Remove Customer Development Remove Early Stage Remove Engineer Remove Founder
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Early-stage Regional Venture Funds–part 2 of 3 of Bigger in Bend

Steve Blank

Dino Vendetti a VC at Bay Partners, moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Over the years Dino and I brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds. Part 3: Engineering a Regional Tech Cluster.

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Seed Stage Founders Undervalue Angels With Marketing & Comms Expertise

Hunter Walker

In addition to our dollars, we are eager to help founders with the construction of their cap table, not just generically with the highest profile folks available, but more specifically where they might get some help along the way. What expertise do the founders personally have? Founders Often Don’t Come From These Backgrounds….

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Which Fundraising Round Should You Skip?

View from Seed

As seed rounds have atomized, it’s not uncommon for founders to raise 3 or even 4 rounds prior to a series A. The reality is that if a founder raised every one of these rounds, and lead investors always got their “target” ownership, the level of dilution would be ridiculous. Founders with limited experience. should be avoided.

Dilution 149
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Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out – The Startup Genome Project

Steve Blank

The email continued, &# The problem I’m working on is that many founders are either making uninformed decisions or inefficiently learning the new skills they need. The solution I’m exploring is a just in time learning methodology that accelerates founders’ learning curve by aggregating relevant content, peers and mentors.&#.

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Nokia as “He Who Must Not Be Named” and the Helsinki Spring

Steve Blank

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. Instead the business press dumped on the founders for “selling out.” Many founders mentioned this as a reason not to incorporate or grow their companies in Finland. Lessons Learned.

Finland 324
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Entrepreneurship is an Art not a Job

Steve Blank

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. Founders fit the definition of a creator: they see something no one else does.

Agile 332
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Profound Beliefs

Steve Blank

In the early stages of a startup your hypotheses about all the parts of your business model are your profound beliefs. You can’t be an effective founder or in the C-suite of a startup if you don’t hold any. Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development.