

The University of California managed research and development of the bomb design at Los Alamos while the US Army managed the Los Alamos facilities and the overall administration of the project. After the war the U.S. split up the functions of the OSRD.

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Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Kuwait 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

Hewlett’s partner Dave Packard wanted to get into the computer business.) We Changed Our Mind In 1966, 10 years after Hewlett’s memo, Hewlett Packard’s revenue and headcount had grown ten fold; $200 million and 11,000 employees – all from test and measurement equipment.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 164

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

I had hired the VP of marketing from a potential software partner who was responsible to get all this 3 rd party software on our computer. I’ve been on the side of your potential partners, and I know that often too much ‘persistence’ is offputting. Oh, and we had no installed customer base. u have to be creative, too.

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Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 324

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2015

Venk Shukla , president TiE Silicon Valley and general partner, Monta Vista Capital. In DC it’s George Washington University, the University of Maryland and Virginia Tech, and now Johns Hopkins… in the Bay Area, there’s Berkeley, Stanford and UCSF. … In Southern California, there’s Caltech, USC and UCLA.

Government 120

Government Channel Southern California Lean 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

The positive effect of the tidal wave of press was as a door opener for us to raise money from corporate partners. Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing. At the time I was a true believer that Rocket Science was going to change the gaming world.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

If you were a “with it” VC you needed to have a “Content&# or “Multimedia&# company in your portfolio to impress your limited partners – educational software companies, game companies, or anything that could be described as content and/or Multimedia. There appears to be a saturation point within this market space.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Meanwhile my partner was in heaven working with his newly hired group of game designers directing and producing our first games. No, not really, but my partner owns the studio and tells me it’s spectacular and everyone will love it. Go spend some time outside the building talking to potential distribution partners.

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Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 207

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

I packed up my life in Michigan and spent five days driving to California to start work. No one will say work less and go home and spend time with your partner and/or family. You’re Hired, You’re Fired. My first job in Silicon Valley: I was hired as a lab technician at ESL to support the training department.

Agile 245

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 245

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

And one would become my mentor and partner in later companies.) The other thing it helps clarify is that even at work, it’s the relationships that matter most (collegues, customers, partners, etc). Two of my role models for my career were in this company. (And But this story is not about Convergent.

Entrepreneur 276

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 276

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2013

The University of California managed research and development of the bomb design lab at Los Alamos while the US Army managed the Los Alamos facilities and the overall administration of the project. In exchange for federal science funding, universities became partners in weapons systems research and development.

Silicon Valley 243

Silicon Valley Government Germany Japan 243

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2012

I explained that the goal of the Innovation Corps was to bridge what the NSF calls the “ditch of death” – the gap between when NSF research funding runs out and when a team is credible enough (with enough customer and market knowledge) to raise private capital or license/partner with existing companies. Concentric Technology.

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America Rhode Island Southern California Illinois 241

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2017

Hacking for Defense is now offered at eight universities in addition to Stanford – Georgetown , University of Pittsburgh , Boise State , UC San Diego, James Madison University, University of Southern Mississippi , and later this year University of Southern California and Columbia University. Hacking for Journalism at Stanford.

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Silicon Valley Southern California Lean San Diego 182