View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

I’d keep the dilution really low at that stage, and focus on very cheap customer development tactics or even a hybrid services model to test out your initial hypothesis without requiring meaningful outside funding. In any of these cases, there isn’t a standard path that all companies take.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. The combination of Venture Capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. The NSF will fund 100 science and engineering research projects every year. billion U.S.

Engineer 283

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 283

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. I began to gain an appreciation of how world-class venture capitalists develop pattern recognition for these common types of problems. Do you have thoughts on specifically how to restructure startups?

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Freemium models have their own scorekeeping.) What plan says that?

Customer Development 225

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 225

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. I remember thinking, “What a disappointment one of the smartest engineers I know and he is going to waste his time making games.” How could it go wrong? Little did I know.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

. … (Still) We had no idea the complexity that would be involved from sourcing the manufacturer and how long it would take once you found that manufacturer to be able to engineer the product… It’s very different when you’re engineering a product to make 100 of parts. …. Want to be a guest on the show?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And it was going to mention the two words that SuperMac marketing needed to live and breathe: revenue and profit. 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 267

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 267

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Who better to answer than the company's engineering lead. Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. The Proof Is In The Revenue. This post is an accusation. call to arms. What went wrong?

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention. In these markets it’s all about customer/market risk.

Vertical 154

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 154

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

One would think that designing a medical device would be a simple engineering problem, and startups would be emerging right and left. on medical device revenues, regardless of profitability delays or cash-flow breakeven. Venture Capital Issues. Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up.

Startup 299

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 299

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

I’ve seen a range of options for supporting entrepreneurs, which I can rank from least to most involvement in companies by investors: financier VCs, e.g., Correlation Ventures. portfolio operator VCs, e.g., Andreessen Horowitz, ff Venture Capital, First Round Capital, Google Ventures. mentor VCs, e.g., most VCs.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Now with customers and early revenue, it was out raising its first round of venture money. Lets take venture capital and grow this thing into a real business.”. Typically the size of their opportunity and company doesn’t lend itself to attracting venture capital. The Scalable Startup.

Hockey Stick 293

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 293

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

Intel under their last two CEOs delivered more revenue and profit than any ever before. For the first 75 years of the 20 th century, when capital for new ventures was scarce, the smartest engineering talent went to corporate R&D labs. Risk capital has provided financing for new ideas in the form of startups.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Unfortunately most startups learn this by going through the “Fire the first Sales VP&# drill: You start your company with a list of potential customers reading like a “who’s who&# of whatever vertical market you’re in (or the Fortune 1000 list.) Your board nods sagely at your target customer list.

Silicon Valley 137

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 137

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

I’ve introduced a new class at Stanford to teach engineers, scientists and other professionals how startups really get built. Jon Feiber of Mohr Davidow Ventures and Ann Miura-Ko of Floodgate are co-teaching the class with me (and Alexander Osterwalder is a guest lecturer.) Class 1 Jan 4 th Intro/Business Model/Customer Development.

Wiki 315

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 315

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

The quintessential California couple, they stood out in our crowd as the engineer (in his late 20′s, respected by his peers and the customer) had hair down to his shoulders, sharply contrasting with the military crewcuts of the customers and most of the other contractors. Mike Arrington is a capitalist.

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 201

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

They have many, many man-years of development and customer development in them. I want to go to this homepage and think me, as the founder of WP Engine, I want to go in here and think, ‘Oh my God, we need this,’ and then sign up. No, I’m a very happy customer actually. Jason: Yeah. Edwin: Right.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 1, 2011

Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. The combination of venture capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. The NSF will fund 100 science and engineering research projects every year. Until today.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Balance Sheet Lean 118

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 267

Steve Blank

MAY 16, 2016

In a company you know you’ve been successful when you generate revenue and profit. In those case revenue will become an additional metric. The OODA loops and the four steps of Customer Development and the Lean Methodology are rooted in the same “get of the building/get eyes out of your cockpit” and “speed and urgency” concepts.)

San Diego 145

San Diego Metrics Indonesia Silicon Valley 145

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 124

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

Now we were faced with the fact that even though we were gaining market share daily, there was nothing coming out of Engineering. Instead of eight boards, Engineering was going to be able to deliver one new graphics board. One of the reasons I had joined the company was seeing these boards as hope for the future. What could we do?

Silicon Valley 140

Silicon Valley Product RSS Engineer 140

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

And in comes the Google App Engine as Google's offering in this context. Well, it turns out that to port long tail productivity apps to Google's App Engine is a somewhat cumbersome job, and requires a lot of custom development. Building new apps is also not as simple. Enter OrangeScape.

Entrepreneur 114

Entrepreneur India Silicon Valley Massachusetts 114

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

But without sales there is no revenue, and without revenue there is no company. All the strategic thinking in the world won’t make up for a missed revenue plan. If sales revenue and profits are high enough, we could take the company public or sell it, and the stock would be worth more than the paper it was printed on.

Silicon Valley 129

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 129

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

The timing is perfect, there is more than a little overlap with Vivek Wadhwa’s guest post on venture capital earlier today. The best composition is probably one engineer whose passion lies in the pixels on the screen and another engineer whose passion is making bits fly really fast through servers. Sorry, folks.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2011

As it turned out, rather than run me out of town on a rail, the two venture capital firms that had lost $12 million in my failed startup actually asked me to work with them. In 1999… with the company’s revenue north of $100 million…I handed the keys to a new CEO and left.

Philadelphia 336

Philadelphia Miami Thailand Silicon Valley 336

Spencer Fry

APRIL 17, 2017

Having started and sold 3 successful bootstrapped businesses, and am now running 1 venture capital backed business ( Coach ), this is a topic I know a thing or two about. Days before the conference started, I was asked (and felt honored) to lead two workshops on bootstrapping vs. raising money. The quality bar has never been higher.

Bootstrapping 63

Bootstrapping Cap Table Liquidation Preference Cofounder 63

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. Seed-stage investors are learning the metrics of traction, and are getting better at identifying those companies that are really achieving validated learning about customers. What is the right revenue model?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113