Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

The Energy Storage division is acting like a startup, and Prescott Logan its General Manager, has lived up to the charter. He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley. They’ve tested their hypotheses with literally hundreds of customer interviews on every continent in the world. You couldn’t be more wrong.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

I just spent a few weeks in Japan and China on a book tour for the Japanese and Chinese versions of the Startup Owners Manual. Of all the Chinese government programs, the Torch Program is the one program that kick-started Chinese high-tech innovation and startups. In these series of 5 posts, I thought I’d share what I learned in China.

Programming 170

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 170

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

For example, I suggest it doesn’t make a lot of sense to hire a full-time team member who’s an SEO consultant. You might hire a really amazing designer, and perhaps even charge companies for their service for cost recovery purposes. Real Ventures , an early-stage, Canadian-based fund, runs a two-day Founder Camp every six months.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Following is his advice to early stage entrepreneurs for creating structure in their company. So, I’ll explain my reasoning through the story of ASC, a fictitious company that has a combination of characteristics I’ve seen across a number of early stage companies. Soundbites from potential customers are encouraging.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, August 26, 2009 Building a new startup hub Last week, I had a unique opportunity to spend some time in Boulder at the behest of TechStars. It was a great experience to see a relatively new startup hub in action - and thriving. Their model looks like a key ingredient in the startup brew there.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

David Teten

MARCH 28, 2012

In addition, in light of increasing competition in the startup funding space, a methodology for helping portfolio companies consistently is a strong competitive advantage. So how can VCs help their startups? Lowering that failure rate would be highly impactful on venture capitalist returns, if we could figure out how to do it.

Portfolio 144

Portfolio Private Equity Venture Capital Early Stage 144

The Startup Toolkit

NOVEMBER 10, 2012

Spoiler: You can’t hire out sales because in the early days it’s about learning, not selling, and hired guns can’t bring back bad news. As a tech founder doing sales, you’ll find yourself constantly fantasising about hiring in a sales guy to take all your pain away.

Hiring 51

Hiring Founder Viral Early Stage 51

Hunter Walker

FEBRUARY 20, 2021

You see, the demand for “startup advisors” were going through a little bit of a boomlet. Anyhow, fast-forward to 2021 and it almost feels like startup advisor roles have fallen a bit out of fashion as everyone scrambles to be an angel investor, a scout or solo capitalist. You don’t even need to do anything and we’ll give you equity.

Advisory Board 151

Advisory Board Equity Vesting Startup 151

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Startups and Sales If you read this post you can come away with the impression that every startup with a direct salesforce needs a consultative sales team. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? what Market Type is your startup?

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

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

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 207

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

I had coffee with an ex student earlier in the week that reminded me yet again why startups burn through so many early VP’s. Here’s one possible explanation – Job titles in a startup mean something different than titles in a large company. They helped me hire the best VP of Sales I could find.

Startup 312

Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 312

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

And building a startup is not for the faint of heart. 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 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Having just retired from a career as an entrepreneur I had started thinking about why startups were different from large companies. Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. In contrast, customer acquisition, brand, reputation, etc.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

And building a startup is not for the faint of heart. 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 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.

Silicon Valley 175

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 175

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, July 30, 2009 Techstars brings The Lean Startup to Boulder Im very excited to announce a pair of events that will kick off a very busy fall speaking tour. The event will include a talk from Eric on The Lean Startup over dinner, followed by moderated table discussion and then final Q&A with Eric.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). Venture Capital Cafe > Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). VC & Startup Resources. Seed Startups. VC Cafe covers early stage Israeli and European tech & mobile startups. Hundreds of startups featured since 2005, will yours be next? About VC Cafe.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

In reality I had been hired as CEO and the adult supervision and administrative overseer of one of the most creative talents in the valley. Reply Mark Essel , on July 2, 2009 at 9:14 am Said: Reality distortion field isn’t the basic technique covered in startups 101? I love all these war stories.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

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. The only problem that faces startup investors now is how to mine this new data layer efficiently to increase returns.”.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. 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.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 2, 2012

These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Small Business and Startups: Slice & Dice Your Customer Service Data | crowdSPRING Blog - [link]. Is The Only Purpose of Customer Service To Change Feelings?

Social Media 93

Social Media Small Business Design Media 93

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

How would one set up such a startup to eventually raise capital from outside VCs, who will be wary of ‘dead equity’ (i.e., 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. What are the timelines? The discounts?

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Don’t startups exist for the same reason?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, June 9, 2009 The Lean Startup Tokyo edition I had a blast speaking at Startonomics Tokyo , which was organized to foster ties between the startup cultures in Japan and Silicon Valley. ericnakagawa : Show of hands how many in startup here? Startups need to spend time with these customers.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

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

JUNE 5, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, June 5, 2009 It’s a startup, not a spreadsheet Some people, when they start to realize the power of using data to inform their decisions, become obsessed with optimization. Unfortunately, most decisions that confront startups lack a definitive right answer. But this is wrong, too.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

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? Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. Do some Customer Development instead. Help you raise money.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

The role of a founding CEO in a startup searching for a business model is radically different than a CEO building and growing a company. So if you’re the founder of a startup, you may want to consider who you take money from. What startup stage do they typically invest in? Do they “get&# Customer Development ?

Founder 231

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. When I was at Intel, we hired the Hill Group to come in a train the entire team of sales and marketing people who were slated to staff any trade show booth throughout the year. You’ll never have to do it again.)

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

www.instigatorblog.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Home About Contact My thoughts & lessons learned on startups, entrepreneurship, marketing and other stuff. 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. the better the startup will be.

Equity 41

Equity Employee Startup Vesting 41

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Team Configuration 500 Startups Guerilla Marketing Organizations Entrepreneurship Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs Startups Startup Incubators and Seed Programs Seedcamp Y Combinator TechStars Lean Startups What is the perfect startup team?

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

You are here: Home » Hiring » Crazy! 189 Answers To The Top Startup Questions On Your Mind. 189 Answers To The Top Startup Questions On Your Mind. Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. I love startups.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

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. It has become an integral part of startup culture. None of mine did.)

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Most of the people building our product werent themselves target customers. So there was simply no substitute for seeing actual customers with the product, live. Today, when I talk to startup founders, the most common answer I get to the question "do you talk to your customers?" Dont confuse passion with volume.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

And it hires very smart people from the best schools. BTW, by the standards mentioned in the Times article, the following people would never have been interviewed or hired at Google. College Dropouts - Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison These guys realized that customers don’t ask for your transcript. I love Google.

Silicon Valley 327

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 327

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

Startup Quote: Wendy Tan White on Building a Successful Startup » FounderDating: How I Found My Co-Founder. After quitting my job and starting Sorced , I spent a few months validating my business concept by creating the product mockups and doing customer development. You might as well hire an outsourced team.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47