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This Week in Venture Capital – Episode 2

Both Sides of the Table

I think the best solution for the social networking era is “in-stream&# advertising. I know you could argue that YouTube was much broader but it was really popularized in the social networks. In the former case many people scoffed at paying up for Google at IPO. But I made it for a reason. uh, hello!

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New Rules for the New Internet Bubble

Steve Blank

Dot.com Bubble ( 1995-2000): “ Anything goes” as public markets clamor for ideas, vague promises of future growth, and IPOs happen absent regard for history or profitability. With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit. The New Bubble : (2011 – 2014): Here we go again…. (If

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Lessons Learned: The lean startup

Startup Lessons Learned

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

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Zhongguancun in Beijing – China’s Silicon Valley (Part 4 of 5)

Steve Blank

China has essentially closed its internal search, media and social network software market to foreign companies who wouldn’t play with the government rules on the Great Firewall. The table below from web2asia.com shows the number of users of online social networks as of 2009. 70% of exits in China are via IPO (in the U.S.

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Pivot, don't jump to a new vision

Startup Lessons Learned

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. Ive spoken in some detail about a specific pivot that we went through at IMVU , when we decided to abandon the instant messaging add-on concept, and switch to a standalone instant messaging network.

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How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people

Startup Lessons Learned

But the early customers all compared it to MySpace. This was 2004, and we had never even heard of MySpace, let alone had any understanding of social networking. It required hearing customers say it over and over again for us to take a serious look, and eventually to realize that social networking was core to our business.

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Zhongguancun in Beijing – China’s Silicon Valley (Part 4 of 5)

Steve Blank

China has essentially closed its internal search, media and social network software market to foreign companies who wouldn’t play with the government rules on the Great Firewall. The table below from web2asia.com shows the number of users of online social networks as of 2009. 70% of exits in China are via IPO (in the U.S.