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.

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Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

In venture capital in particular, early-stage companies are often operating in frontier industries, where the rules are unpredictable and conventional analytic frameworks may be misleading. A major angel group used Influitive , an advocate management tool, to track, activate and motivate their members. 4) Manage deal flow.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Prior to founding Carely , Michael Eidsaune earned his MBA in finance and spent several years in investment management, eventually earning his level 1 CFA certification. You might look at it and say, “In some ways, that team is overkill for an early-stage company. A college degree is great if you’re looking to get hired.

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Prior to founding Carely , Michael Eidsaune earned his MBA in finance and spent several years in investment management, eventually earning his level 1 CFA certification. You might look at it and say, “In some ways, that team is overkill for an early-stage company. A college degree is great if you’re looking to get hired.

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Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Hunter Walker

FEBRUARY 20, 2021

That said, there are three types of advisors that I don’t see as commonly utilized by early stage startups — at least the ones we’re not advising. I’m a big proponent of startups hiring talented high-ceiling people who are earlier in their careers and haven’t necessarily yet done the job they’re being recruited for.

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Advisory Board Equity Vesting Startup 150

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Supercomputers get Personal Back in Sunnyvale my friend had not only been hired but had convinced the team that we should be building hardware – making a new class of computers not a software application. We’re building a supercomputer.” We told Andy we’d talk further when he got back from Europe.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies. Provide early seed capital, and be the ones to make those introductions. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Continuous Deployment 113

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? But all things are never equal.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

What startup stage do they typically invest in? Do they “get&# Customer Development ? What Startup Stage Do they Invest In? Certain VC’s like the new class of Super-Angels and small VC funds specialize in the early stage of a startup where you are searching for a business model. Lean Startups ?

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Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

If your don’t have enough employees on the payroll, hire relatives, friends, or part-timers and train them. And that most of the post on trade shows was describing how to prepare and manage a physical presence in a trade show booth. You’ll never have to do it again.) Trade Show Post Mortem Evaluate the experience.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

A discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students. In 2002 I became exposed to the idea of “agile software development&# and subsequently was a first round investor in Rally Software which is now the market leader in Agile application lifecycle management software.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

Unfortunately, they are disinterested in doing the hard work to help early stage entrepreneurs and companies. A few of us have banded together to do this ourselves and are actively working on several projects, including coworking, free startup workshops (our next one in on Jan 7th about product management), jellys etc.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

The people who are the lifeblood of an early-stage startup are earlyvangelists. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? They just dont need another authority figure in their life.

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San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

www.instigatorblog.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Changing Equity Structures for Early Startup Employees Tweet Recently someone asked me for advice on how much equity they should give to their early employees. His company had just closed an early round of funding and he wanted to cement the employee relationships. But I also told him that I though the numbers were wrong. .&#

Equity 41

Equity Employee Startup Vesting 41

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. With that information in hand, Engineering estimates delivery dates and development costs.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

BetaBrand building apparel MVPs and testing them quickly with targeted customer communities. Telecom O2 learning to move at the speed of the internet 500 Startups and their accelerated feedback loops on what works, and what doesn't work in early-stage investing. The result: a new idea I called The Lean Startup. It's a big tent.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Imagine a general manager that has read The Innovator’s Dilemma and related books, and is therefore trying hard to help her organization make a transition to a new product category via disruptive innovation. Still, this manager is going to spend the company’s money, and needs to be held accountable. So far, so good.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

When it becomes possible to build products "live" with customers, the cycle time changes and design becomes a much more dynamic process. We still struggle to create Firm software that is defect-free, and it still requires customer insight (and maybe some customer development) to discover what will Delight.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

Many founders dont like to hear that visionary customers are as smart, maybe even more so, than they are. Startups need to spend time with these customers. In fact, early stage companies shouldnt be able to get time from anyone else - who else would be crazy enough to try an truly innovative new product?

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

All startups (whether a new division inside a larger corporation or in the canonical garage) follow similar patterns—a series of steps which, when followed, can eliminate a lot of the early wandering in the dark. Yet the processes that early-stage companies were using were identical to that of large corporations.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 127

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

— I just watched a very smart company try to manage innovation by hiring a global consulting firm to offload engineering from “distractions.” So, in response the company had hired a global consulting firm to help solve the problem. A shorter version of this post first appeared on the HBR blog. There’s a much better way.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , SuperMac | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Early Stage Startup « Killing Innovation with Corner Cases and Consensus The Secret History of Silicon Valley Part VI: Every World War II Movie was Wrong » 7 Responses David , on April 23, 2009 at 8:58 am Said: Excellent!

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 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 244

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

It got bigger by inventing new test and measurement equipment and it hired people who knew how to execute that strategy. General managers of divisons are compensated on division P&L not long term innovation. You cannot say it is the people (owners, manager or workers). Steven Blank: Managers need to be more entrepreneurial.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 164

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

Have a loud product demo; give away pieces of candy; hire a masseuse and offer free back rubs. Get yourself into the booth selection meetings and get to know the manager. Call often and early and try to upgrade your location. Offer a free bestselling book in your industry (can you have the author there to autograph it?);

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 178

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

In the last decade Torch managed to break free of China’s state central planning bureaucracies. They provide consulting, promotion, product testing, hiring, training and incubation services to startups. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. Technology Business Incubators (TBIs).

Programming 278

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 278

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 17, 2010

Three premier early-stage venture investors have joined forces to sponsor the event: Baseline , Floodgate , and First Round Capital. Three premier early-stage venture investors have joined forces to sponsor the event: Baseline , Floodgate , and First Round Capital. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Ill mention one last thing about knowing what channels of communication your customers engage with. This is important, especially if you are a very early stage company. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? It also gives you insight into their language.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Thor Ernstsson is the founder of Alpha UX , a product validation company serving real-time user insights to Fortune 500 product managers. Customer development would be reduced to a single person exercise that could be repeated in parallel dozens of times over, ultimately yielding 30+ companies a year. Our model at Casual Corp.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. I was hired as a training instructor to teach microprocessor system design for the existing Z-80 family and to write a new course for Zilog’s soon to be launched 16-bit processor, the Z-8000. You created it and own it.

Silicon Valley 175

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 175

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

I liked the flattering Venture Hacks commentary so much Ill just quote it: Many founders believe that early stage startups are endeavors of execution. The customer is known, the product is known, and all we have to do is act. He believes that many early stage startups are labors of learning.

Lean 74

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 74

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

In the last decade Torch managed to break free of China’s state central planning bureaucracies. They provide consulting, promotion, product testing, hiring, training and incubation services to startups. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. Technology Business Incubators (TBIs).

Programming 170

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 170

www.instigatorblog.com

MARCH 2, 2010

And the Board is responsible for a lot of company management type stuff, which advisers wouldn’t really touch. And the Board is responsible for a lot of company management type stuff, which advisers wouldn’t really touch. But the structure is much more formal. But the structure is much more formal.

Advisory Board 40

Advisory Board Startup Cofounder Equity 40

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Successful pinball companies didn’t hire Hollywood talent. 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. I know what’s great and what’s not.

Silicon Valley 207

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? This is the usual reason given for a marketing launch, but for most early stage startups, its a failure. Do some Customer Development instead.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. So I have a question for you, Jason.

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Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208