Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

Instead the business press dumped on the founders for “selling out.” Many founders mentioned this as a reason not to incorporate or grow their companies in Finland. While the government says they love startups, the first thing they did this year is raise the capital gains tax. Note to Finland – lighten up.

Finland 324

Finland Naming Russia Government 324

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

student of our MS&E department at Stanford ,) where they are set on being a leader in developing the management science of entrepreneurship. This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Business Model Versus Business Plan.

Business Model 275

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 275

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

I just had lunch (at my favorite Greek restaurant in Palo Alto forgetting it looked like a VC meetup) with a friend who was technical founder of his company and is now its chairman. I reminded my friend that I’ve never been an engineering manager so any advice I could give him was just from someone who had seen the movie before.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

So we built our own tools to enable founders to rapidly translate their vision into hypotheses and then into validated facts. These formalized structures, necessary for managing execution/exploitation, actually strangle disruptive innovation before it can start. Recognizing the anomaly was just the first step.

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Management 101. ” A good number of startups in Beijing seem driven by the VCs – and not the founders. But the differences are worth noting – it’s a young ecosystem, so startup management tools are nearly non-existent. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Eric Ries , entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Lean Startup. Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Taking My Class.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Draw Your Ideas - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 16, 2010 I saw Jack Dorsey give this talk at The 99% Conference last month. But founders need to know how to ask for their advice and when to ignore it. But startups can shoot themselves in the foot when founders use consultants at the wrong time or in the wrong way.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

Greycroft is Alan’s venture capital firm that recently raised its second fund ($130 million) with offices in both New York and LA. We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc.

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PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

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. Wasn’t something fundamentally wrong with the way everyone organizes and manages startups? Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Management 101. ” A good number of startups in Beijing seem driven by the VCs – and not the founders. But the differences are worth noting – it’s a young ecosystem, so startup management tools are nearly non-existent. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

So if you’re the founder of a startup, you may want to consider who you take money from. Is Your VC Founder Friendly? Do they “get&# Customer Development ? How many of their founders are still with their company? How many of their founders are still with their company? Do They Get Customer Development?

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Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

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.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Now with over 917 interviews of beneficiaries (users, program managers, stakeholders, etc.), The founder of this 1964 Silicon Valley startup was Bill Perry. His work at ESL made him one of the 10 founders of National Reconnaissance. We just held our eighth and ninth weeks of the Hacking for Defense class. It’s a ton of work.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

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

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

The Founder’s New Insight Smart founders are never satisfied with simply executing their current business model, they are constantly observing, orienting and deciding whether their current business model can be made better. But the purpose of this post is what happens when a founder (or large company CEO) finds a better business model.

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

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. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Founders Pad.

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Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

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

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Years later he would become a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital.) He would go on to be a co-founder of two mechanical engineering software companies.) Your approach here makes much more sense, but I imagine requires more management effort overall and risks honest, unvarnished appraisals reaching sensitive ears.

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. The goal was commercial products, but as scientists and engineers the company’s founders realized that at times the cost of experimentation was failure. Scientists and Engineers as Founders.

Engineer 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

A first order filter is whether the founders are aiming for a scalable startup. In fact, Google’s offer for $15 Million was equal to the highest valuation from the venture firms. The question was: what did the founders want to do? Lets take venture capital and grow this thing into a real business.”. Go For Broke.

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

Ann who had been my Teaching Assistant while she had finished her PhD at Stanford felt the same frustration about teaching entrepreneurs to assemble a business plan that we knew in the real world wouldn’t survive first contact with customers. After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner.

Business Model 226

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

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

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. The process they use to guide their search is customer development. They would: Blog their Customer Development progress as a narrative. Founders operate in a chaotic regime. Victor Hugo.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Oh, and since it was not code compatible with anything, we were going to have to port all the key scientific applications our customers needed (as soon as we figured out who they were.) A few days later Gordon became a founder. We were going to be guessing.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

Our small training department had been without a manager for months and finding a replacement didn’t seem to be high on the VP of Sales list. Then it hit me – no one else wanted to be manager – what was the worst that could happen? I’ve built my company using the Customer Development Model from Day One.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

This is a 3-day program for entrepreneurship faculty from around the world how to teach entrepreneurship via the Lean LaunchPad approach ( business model canvas + customer development ) and bring their entrepreneurship curriculums into the 21st century. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

Silicon Valley 305

Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 305

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject. It was a management problem. We had been outsourcing an important part of our demand creation strategy – packaging – to an outside agency without having the expertise to judge or manage the results.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Rather than invent a new form of corporate governance, venture investors adopted the traditional board meeting structure from large corporations. From a founder’s point of view there are three reasons for board meetings. Here’s how.

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. Communism being a bad science experiment) ESL’s founder Bill Perry was moving the chess pieces. In 1964, Bill Perry, the head of the lab, frustrated with GTE’s management, quit (GTE, a phone company had bought Sylvania in 1959.)

Silicon Valley 171

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 171

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Rather than invent a new form of corporate governance, venture investors adopted the traditional board meeting structure from large corporations. From a founder’s point of view there are three reasons for board meetings. Here’s how.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. It’s our hood alignment station,” the plant manager said proudly. One day, I was at the Ford Wixom auto assembly plant training my replacement and I was at met at the door by an irate plant manager.

Founder 297

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 297

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

All we had to do was tell customers they could get video into their computer – and not promise anything else. But the rest of the management team really skeptical. When we saw our salespeople actually trying to steal the early boards to take home and show their kids, we knew we had a winner. Little did we know.

Video 164

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms. But I managed a few "good learning experiences" before throwing myself full-bore into IMVU. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science?

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

Our LivePlan customers are entrepreneurs, our founder and staff have run and sold companies, the Bplans readers are aspiring entrepreneurs (or actual entrepreneurs), and as I sell my own handmade jewelry, I like to think I have a very small claim to the title. At Palo Alto Software, I am surrounded by entrepreneurs. What to do next.

Curation 60

Curation Lean Software Review Finder 60

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2013

Jim Hornthal splits his time between venture capital, entrepreneurship and education. Today he is the co-founder and Chairman of Triporati, LaunchPad Central. My prior journeys were spearheaded by the founder of this school of teaching, Steve Blank. Align and train mentors to embrace customer development.

Lean 282

Lean Cofounder Dividend Business Model 282

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

Ajay Kshatriya , co-founder and CEO of Biota Technology , which applies DNA sequencing technology to the energy industry. Steven Cohn , founder and CEO of Validately , which helps user researchers, product managers and others validate demand or usability for prototypes and live sites. Ajay Kshatriya. Steven Cohn.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120