Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

Although the class was run completely online, and even though they were suffering from Zoom fatigue, the 10 teams of 42 students collectively interviewed 1,142 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, industry partners, etc. And our course advisor, Tom Byers , Professor of Engineering and Faculty Director, STVP.

Lean 394

Lean Security Asia SBIR 394

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

Over the last half a century, Silicon Valley has grown into the leading technology and innovation cluster for the United States and the world. Venture capital used to be a tight club clustered around formal firms located in Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York. The story to date is a familiar one.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

As I was reading a history of the startup years of Fairchild Semiconductor , I realized that a problem I thought was new – sales as an obstacle to Pivots – had occurred 50 years ago at the dawn of what would become Silicon Valley. It was when engineering Pivoted again. What could go wrong? And this time sales revolted.

Silicon Valley 241

Silicon Valley Technical Review Spain Engineer 241

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Todd Branchflower took my Lean LaunchPad class having been entrepreneurial enough to convince the Air Force send him to Stanford to get his graduate engineering degree. True to his word, fast-forward three years and Todd is now Captain Todd Branchflower , teaching computer engineering at the Air Force Academy. ——-.

Lean 264

Lean Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 264

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Another way to learn more about who’s speaking is to sort the conference program by category and find people addressing specific topics. As the emeritus Chief Technology Officer of the United States, he still connects government and Silicon Valley. Now he’s VP of engineering at Dropbox , where he’s seeing similar growth.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

BMNT , a new Silicon Valley company, is combining the Lean Methods it learned in combat with the technology expertise and speed of startups. The OSRD developed advanced electronics: radar , electronic warfare , rockets , sonar , proximity fuse , Napalm , the Bazooka and new drugs such as penicillin and cures for malaria.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Kuwait 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.

Lean 250

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, science and engineering at both Stanford and U.C. Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. At the same time Berkeley was also developing Cold War weapons systems. As a Silicon Valley entrepreneur I had lived the lean approach, yet I had never seen it taught.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

Innovation outposts in Silicon Valley allow big companies to sense and respond to rapid changes in technology. The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

Second, doing customer discovery via video actually increased the number of interviews the students were able to do each week. The eight teams spoke to over 945 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, warfighters, legal, security, customers, etc. He runs H4X Labs.

Oakland 306

Oakland Asia Lean Video 306

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

I’ve spent the last week in Santiago, a guest of Professor Cristóbal García at the Catholic University of Chile as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program. Entrepreneurship and innovation in what I call “Chilecon Valley” is being talked about continually here. Teaching in Chile. Valaparaiso houses.

Chile 237

Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 237

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 3: Engineering a Regional Tech Cluster. Is it creating a job works program?

Engineer 309

Engineer Silicon Valley Oregon San Francisco 309

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2018

Is your organization full of Hackathons, Shark Tanks, Incubators and other innovation programs, but none have changed the trajectory of your company/agency? Over the last few years Pete Newell and I have helped build innovation programs inside large companies, across the U.S. Think of this as the innovator’s support group.)

Programming 322

Programming Incubator Leadership Silicon Valley 322

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. Every time I go to Silicon Valley I’m like, “Oh, this place is great.” Will : Absolutely.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Computer hardware companies were faced with their customers asking for low-cost (relatively) desktop computers they had no experience in building. Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.)

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

Two years out of the Air Force, serendipity (which would be my lifelong form of career planning) found me in Silicon Valley working for my first company: ESL. If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. The “customers’” contracts funded the company.

Silicon Valley 176

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 176

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Now with over 917 interviews of beneficiaries (users, program managers, stakeholders, etc.), Four decades ago my first job in Silicon Valley was with ESL, the first company to combine computers and signals intelligence. The founder of this 1964 Silicon Valley startup was Bill Perry. The Left side of the Canvas.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Hitting “burnout” changed the trajectory of both ends of my career in Silicon Valley. Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. I looked around the room thinking I’d see the faces of the engineers in the ESL M-4 vault, but these were different people.

Silicon Valley 181

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 181

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. This approach would shape Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial ethos: In startups, failure was treated as experience (until you ran out of money). Each team accepted into the program will receive $50,000.

Engineer 280

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 280

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley , was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. Why It’s “Silicon” Valley. ———-.

Engineer 307

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 307

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, February 22, 2009 Please teach kids programming, Mr. President Of course, what I really mean is: let them teach themselves. See Paul Grahams Why Nerds are Unpopular to learn more) Take a look at this article on a programming Q&A site: How old are you, and how old were you when you started coding?

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2023

This meant the class was team-based, Lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering) and experiential – where the students, rather than being presented with all of the essential information, must discover that information rapidly for themselves.

Lean 294

Lean Chile Ukraine Spain 294

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. What’s Different.

Silicon Valley 314

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 314

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

If you read only one previous post, read this one (or this one.) ————- The Birth of Entrepreneurship in The Hot Cold War Silicon Valley entrepreneurship was born in the middle of a secret war with the Soviet Union. While officially in the electrical engineering department, the lab reported directly to Terman.

Silicon Valley 157

Silicon Valley RSS Europe Germany 157

Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2009

Stanford’s Dean of Engineering, Fred Terman, encouraged scientists and engineers to set up companies to build these microwave tubes for the military. Funded by military contracts, these 1950′s microwave tube startups would help build Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial culture and environment.

Silicon Valley 158

Silicon Valley RSS SBIC California 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

This week, the startup tribe from Harvard Business School is making their annual trek to Silicon Valley. It’s a common refrain around Silicon Valley to disparage the role of MBA’s in entrepreneurship. They’ll hear from a variety of experts and get to see many startups firsthand. I also frequently see the reverse.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

Signs of Success One of the things you do right in a startup, is you move from one cheap and cramped building to another as you grow, with desks, cubicles and engineers piled cheek to jowl. Engineers were packed in cubicles or desks right on top of each other? Now every engineer can have their own office.

Silicon Valley 212

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 212

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Now we needed to put the tactical programs in place to make this repositioning strategy happen. Since no benchmarks existed, we enlisted our engineering department in a serious software development effort and wrote our own. Then we were going to buy our competitors’ boards (think “secret shopper”) and compare them to ours.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

If you believed the opinions in the marketing department, the customers were in science, engineering, color desktop publishing, and a variety of applications with no single industry or application dominating the list. Within these applications how did our customers spend their day? Was our compensation program good, great?

Silicon Valley 192

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 192

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

This is the second of three posts about the rise of “risk capital” and how it came to be associated with what became Silicon Valley. ———————– The First Valley IPO’s Silicon Valley first caught the eyes of east coast investors in the late 1950’s when the valleys first three IPO’s happened: Varian in 1956, Hewlett Packard in 1957, and Ampex in 1958.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley SBIC San Francisco RSS 126

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. We were looking for four students for the program, four developers in training, and we ended up getting 700 applicants in a week.

Cofounder 143

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 143

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Its easy to take Silicon Valley for granted. Ive written a little bit about the origins of Silicon Valley because I think its important for us to understand how we got here in order to make sure we preserve what is best about our community. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

In my last post I described my approach to one of the three classes I teach at Stanford in the engineering school: Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship. One part of Silicon Valley culture that doesn’t get enough credit is the generosity of entrepreneurs and VC’s who are willing to share their time with students.

Business Model 230

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 230

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. Entrepreneurship stretches from Main Street to Silicon Valley, from startups to big companies. Want to be a guest on the show?

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. We were looking for four students for the program, four developers in training, and we ended up getting 700 applicants in a week.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2013

Todd Branchflower was one of my Lean LaunchPad students entrepreneurial enough to convince the Air Force send him to Stanford to get his graduate engineering degree. Fast-forward three years and Todd is now Captain Todd Branchflower , teaching electrical engineering at the Air Force Academy. He promised that one day he would fix that.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Colorado Lean Connecticut 258