Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. Ultimately, Nokia’s difficulties will turn out to be good news for Finnish entrepreneurs. Finland itself has significant engineering talent, and is also attracting entrepreneurs from Russia and the former USSR.

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Finland Naming Russia Government 327

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

I don’t recommend anyone become an entrepreneur. The tools and temperament needed to get from startup idea to startup success were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Prior to founding Andela , he co-founded 2U , an education technology startup that went public in 2014.

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 143

The Next Web

JUNE 8, 2014

The keys are maintaining capital efficiency, launching early versions to the SMB market and constantly applying customer development methods. Design & Dev Entrepreneur Analysis and Opinion' And more importantly, B2B companies. This story continues at The Next Web.

B2C 132

B2C B2B IP Technical Review 132

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

I don’t recommend anyone become an entrepreneur. The tools and temperament needed to get from startup idea to startup success were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Prior to founding Andela , he co-founded 2U , an education technology startup that went public in 2014.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2015

It is in need of innovation on many fronts and is also trying to embrace the amazing amount of innovation happening with early-stage companies. In working with eight early-stage companies in the last two months I have consistently asked, “What do you want from us?” This often tries the patience of entrepreneurs.

Startup 120

Startup Early Stage Azure Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Over my career as a serial entrepreneur I observed that since the late 1990s, no early-stage Silicon Valley investor had used business plans to screen investments. Traction and evidence from customers were what investors were looking for – even in “slow” sectors like healthcare and energy. Seeing Is Believing.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 31, 2011

After 50 years of technology entrepreneurship it's still an art. Max and his partners had interviewed and analyzed over 650 early-stage Internet startups. In May they released the first Startup Genome Report -- an in-depth analysis on what makes early-stage Internet startups successful.

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Software Review Early Stage Startup Technical Review 134

David Teten

MARCH 28, 2012

Even the best VCs and entrepreneurs have a painfully high failure rate. We’re now in the midst of surveying VCs and entrepreneurs for this research. Entrepreneurs please click here. We have interviewed over 50 entrepreneurs and some leading VCs around the US about their experiences and pain points while building their companies.

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Portfolio Private Equity Venture Capital Early Stage 144

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Other Roles in a Startup Generic advice given to entrepreneurs assumes that everyone is going to be the founder/co-founder. Yet for every founder there are 10-20 other employees who take the near-equivalent risks in joining an early-stage company. Get customers first. This is the minimum feature set for founders.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 223

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

I have developed a founder curriculum on my blog. Relationships with Venture Partners, Entrepreneurs in Residence , and other non-salaried personnel who can help your companies. For technology vendors and models, see Venture capitalists eating our own dog food: Using technology and analytics to make better investments. .

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Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 246

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# Reply One difference between VCs and Entrepreneurs « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog , on April 20, 2009 at 7:06 am Said: [.]

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Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 302

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

In the last five years “ Lean Startup ” methodologies have enabled entrepreneurs to efficiently build a startup by searching for product/market fit rather than blindly trying to execute. Horizon 3 is where companies put their crazy entrepreneurs. I’ve been working with large companies and the U.S. A 50x speedup kind of fast.

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Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. The first class was an introduction to the concepts of business model design and customer development.

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Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 300

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. I am a young entrepreneur here, absolutely dying to hear the talk. Your “Customer Development Process&# has really resonated for me. The VC firm delivered a term sheet for an 8-digit second round that afternoon.

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Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 216

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

They had no model of who their own customers were and what it would take to make those customers bang down their doors to buy their products. Nothing I couldn’t fix. I took the job.

Silicon Valley 150

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 150

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Meanwhile our company was pouring an enormous amount of dollars into building tools and video compression technology, while also hiring a lot of high-priced Hollywood talent like art directors, and script and story editors. His point was that it was in the VC’s interest in having entrepreneurs swing for the fences.

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Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 212

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

VCs tout themselves as frontier technology investors, but most are using the same infrastructure tools they have used for the past 20+ years: Excel and recent college grads searching Google. According to Knowledge.VC , under 5% of US VCs have a full-time team member focused on technology. . But we’re doing it slowly.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.

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Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 185

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

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Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 126

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Our firm has a portfolio of companies across a broad range of markets and the way we look at it is pretty simple – the deals fall into two types: those with customer/market risk and those with invention risk.” Markets with Customer/Market Risk are those where the unknown is whether customers will adopt the product.

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 147

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

My boss, the CEO, had just come from a string of successes at Convergent Technologies, Intel and Digital Equipment, names that at that time carried a lot of weight. 15, 2009 Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank blogged about being on the receiving end of a hostile outburst from his “abusive boss,&# the [.]

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Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 275

Steve Blank

JANUARY 24, 2014

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 1: Bend, Oregon Ecosystem and Entrepreneurs. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds.

Engineer 309

Engineer Silicon Valley Oregon San Francisco 309

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Entrepreneur-in-Residence After SuperMac I had been approached by one of our venture investors to be an entrepreneur in residence (EIR), a Silicon Valley phrase which says one thing but means another. I offered to introduce him to the firm whose Entrepreneur-in-Residence offer I had just accepted.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

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. Entrepreneurs in Bend.

Silicon Valley 314

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 314

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Ardent would be my third technology company as a VP of Marketing (Convergent Technologies and MIPS Computers were the other two.) It was my ex boss from Convergent Technologies, “Steve we’ve all just resigned from Convergent and we’re starting a new company.

North Carolina 126

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 126

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. Zilog produced one of the first 8-bit microprocessors , the Z-80 (competing at the time with Intel’s 8080 , Motorola 6800, and MOS Technology 6502.) Burnout can turn productive employees into emotional zombies and destroy careers.

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Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 181

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Verticals Are Different I began to realize that entrepreneurs (and their professors) act like every vertical market and industry has the same set of rules. Entrepreneurs who have experience in the vertical market they’re entering do this analysis automatically. Moore’s technology adoption lifecycle tells us to find a client.

Vertical 151

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 151

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

We now have the tools, technology and data to take incubators and accelerators to the next level. A Lean Startup methodology offers entrepreneurs a framework to focus on what’s important: Business Model Discovery. Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering.

Oakland 327

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 327

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

You’ve got a great idea and domain expertise, but limited money and insufficient technology resources. Should you co-found your company with a software development shop? They’re well aware of the conventional VC bias against funding companies which externally develop their technology, but they do have relevant skills.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Last May, I shared the news that long-time Lean Startup advocates Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits were working on a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur featuring illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. The Embrace infant warmer was developed - by getting out of the country -- and how Rob Emrich learned and scaled his non-profit, Road of Life.

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Lean Entrepreneur Agile San Francisco 167

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

In exchange, these VCs/companies get early looks at new deal flow and offer aspiring entrepreneurs feedback and advice on their business plan. These competitions started in the early 1980 ‘s at the University of Texas and have sprouted like mushrooms in the last 10 years. You’ll learn a lot.

Business Plan 143

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 143

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

In this admittedly very unscientific survey I’ve found that between a quarter and half of the students I consider “hard-core&# entrepreneurs/founders (working passionately to found a company,) self-identified as coming from a less than benign upbringing. I’ve been surprised at the data. Let me know what you think.

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Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 302

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2016

And just having cool technology doesn’t make a successful business. What it was like to get out of the research lab to build a startup was the focus of interviews with two of the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern).

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Michigan Detroit 120

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Lean Planning started with Tim Berry ‘s 2008 “ Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan ” which was a new way for entrepreneurs to think about planning. Also, the “customer relationships” section didn’t seem to fit for many traditional businesses. Does the solution the entrepreneur is proposing actually solve the problem?

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Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Believing Your Own BS is Toxic Lots of noise and smoke before a product ships seems to be a toxic byproduct of enthusiastic entrepreneurs. Every generation of new technology seems to find a willing audience in naïve journalists and eager readers. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea.

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Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122