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Ardent War Story 5: The Best Marketers Are Engineers

Steve Blank

I would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. I set up an advisory board as a vehicle to get these industry experts engaged with the company and product.

Engineer 221
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Ardent 1: Supercomputers Get Personal

Steve Blank

A Phone Call After I left MIPS Computers I was in New York tagging along with a friend (a computer architect whose products at Apple a decade later would change the shape of personal computing) who was consulting for a voice recognition startup. I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.”

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Convergent Technologies: War Story 1 – Selling with Sports Scores.

Steve Blank

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

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Scaling is Hard, Case Study: TripAdvisor

Seeing Both Sides

Last week, I wrote about Akamai , a company with strong network effects that successfully transitioned from a single product to build a platform that garners over a billion dollars in revenue and is now a core part of the Internet’s fabric. Big Data meets travel…in 2000. The company has grown profitably ever since.