Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Though they’re familiar with technology in the valley, I picked up some important cultural difference from students and startup engineers I talked to. The motivations are the same – profit – driven by entrepreneurs and venture finance. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

The Times Square Strategy discussion I had with Eric Ries , was still top of mind, so instead of my standard Customer Development lecture , I offered my thoughts on: the origin of Customer Development, where we are today, and where does Customer Development go, and how you can help get it there.

Customer Development 212

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 212

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

APRIL 10, 2013

China has embraced state capitalism in a way Wall Street can only dream about. Startups, Venture Capital and the Communist Party: how did this happen in China? viewed science and technology as a strategic asset. Building China’s Science and Technology infrastructure. During World War II, the U.S.

China 315

China Taiwan Silicon Valley Guam 315

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

You’ll learn more about what destroys startups, how to use the Customer Development method to succeed, how to use the Business Model Canvas, how to identify and keep your customers, and how to drive profits. Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy. B y Cindy Alvarez.

Startup 80

Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. You might as well bring your lucky rabbits foot to the VC meeting. Just as a refresher.

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

The previous post described the evolution of the Chinese Venture Capital system. Startups here are primarily in what they call the TMT (Technology, Media and Telecommunications) segment. It was the first of the 54 Science and Technology Industrial Parks. China Venture Capital. Entrepreneurship in Beijing.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 267

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. As a result, the standard product development model is not only useless, it is dangerous.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2013

China has embraced state capitalism in a way Wall Street can only dream about. Startups, Venture Capital and the Communist Party: how did this happen in China? viewed science and technology as a strategic asset. Building China’s Science and Technology infrastructure. During World War II, the U.S.

China 207

China Taiwan Silicon Valley Guam 207

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

Recently, the financing of innovation in medical devices has collapsed even further with most Class III devices simply unfundable. 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. Venture Capital.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

If you take funding from a venture capital firm or angel investor and want to build a large, enduring company (rather than sell it to the highest bidder), this isn’t the decade to do it. The collapse of the IPO market and dysfunctional math in the venture capital community has stacked the odds against you. Here’s why.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious. Good stuff too.

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

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.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

The previous post described the evolution of the Chinese Venture Capital system. Startups here are primarily in what they call the TMT (Technology, Media and Telecommunications) segment. It was the first of the 54 Science and Technology Industrial Parks. China Venture Capital. Entrepreneurship in Beijing.

Silicon Valley 159

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 159

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

Second, the leaders of these companies tended to be those who excelled at finance, supply chain or production. 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. Filed under: Corporate Innovation , Customer Development.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Each region had two of the finest research universities in the United States, Stanford and MIT, which were building on the technology breakthroughs of World War II and graduating a generation of engineers into a consumer and cold war economy that seemed limitless. government backed venture firms and limited partnerships.

Engineer 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

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. They grow their business via profits or traditional bank financing. The question was: what did the founders want to do? The Scalable Startup.

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

MBA or Domain Expert Years later when I was running marketing departments I came up with a heuristic that replicated my own hire: in a technology company it’s usually better to train a domain expert to become a marketer than to train an MBA to become a domain expert. or whatever is necessary to build a company. Thanks Steve!

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

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 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

Do they “get&# Customer Development ? Some VC’s invest solely on technology breakthroughs and assume they’ll find a market later.). They understand that now’s not the time to hire a senior VP of Sales to start to scale the sales force or to look for a finance department to create income statements that say zero each month.

Founder 231

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

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

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

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. 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. Finance, IT, Legal).

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

www.kernelmag.com

MARCH 8, 2012

New technology for enquiring minds. The Scene Developers Nailing that elusive technical co-founder. It’s long been observed that the barriers to creating a technology start-up have been falling over the past decade or so. He is cofounder and chief technology officer of GroupSpaces. The Kernel. Thursday, 8 March 2012.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Coder 43

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 278

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 278

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 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Instead you will be getting your hands dirty talking to customers, partners, competitors, as you encounter the chaos and uncertainty of how a startup actually works. What are the 9 parts of a business model?

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

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

MARCH 22, 2009

Steve my name is Donald xx, and I’m the head of external affairs of the CIA’s venture capital firm and we’d like you to keynote our conference.” And you’d like me to do my talk on Customer Development and startups?” “No, we’re the other CIA.” We witness similar behavior in corporate finance.

Silicon Valley 247

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Venture Capital 247

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

Ajay Kshatriya , co-founder and CEO of Biota Technology , which applies DNA sequencing technology to the energy industry. Before co-founding Biota Technology , he was an investor and entrepreneur-in-residence at Seed Capital , a investing in science-based innovation. There I learned about how to raise capital.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

Ajay Kshatriya , co-founder and CEO of Biota Technology , which applies DNA sequencing technology to the energy industry. Before co-founding Biota Technology , he was an investor and entrepreneur-in-residence at Seed Capital , a investing in science-based innovation. There I learned about how to raise capital.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

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. The long tail apps can easily be ported to or developed on Google App Engine in a third of the time and cost using OrangeScape as an application platform. Enter OrangeScape.

Entrepreneur 114

Entrepreneur India Silicon Valley Massachusetts 114

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 13, 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 117

Silicon Valley Balance Sheet Metrics Early Stage 117

www.instigatorblog.com

MARCH 2, 2010

The Importance of Advisory Boards for Startup CEOs Tweet When a startup receives financing it will need to setup a Board of Directors. What many first-time CEOs might not realize is that they may need to setup an Advisory Board as a condition of receiving financing. Mark Macleod spells it out beautifully in his post on Advisory Boards.

Advisory Board 40

Advisory Board Startup Cofounder Equity 40

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan kept the corporate staff small and focused on policymaking, corporate finance and planning. Durant Versus Sloan – Part 1 « Steve Blank steveblank.com/2009/10/01/durant-versus-sloan-part-1 – view page – cached + Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) + Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40?

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

August was a slow month in terms of traffic and I was away for a lot of the month, but there were some really great posts at the intersection of startups, technology, product and being a Startup CTO. Paul Graham kicked it off by noting that all the financings in the recent YC batch were converts. m the f%*kin’ boss.”. Final Thought.

Startup 191

Startup CTO Hire Cofounder Venture Capital 191

www.instigatorblog.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

The more that those first employees feel like founders in terms of their ownership, emotional attachment, responsibility and overall understanding of the startup process (including financing , running day-to-day activities, etc.) the better the startup will be. I do believe that early employees should trade salary for equity.

Equity 41

Equity Employee Startup Vesting 41