Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

the wave of semiconductor startups in the 1960’s/70’s, the emergence of Venture Capital as a professional industry, the personal computer revolution in 1980’s, the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s and finally. The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle. The founders.

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink. Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter? The short answer is no.

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Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

The benefits of customer and agile development and minimum features set are continuous customer feedback, rapid iteration and little wasted code. But over time if developers aren’t careful, code written to find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. That died with waterfall software development. I’m not even talking about your 12-page Powerpoint presentation that you need to raise venture capital or to talk with potential biz dev partners.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Steve Blank

APRIL 19, 2010

The question is whether you are born with innate entrepreneurial talent or whether you can be taught to operate like an entrepreneur. Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Jason Calacanis , founder of Mahlo.com, and Mark Suster of GRP Partners, have all weighed in on the nature side – you’re born being an entrepreneur or your not.

Silicon Valley 219

Silicon Valley Venture Capital China New York 219

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

Just as with any company, the most important issue is the team; see “ How to Negotiate a Partner Role at a Venture Capital or Private Equity Firm “ . See How Private Equity and Venture Capital Investors Are Eating Their Own Dogfood. . 3) Raise capital. 4) Originate investments. 6) Due diligence.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

Just as with any company, the most important issue is the team; see “ How to Negotiate a Partner Role at a Venture Capital or Private Equity Firm “ . See How Private Equity and Venture Capital Investors Are Eating Their Own Dogfood. . 3) Raise capital. 4) Originate investments. 6) Due diligence.

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Should you co-found your company with a software development shop? I’ve seen a range of options for supporting entrepreneurs, which I can rank from least to most involvement in companies by investors: financier VCs, e.g., Correlation Ventures. Vlad is also the CEO at DarwinApps , a software development shop.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

And some of their best and brightest have ended up in the organizations like the 2nd Bureau, Unit 61398 tasked euphemistically for “Computer Network Operations.”. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Understanding the left-side of the mission model canvas ( activities, resources , partners , and costs) forces all teams to ask, “Are we building a product for a DOD/IC customer only or do we have a “dual-use” product that could be sold commercially and get funded by venture capital?”. This post is a continuation of the series.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Investors who provide hands-on help have little or no effect on the company’s operational performance. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. But the right mentors significantly influence a company’s performance and ability to raise money. Congratulations. ——-.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

As a first time founder, having a few million dollars in the bank after a successful seed raise may seem like a huge amount of capital, and it’s easy to lose discipline around your burn rate. There are always exceptions, on both the positive and negative side, and many companies really shouldn’t be raising venture capital at all.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. I began to gain an appreciation of how world-class venture capitalists develop pattern recognition for these common types of problems. “Oh Oh yes, company X, they’re having problem 343.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

David Teten

MARCH 28, 2012

Best Practices in Venture Capital Portfolio Company Value Creation. Lowering that failure rate would be highly impactful on venture capitalist returns, if we could figure out how to do it. Venture capitalists are financiers of a special nature. I’ve also posted this at Betabeat.).

Portfolio 144

Portfolio Private Equity Venture Capital Early Stage 144

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Guide to Evaluating Startup Ideas - Tony Wright dot com , May 27, 2010 A great developer I once worked with was kvetching at lunch one day. Draw Your Ideas - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 16, 2010 I saw Jack Dorsey give this talk at The 99% Conference last month. They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said.

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Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

And some of their best and brightest have ended up in the organizations like the 2nd Bureau, Unit 61398 tasked euphemistically for “Computer Network Operations.”. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 13, 2011

Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology detailed in his book, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany." 9-to-5 Venture Capital. Yet Tekes does that and is trying to act like a government-run Venture Capital firm.

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Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 158

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. Companies specializing in components and systems that operated in the microwave portion of the electromagnetic spectrum sprouted faster than fruit trees in the valley orchards. Why was it occurring here?

Silicon Valley 270

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 270

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

PS1- I run a small software startup in Brazil and just found out about Customer Development and your blog (I’ve been reading and listening to everything I can get my hands on online, like Venturehacks and Ries’ blog). You can get away with effective behavior in a large company. Ideas anyone,? Conversion ideas?

Silicon Valley 324

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 324

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

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.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Yet in our case the product, the machine as delivered from engineering, was a blank, featureless computer with just an operating system and compilers. In most other companies a product-marketing department was responsible for the pricing, positioning and promotion of the product.

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

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. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. What’s Different. Entrepreneurs in Bend.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Supercomputers With the introduction in 1976 of the Cray-1 , supercomputers were defined as the fastest vector-processing computer , one in which a single instruction performed operations on an array rather than a single number. Cray’s first customers were the U.S. That knowledge itself gives me immense strength about my approach.

Silicon Valley 147

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

JULY 8, 2010

Are you are born with innate entrepreneurial talent or can you can be taught to operate like an entrepreneur? Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Jason Calacanis , founder of Mahalo.com, and Mark Suster of GRP Partners, have all weighed in on the nature side – you’re born being an entrepreneur or you’re not. Taking Sides.

Venture Capital 227

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Customer Development Partner 227

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. Electron-based Venture Capital. Here’s why.

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Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

In our case, we’re local in over 200 countries with operations in basically every city on the planet. For most big, established companies like us, our business models were developed years—even decades ago. in developing these new models. billion times a day. Our market cap is around $170B. And why wouldn’t it be?

Lean 326

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 326

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

“And, oh by the way, can you write the manuals for the operators while you’re at it.&# As I poured over the system schematics, I figured out how to put together a course to teach system theory, operations and maintenance. Are You Single?

Agile 245

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 245

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

Secondly, they had an owned & operated (O&O) website – Google.com – and Overture had shut down GoTo.com at the request of their very profitable and large distribution partners. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

and reorganized into operating divisions (by product, territory, brand, etc.) This strategy-to-structure shift from functional organizations to operating divisions was led by DuPont and popularized by General Motors and quickly followed by Standard Oil and Sears. Operating divisions execute the known business model.

Business Model 333

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 333

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

For the first 75 years of the 20 th century, when capital for new ventures was scarce, the smartest engineering talent went to corporate R&D labs. But starting in the last quarter of that century and accelerating in this one, a new form of financing – risk capital (angel and venture capital) — emerged.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

It wasn’t until I found the extremely obscure Lanchester Strategy for market share that I realized that these ratios had their basis in operations research and the Lanchester’s Laws.) Our company’s graphics boards were designed to speed up a key part of the Macintosh graphics operating system called QuickDraw.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

We agreed that all her founding CEOs seemed to have the same set of personality traits – tenacious, passionate, relentless, resilient, agile, and comfortable operating in chaos. It’s why all of you operated so well in the unpredictable environment that all startups face.” And that’s just to get started.

Founder 297

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 297

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. Reply steveblank , on October 10, 2009 at 10:59 am Said: Sales material developed by marketers who have never left the building is more often that not completely useless.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

While this signaled that investments in technology companies could be very lucrative, both Shockley and Fairchild could only be funded through corporate partners – there was no venture capital industry. government backed venture firms and limited partnerships. A wave of innovation was about to meet a pile of risk capital.

Engineer 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Reply bjorn , on March 23, 2009 at 5:18 pm Said: these stories really livened up the whole concept of “customer discovery&# for me. It reminded me of “earlier days&# , when I was just starting out in running business operations for startups. i have your book, but stopped at the 4th chapter.

Silicon Valley 134

Silicon Valley Customer RSS Philippines 134

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

Present at the Creation It was early 1991 and Apple’s software development team was hard at work on QuickTime , the first multimedia framework for a computer. But the team believed adding video as an integral part of an operating system and user experience (where there had only been text and still images) would be transformative.

Video 164

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164