Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building.

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 124

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

The previous post described how China built its science and technology infrastructure. This post is about the how the Chinese government engineered technology clusters. Torch has four major parts: Innovation Clusters , Technology Business Incubators (TBIs), Seed Funding (Innofund) and Venture Guiding Fund.

Programming 170

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 170

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. You find early stage employees expecting to work normal hours, to get paid a regular salary, and not asking or expecting equity. Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team for the fabulous logistics!)

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Finland Naming Russia Government 324

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

He set up Blackbox.vc, a seed accelerator for technology startups (and one of the tour stops for entrepreneurs from around the world.) Max and his partners interviewed and analyzed over 650 early-stage Internet startups. I think these guys have gone a long way to turn hypotheses about early-stage Internet startups into facts.

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Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

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

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

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. Koen, Gyorgy, and Adham are all Columbia Business School MBA 2012 students and former consultants with McKinsey and BCG.

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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

MARCH 19, 2009

Now with a new infusion of $8 million dollars of venture capital, SuperMac had been resurrected from the dead and was attempting to restart. 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.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 146

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. Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

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Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

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.&# My advice was to start a policy of making reversible decisions before anyone left his office or before a meeting ended.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Yet for every founder there are 10-20 other employees who take the near-equivalent risks in joining an early-stage company. If you’re not a founder (by choice, timing or temperament,) you may be an early employee or a later stage startup employee. This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

To an entrepreneur, being asked to join a venture firm with an Entrepreneur-in-Residence title means you have been tapped on the shoulder by the VC gods. As Peter began to speak extemporaneously our mouths slowly fell open as he described the video game market, its size, its demographics, the state of the technology, and the state of games.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

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 242

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.

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Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

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 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds. Local Early-Stage Risk Capital.

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Engineer Silicon Valley Oregon San Francisco 307

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. Startups in Bend.

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Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

government is the leading payer for most of health care, and under ObamaCare the government’s role in reimbursing for medical technology will increase. Venture Capital Issues. Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up. Venture Capital. Regulatory Issues.

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Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I finally understood how valuable these contests can be for students in cities or countries without a venture capital or entrepreneurial infrastructure. MootCorp in particular has an impressive track record of putting early stage tech companies on the right path towards funding. to compete. You’ll learn a lot.

Business Plan 140

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

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 144

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. Customer Development says having a vision, faith and a set of hypotheses are a normal part of the startup experience.

Silicon Valley 207

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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. Customer development isn’t just for [.] understands and groks Customer Development. Customer development isn’t just for [.]

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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.

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North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

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? portfolio operator VCs, e.g., Andreessen Horowitz, ff Venture Capital, First Round Capital, Google Ventures.

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Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. Victor Hugo. Here’s how.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

A lot of my time is spent helping early-stage companies get to proof points so that they can raise capital. They might have some seed money and are thinking or raising a Series A based on success of an early release (MVP). Bill Payne is an expert on how early-stage investors should look at valuation.

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Valuation Revenue Pre-Money Valuation Early Stage 198

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.

Silicon Valley 175

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 175

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 ?

Founder 231

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Moore’s technology adoption lifecycle tells us to find a client. That client is inherently in a vertical, so stage gate the vertical for seats and dollars. Build the client’s visualization with your technology, but your technology is not the product. No, linearity in business is a tragic myth.

Vertical 149

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 149

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Reinventing the board meeting may offer angel-funded startups – which because of geography or size of investment typically don’t have formal boards or directors – to attract experienced advice and investment outside of technology clusters (i.e. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old.

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Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Venture Capital Cafe > Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). VC Cafe covers early stage Israeli and European tech & mobile startups. Every startup faces multiple choices and decisions when it comes to technology. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Ad Serving Technology.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

The landscape for how to turn life science and health care technologies into viable companies has changed more in the last 3 years than in the last 30. ———– The National Institutes of Health recognizes that Life Science/Health Care commercialization has two components: the science/technology, and the business model.

San Diego 261

San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 261

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Reinventing the board meeting may offer angel-funded startups – which because of geography or size of investment typically don’t have formal boards or directors – to attract experienced advice and investment outside of technology clusters (i.e. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

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. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. We all know how that ends up.

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Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Everyone should have a chance to walk the floor looking for deals, technology, distribution, customers, etc. Partnership Opportunities At any show you are attending there has to be tons of opportunity for business to business relationships you hadn’t thought about. Go to trade shows like it matters.

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