Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

The first post described how China built a science and technology infrastructure to support advanced weapons systems development. The previous post described how the Torch program built China’s innovation clusters. This post is about the rise of Chinese venture capital and how it helped build the countries entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Venture Capital 272

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 272

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

The first post described how China built a science and technology infrastructure to support advanced weapons systems development. The previous post described how the Torch program built China’s innovation clusters. This post is about the rise of Chinese venture capital and how it helped build the countries entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Venture Capital 164

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 164

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. The country needs to figure out a long term privatization strategy for Venture investing. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital.

Finland 327

Finland Naming Russia Government 327

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks , turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. In July I got a call from Errol Arkilic , a program manager at the National Science Foundation (NSF), the $6.8-billion And since the rest of the slides were about Customer Development, I taught those.

Incubator 303

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 303

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. Berkeley Boalt Law School and runs their entrepreneurship program. They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. Tesla is not. It's a great talk. You Can’t Sign This Deal.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

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? The majority of the science and technology programs are driven by MOST (Ministry of Science and Technology ) and NSFC (National Natural Science Foundation).

China 317

China Taiwan Silicon Valley Guam 317

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Now with over 917 interviews of beneficiaries (users, program managers, stakeholders, etc.), Each week the teams marched through another box of the canvas, testing their hypotheses in front of beneficiaries using the customer development methodology, all while building and updating their minimal viable product.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

They were one of the first companies to sell an external disk drive for the original Mac; they had the first “color paint programs” for the Mac; and when the Mac was just black and white they had the first color graphics boards and large screen color monitors for the Mac. The first step was to recruit a new management team.

Silicon Valley 150

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 150

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. Will : Yes, and that was my first brutal intro into the difficulties of raising venture capital where I lived. .

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Columbus Ohio Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

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 314

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 314

Steve Blank

MARCH 5, 2015

Starting this Monday, March 9 th 4-6pm Pacific Time I’ll be on the radio hosting the Bay Area Ventures program on Sirius XM radio Channel 111 – the Wharton Business Radio Channel. Over this program I’ll be talking to entrepreneurs, financial experts and academic leaders in the tech and biotech industries.

Channel 120

Channel Venture Capital Lean Business Model 120

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? The majority of the science and technology programs are driven by MOST (Ministry of Science and Technology ) and NSFC (National Natural Science Foundation).

China 209

China Taiwan Silicon Valley Guam 209

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

Venture Capital Issues. Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up. The amount of capital being invested in new device companies is at an 11 year low. Venture Capital. The National Institute of Health (NIH) is also setting up translational centers through its NCATS program.

Startup 296

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 296

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

The previous post described the evolution of the Chinese Venture Capital system. If there ever was any question about the value of China’s Torch Program walk around Zhongguancun. China Venture Capital. If it’s driven by profit then the ecosystem needs both entrepreneurs as well as Venture Finance.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 269

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. Alex had been recruited back by his Alma Matter to create an entrepreneurship program. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

Silicon Valley 307

Silicon Valley Lean Utah IPO 307

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 14, 2013

Amsterdam-based startup accelerator Rockstart last year launched a program to find and support ten teams of startup founders in Europe. It recently announced the results of its incubator program – and the results look promising.

Silicon Valley 186

Silicon Valley Europe Venture Capital Cofounder 186

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2011

I spent a few days in March in Ann Arbor Michigan as a guest of Professor Thomas Zurbuchen , Associate Dean for Entrepreneurial Programs, and Doug Neal , Director of Center for Entrepreneurship in the Engineering School at the University of Michigan. Venture Capital ; met with the local hardware/software venture capital firm.

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Michigan Silicon Valley Venture Capital Incubator 309

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

No trade-up program? No tools to transition your customers data to the new and improved but incompatible product(s)? Congratulations, you’ve just fired your existing customer base. No discount for existing users?

Customer 201

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 201

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 230

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 230

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. The NSF has announced the Innovation Corps – a program to take the most promising research projects in American university laboratories and turn them into startups. What Took You So Long.

Engineer 280

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 280

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

All branches of the military (the Air Force and Army would fund the program as well) wanted Stanford to build prototypes of electronic intelligence and electronic warfare systems that could be put into production by partners in industry. Stanford had a Customer Development loop going on inside their own lab.

Silicon Valley 144

Silicon Valley RSS California Government 144

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

– The Torch Program. In size, scale and commercial results China’s Torch Program from MOST (the Ministry of Science and Technology) is the most successful entrepreneurial program in the world. government’s SBIR and STTR programs. Most Venture Capitalists in China viewed the Innofund the same way most U.S.

Technical Review 280

Technical Review Programming SBIR China 280

Steve Blank

MAY 12, 2015

Here’s Edmund’s description of the I-Corps Lite program. SBIR/STTR Program and Startup Seed Funding. The Small Business Innovative Research ( SBIR ) and Small Business Technology Transfer ( STTR ) programs are startup seed funds created by Congress to encourage U.S. startups that don’t fit whatever’s hot in venture capital.

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SBIR Maryland Lean Seed Stage 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

It also made me understand what kind of support sales people needed from marketing and what marketing programs were wasted motion. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

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 307

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 307

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

The previous post described the evolution of the Chinese Venture Capital system. If there ever was any question about the value of China’s Torch Program walk around Zhongguancun. China Venture Capital. If it’s driven by profit then the ecosystem needs both entrepreneurs as well as Venture Finance.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 161

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. Weekly blog of the customer development narrative.

Silicon Valley 284

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 284

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. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). Learning is better than optimization (the local ma.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2014

This leads to two key points: Point 1: You have to fight – and win- on two fronts (both outside and inside), in order to succeed in corporate venturing. One memorable example of this was Xerox’s internal venture capital fund, Xerox Technology Ventures (XTV). As Steve would say, this is a big idea.

Startup 328

Startup Business Model Lean Russia 328

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

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Now we needed to put the tactical programs in place to make this repositioning strategy happen. We had thought really hard about “ market type ” and decided to reposition the company from a technology provider to a solutions provider. Getting B-52s through the Soviet Air Defense System Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential?

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

– The Torch Program. In size, scale and commercial results China’s Torch Program from MOST (the Ministry of Science and Technology) is the most successful entrepreneurial program in the world. government’s SBIR and STTR programs. Most Venture Capitalists in China viewed the Innofund the same way most U.S.

Technical Review 172

Technical Review Programming SBIR China 172

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 6, 2014

This is a quote from Leander Kahney’s recently published book on Apple design chief Jony Ive: “In the world according to Steve Jobs, the ANPP would rapidly evolve into a well-defined process for bringing new products to market by laying out in extreme detail every stage of product development.

Product 84

Product Venture Capital Lean Finance 84

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering.

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe RSS 185

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2013

Jim Hornthal splits his time between venture capital, entrepreneurship and education. Our teams were from Berkeley/Columbia EMBA, the Haas/Berkeley Engineering graduate student ranks, and as a co-teacher at Stanford for the National Science Foundation I-Corps program. Align and train mentors to embrace customer development.

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Lean Cofounder Dividend Business Model 284