Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. They’ve stopped hiring the best talent, and startups are not looking so risky compared to large companies. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital.

Finland 327

Finland Naming Russia Government 327

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. This engineering manager is a smart guy, and very experienced.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 29, 2018

The introduction of remote employees opens your business to an influx of new talents and skill sets. If you want app development that is both affordable and efficient, you need to know how to hire programmers to do the job. Where to Hire Developers for Your Project. How to Hire Remote Developers.

Developer 93

Developer Offshore Software Developers Software Development 93

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

A study done by SurveyMonkey and Search Engine Land found that brand name was the first thing people looked for when clicking on search engine results: Source. These don’t require coding skills—they’re usually visual templates that are easy to use but don’t allow for great customization (that would require technical skills).

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Though they’re familiar with technology in the valley, I picked up some important cultural difference from students and startup engineers I talked to. Entrepreneurial Culture.

China 324

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 324

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

—— I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. At Tekes, government employees (and their hired consultants) – with no equity, no risk or reward, no startup or venture capital experience – try to pick startup winners and losers.

Finland 325

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 325

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Though they’re familiar with technology in the valley, I picked up some important cultural difference from students and startup engineers I talked to. Entrepreneurial Culture.

China 216

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 216

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. Those first employees will take 0.5-1%

Equity 41

Equity Employee Startup Vesting 41

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Department Mission Statements – What am I Supposed to Do Today It wasn’t that we somehow had inherited dumb employees. To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Hire around you to fill those weak spots. …. whether that’s partners or employees that you bring on. And most importantly, you have your customers that you want to sell your product or service to. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. You have investors … or directors and advisors.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

The team hired only the best and the brightest. I was an engineer on the engineering team. For one, the engineers consider the artists stupid; the artists consider the engineers arrogant. Meanwhile the drawbacks of functional departments can cause real and lasting harm. The meeting was tense.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 13, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford's Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology detailed in his book, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany."

Finland 158

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 158

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. At the same time, it’s a chance to expose some career State Department employees to Silicon Valley thinking.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products. At the same time, it’s a chance to expose some career State Department employees to Silicon Valley thinking.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

doing postdoctoral internships, supervised by faculty members or hired staff (many from Fred Terman’s WWII Electronic Warfare lab.) Many of the other staff in the applied program were full-time employees hired to work solely on these military programs. Stanford had a Customer Development loop going on inside their own lab.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley RSS California Government 144

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Objects in Our Mirror are Larger than they Appear Our first goal was to set up benchmarks to measure the performance of our own graphics boards on the real applications our customers used (Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator and PageMaker.) Theoretically, that’s why I hired them. You don’t delegate life and death.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

At IMVU , our engineering team accumulated thousands upon thousands of tests, and we had a build cluster (using BuildBot ) that ran them. Joel is focused on the fact that in many environments, programmers are considered "just the hired help" akin to manual labor, and not treated properly. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2016

She is an Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Cooper Union. Nina has a bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the Cooper Union, a master’s in Bioelectrical Engineering from MIT, a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, and an MBA from Columbia University. Nina : Yeah, it became concrete. …We

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Michigan Detroit 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

They used Customer and Agile development to search for a scalable and repeatable business model to become a large company. They hired a world-class team with co-founders and early employees who shared their vision. After that, there was no doubt to existing employees and new hires what the company was aiming for.

Hockey Stick 284

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 284

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. That institution will touch many people in its life: customers, investors, employees, and everyone they touch as well. hope to hear from you. Blew my mind.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

blog.aparttimecto.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Find and hire one or more developers Pros: Implementation Speed - Developers working full time will be much more efficient for you and your product since they’ll be dedicated to your company. Access - Good developers are tough to find. Cons: Cost - Most development shops work on a cash basis.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Equity Vesting 40

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Your most powerful growth engine is your existing customer. These are just a few of the powerful, growth-fostering impacts “Rock Star” customers are creating for a variety of companies. And engaging customers in such ways is generally much less expensive than hiring costly employees or agencies.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

“Some people weren’t comfortable because it wasn’t as fun, and one senior engineer thought we’d be losing the part of kaChing that was an enabler for anyone who wanted to make it as a pro,&# Rachleff recalls. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

We pitch to potential partners, vendors, publishers, conferences, employees, and even lawyers. whos on the engineering team? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Usually we think of pitches in the context of raising money, but that is only one of many pitch situations.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This is an incredible skill, one that most engineers overlook. This is why companies often get out-competed by former employees (Palm vs Handspring to name just one), even though the upstart lacks all of the familiar resources, tools, processes, and support they used to have. Diagnosis is easy: they are exceptionally gifted salesmen.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

They have hundreds, if not thousands, of engineers, world-class design studios, subject matter experts from supply chain to manufacturing. Of course, bringing startups (whether prospective or existing portfolio companies) closer to operating divisions has business and customer development benefits. Are they good sales people?

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

He argued that software engineers don’t finish what they start, and that you’re better off paying a technical person than partnering with one. He picked engineers who were technically-driven but not entrepreneurially-driven. He picked engineers who weren’t comfortable taking risks as great as he wanted to take.

Technical Cofounder 42

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

My colleagues Sebastian Soler , Steven Greenberg and I recently launched a new online community, PEVCTech.com , exclusively for PE/VC investors; engineers who work at PE/VC funds; and other technologists who specialize in working on this problem. VC Firm. $ Tech % of workforce. Google Ventures (GV). 17% (13 / 80).

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2009

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

Agile 60

Agile Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

The same has been true of an unfortunate number of startups, they manage to generate a lot of hype, raise a lot of money, and sometimes make some of their investors, employees, or founders rich. bigs : @ericries says Stealth dev is a (undesirable, failure-presaging) customer-free zone. Use some customer development to find out.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Other companies accomplish this by hiring a large staff of content production experts - and get a very good result. Plus, we saw some of the intrinsic limitations of supporting such a large staff: slower cycle times, higher cost basis, and - most importantly - the ability to serve only a limited number of customer segments.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

The key to successful integration of customer feedback is to make each kind of collection part of the regular company discipline of building and releasing products. Every two months, the company would have a big end-of-milestone meeting, with our Board of Directors, Business Advisory Board, and all employees present.

Advisory Board 151

Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

Lean 76

Lean San Francisco Web Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 3, 2009 Employees should be masters of their own time Every startup should have a culture of learning. The rule is simple: every employee is 100% responsible for how they spend their time. Now he really thought I was nuts, replying "from the recruiter who hired me, of course!"

Employee 146

Employee San Francisco Lean Software Review 146

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

This post is about the how the Chinese government engineered technology clusters. In addition to the one in Beijing, China has set up 53 additional industrial parks and in them are ~60,000 companies with 8 million employees. They provide consulting, promotion, product testing, hiring, training and incubation services to startups.

Programming 280

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 280

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, February 11, 2009 The free software hiring advantage This is one of those startup tips Im a little reluctant to share, because its been such a powerful source of competitive advantage in the companies Ive worked with. This approach gives you an edge in hiring. Instead, engage with the project.

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68