Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. That died with waterfall software development. I’m not even talking about your 12-page Powerpoint presentation that you need to raise venture capital or to talk with potential biz dev partners.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

The key was the realization that start-ups are not simply smaller versions of large companies, which execute/ exploit known business models, and whose customers, problems, and necessary product features are all “knowns.” In sharp contrast, start-ups operate in “search/ explore ” mode, seeking a repeatable and profitable business model.

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

He hired an operating exec as the CEO a few years ago. With a few more questions I learned that the code base, which had now grown large, still had vestiges of the original exploratory code written back in the early days when the company was in the discovery phase of Customer Development.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

And some of their best and brightest have ended up in the organizations like the 2nd Bureau, Unit 61398 tasked euphemistically for “Computer Network Operations.”. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

As a first time founder, having a few million dollars in the bank after a successful seed raise may seem like a huge amount of capital, and it’s easy to lose discipline around your burn rate. There are always exceptions, on both the positive and negative side, and many companies really shouldn’t be raising venture capital at all.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley Technical Review IPO Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Investors who provide hands-on help have little or no effect on the company’s operational performance. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. But the right mentors significantly influence a company’s performance and ability to raise money. Congratulations. ——-.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Understanding the left-side of the mission model canvas ( activities, resources , partners , and costs) forces all teams to ask, “Are we building a product for a DOD/IC customer only or do we have a “dual-use” product that could be sold commercially and get funded by venture capital?”. This post is a continuation of the series.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 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. The Yin and Yang of Product and Engineering - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 22, 2010 For a tech company, product and engineering are the heart and soul of the business.

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Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

David Teten

MARCH 28, 2012

Best Practices in Venture Capital Portfolio Company Value Creation. Lowering that failure rate would be highly impactful on venture capitalist returns, if we could figure out how to do it. Venture capitalists are financiers of a special nature. I’ve also posted this at Betabeat.).

Portfolio 144

Portfolio Private Equity Venture Capital Early Stage 144

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

And some of their best and brightest have ended up in the organizations like the 2nd Bureau, Unit 61398 tasked euphemistically for “Computer Network Operations.”. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 13, 2011

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." 9-to-5 Venture Capital. Yet Tekes does that and is trying to act like a government-run Venture Capital firm.

Finland 158

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 158

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. “Oh No one was actually quite that good, but some VCs had “golden guts” for these kinds of operating issues. 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 California 125

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

JULY 8, 2010

Are you are born with innate entrepreneurial talent or can you can be taught to operate like an entrepreneur? Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Jason Calacanis , founder of Mahalo.com, and Mark Suster of GRP Partners, have all weighed in on the nature side – you’re born being an entrepreneur or you’re not. Taking Sides.

Venture Capital 227

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Customer Development Partner 227

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. Bend needed its own venture firm.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Yet in our case the product, the machine as delivered from engineering, was a blank, featureless computer with just an operating system and compilers. In most other companies a product-marketing department was responsible for the pricing, positioning and promotion of the product.

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. Electron-based Venture Capital. Here’s why.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

and reorganized into operating divisions (by product, territory, brand, etc.) This strategy-to-structure shift from functional organizations to operating divisions was led by DuPont and popularized by General Motors and quickly followed by Standard Oil and Sears. Operating divisions execute the known business model.

Business Model 333

Business Model Customer Development United States Portfolio 333

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Customer Development is all about gathering a list of what features customers want by talking to them, surveying them, or running “focus groups.” Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. And it’s certainly not Customer Development.

Customer Development 278

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

While this signaled that investments in technology companies could be very lucrative, both Shockley and Fairchild could only be funded through corporate partners – there was no venture capital industry. government backed venture firms and limited partnerships. A wave of innovation was about to meet a pile of risk capital.

Engineer 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

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. But starting in the last quarter of that century and accelerating in this one, a new form of financing – risk capital (angel and venture capital) — emerged.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

David Teten

APRIL 8, 2013

My coauthors and I just published in the Journal of Private Equity the first-ever research study on best practices of venture capitalists in creating portfolio company value through operational support, exploring exactly these questions. Analytics and Data Contributed Articles Portfolio Operations Private Equity Venture Capital'

Private Equity 114

Private Equity Hungary IRR Venture Capital 114

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

It wasn’t until I found the extremely obscure Lanchester Strategy for market share that I realized that these ratios had their basis in operations research and the Lanchester’s Laws.) Our company’s graphics boards were designed to speed up a key part of the Macintosh graphics operating system called QuickDraw.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

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

MARCH 20, 2009

Reply bjorn , on March 23, 2009 at 5:18 pm Said: these stories really livened up the whole concept of “customer discovery&# for me. It reminded me of “earlier days&# , when I was just starting out in running business operations for startups. i have your book, but stopped at the 4th chapter.

Silicon Valley 134

Silicon Valley Customer RSS Philippines 134

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. The first reaction from my CEO was, “that’s why you’re running the department.” And yes, we could have built a top-down, command-and-control hierarchy. on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

But the team believed adding video as an integral part of an operating system and user experience (where there had only been text and still images) would be transformative. At the time no one (including Apple) knew exactly what consumers were going to do with multimedia, it was still pre-Internet. It was fun watching it happen.

Video 164

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

Scheduling time to look over a surgeon’s shoulder in an operating room is tough. It will have a simulated procedure space that can be configured as an Operating Room, Emergency Room, Intensive Care Unit and other clinical/procedural settings. Getting time to brainstorm with payers or experts in clinical trials is hard.

San Diego 261

San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 261

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 6, 2014

It detailed exactly what everyone was to do at every stage for every product, with instructions for every department ranging from hardware to software, and on to operations, finance, marketing, even the support teams that troubleshoot and repair the product after it goes to market.” Apple Startup general interest Venture Capital'

Product 84

Product Venture Capital Lean Customer Development 84

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Startups built every possible feature the founding team envisioned (using “Waterfall development,”) into a monolithic “release” of the product taking months or years to build a first product release. There was no repeatable methodology, startups and their VC’s still operated like startups were simply a smaller version of a large company.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. The Stanford records showed that his group received more funding than any other and I assumed it was for construction of these operational systems. If you’re an entrepreneur, ESL is the most important company you’ve never heard of.

Silicon Valley 171

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 171

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

All the radar operator would see was noise, rather than airplanes. Radar engineers had observed if you cut a strip of aluminum foil to 1/2 the wavelength of a radar transmitter and throw it in front of the radars antenna, the radar signal would reflect perfectly. making nothing but jammers to put on our bombers.

Silicon Valley 180

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 180

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Business schools teach aspiring executives a variety of courses around the execution of known business models, (accounting, organizational behavior, managerial skills, marketing, operations, etc.). We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Top management was trying to coordinate all of the operating details (sales, manufacturing, distribution and marketing,) across all the divisions and the company almost went bankrupt that year when poor planning led to excess inventory (with unsold cars piling up at dealers and the company running out of cash.)

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

Every potential startup founder should think about their level of comfort operating in chaos and uncertainty. It may not be for you.

Silicon Valley 170

Silicon Valley Iraq RSS Vietnam 170

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. Do you know the archetype of their customers? Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

Silicon Valley 181

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 181