David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

I’ve been a traditional equity VC for 8 years, and I’m now researching new business models in venture capital. RBI normally requires founders to pay back their investors with a fixed percentage of revenue until they have finished providing the investor with a fixed return on capital, which they agree upon in advance.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.)

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ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 3, 2011

Finally, for those of you who need some additional infusion of courage, please study the story of Ryan Allis in North Carolina who bootstrapped his company iContact to $1 million in revenue and THEN raised venture capital to get to $40 million. In that case, the verticals of choice could be manufacturing, wholesale and retail.

North Carolina 116

North Carolina San Diego Entrepreneur Balance Sheet 116

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. They sold to a set of customers I knew nothing about.

Silicon Valley 161

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Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 8, 2019

Early on in the year we started out by refreshing the look and feel our influencer dashboards, launching a competitive referral program. Now we’re a bonafide and recognized medium-sized company that serves customers throughout our State and employs many arborists and serves so many homes and businesses. 5- Two things.

Entrepreneur 121

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abovethecrowd.com

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

In many cases, a deeper focus on a particular category or vertical allows these marketplaces to distinguish themselves from broader marketplaces like eBay. The company was founded in 2012 by Michiel Prins , Jobert Abma , Alex Rice and Merijn Terheggen , and today serves the needs of over 1,000 corporate bug bounty programs.

Internet 88

Internet Matching Vertical Hosting 88

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I Love Business Plan Competitions I had a breakfast with a friend who has founded a few companies in Thailand and started the New Ventures Program at one of their universities. I finally understood how valuable these contests can be for students in cities or countries without a venture capital or entrepreneurial infrastructure.

Business Plan 152

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Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2018

He’s a former Dell exec that worked on their startup team with Ingrid Vandervelt, a Capital Factory mentor, and the co-founder of DivInc, Austin’s pre-accelerator program for diverse founders, which is hosted at Capital Factory. SXSW Panel: Return on Inclusion: Investing in Diverse Startups Arlan ????

Technical Cofounder 48

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 48

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

This curriculum is based on the various questions entrepreneurs have asked me over these 64 sessions, spanning financing, positioning, customer acquisition, marketing, sales, channel, and various other early stage, startup-related issues. John already has a couple of customers, and needs about 50 customers to get to $1M in annual revenue.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Or offer some real insights into our customers? It wasn’t a lack of competence or skill in her job; it was just that as far as she was concerned, her job had no connection to the rest of marketing, our customers or our ultimate success as a company. “We Has anyone ever spoken to a customer?” An in-depth reseller survey?

Silicon Valley 206

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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. These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers.

Technology 142

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 31, 2021

There’s been an emergence of “pre-accelorator” or “people accelorator” programs—experiences that you can buy your way into with cash, as opposed to potentially valuable future equity, that replicate the education and network provided by the likes of YCombinator. I very much enjoyed them and found them to be intellectually stimulating.

Networking 214

Networking Programming Silicon Valley Founder 214

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 13, 2011

The venture capital industry is so heavily skewed to Northern California, which the remains spilled over Boston, New York & Southern California. So it was wonderful to hear from a leading venture capital firm based in Washington DC. A contemporary analog to this type of vertical integration is Comcast/NBC-U.

Cofounder 277

Cofounder Merger Founder Venture Capital 277

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Given the hardware I had worked on at ESL, learning microprocessors wasn’t that hard but figuring out how to teach hardware design and assembly language programming was a bit more challenging. So our people in the field could correct any egregious design advice I gave to customers who mattered. Life was good. Where Am I?

Silicon Valley 195

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 195

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 152

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abovethecrowd.com

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

oDesk enables companies to easily provision programming talent from all corners of the globe. Some customers now use it as a second car alternative. Many failed marketplaces attack purchasing cycles that are simply way too infrequent, which makes it much more difficult to build brand awareness and word-of-mouth customer growth.

Aggregator 101

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Now we needed to put the tactical programs in place to make this repositioning strategy happen. The “strategy” of learning who SuperMac’s customers were, what solutions they needed and what our repositioning would be was a three month effort. it was the speed of the applications that customers were using to get their work done.

Silicon Valley 126

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www.businessinsider.com

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

Enter you email address and zip code to set up customized email alerts. According to Graham, Google Ventures, a venture-capital firm backed by the tech giant, has systematically been offering to make seed investments in recent Y Combinator graduates, but only on substantially more favorable terms than other investors received.

Silicon Valley 54

Silicon Valley Startup Valuation Venture Capital 54

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. By 1961 its customers now included our intelligence agencies. There were no venture investors. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. The “customers” in Washington had never seen anything like it.

Silicon Valley 190

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 190

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

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. How was this possible?

Silicon Valley 199

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 199

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Customers will get to consume the content they want, and support the producers of that content directly, rather than having to rely exclusively on intermediaries. Now, helping potential customers discover new things they might like is the job of the discipline of marketing. There are just too many of them out there.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

We can’t bring customers to this rundown building. Paul Henderson , on May 15, 2009 at 10:37 pm Said: A boot-strapping startup I once worked with was actually doing some real customer development and making real money from real customers for their early, ugly product. Now every engineer can have their own office.

Silicon Valley 226

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Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

As an early employee I worked all hours of the day, never hesitated to jump on a “ red-eye ” plane to see a customer at the drop of a hat, and did what was necessary to make the company a winner. Great art and great programming are fostered within a community that shares an ethic of care for its members. The Adventure of a Lifetime.

Entrepreneur 290

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Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2009

This was about the time Christies and Sotheby’s were starting to auction Soviet space program artifacts , and I was thinking that perhaps a spacesuit in the lobby would be appropriate given our name. How did your skills in sales and marketing and your ability to discover and validate customers run aground at Rocket Science?

Silicon Valley 135

Silicon Valley San Francisco RSS Vertical 135

Reid Hoffman

MARCH 1, 2021

Founded in 2009 by JoeBen Bevert, Joby Aviation has been working under the radar at a base in Santa Cruz, California to develop an electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft. Our model here at RTP is to deliver “venture capital at scale.” Joby plans to start taking paying customers in 2024.

Merger 28

Merger Vertical Mobile Architecture 28

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2009

military missile program in the 1950′s (Atlas, Thor, etc.) I can’t get this one out of my head. ———— The VENONA Project One of the most interesting (declassified) stories of cryptography is the deciphering of Soviet communications to their diplomatic missions in the U.S during World War II.

Silicon Valley 141

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2009

ELINT Tasking The ELINT program sought answers to operational questions like: What was the Radar Order of Battle a penetrating bomber would face? Venture Capital, Microwaves and the OSS Dean Watkins the leader of TWT research at Stanford’s Electronic Laboratory, left Stanford in 1957 and co-founded Watkins-Johnson (with R.H.

Silicon Valley 169

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www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

If you are an entrepreneur seeking funding, try our free Funding Recommendation Engine to identify a list of angels, venture capital and state grant programs that best match your business. Not close enough to the customer. Look at how many idiots think they know stocks, or programming, or even business.

Software Review 79

Software Review Startup Technical Review Vesting 79

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

I am also a pilot, and computer engineer, and love to read stories about sigint and black aircraft programs. Every potential startup founder should think about their level of comfort operating in chaos and uncertainty. It may not be for you. Also, it would be nice to do something that helps this country (but not solely for that reason).

Silicon Valley 182

Silicon Valley Iraq RSS Vietnam 182

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

Reply Customer Development and Start-up Models « Market By Numbers - Brant Cooper , on March 26, 2009 at 3:06 am Said: [.] I’ll try to mix the topics up during the week. BTW, keep the comments coming, they’re read and appreciated.

Silicon Valley 120

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blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

But it will definitely raise questions during the phone screen, for reasons that are best explained by simile: Programming with.NET is like cooking in a McDonalds kitchen. My example: I have mainly programmed _by choice_ in Python, Ruby, Scala, Haskell, C# and currently I’m doing Java.

Java 107

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cdixon.org

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

But it’s probably wise to be more secretive in some vertical markets: [link]. and an investor, has a great blog on entrepreneurship and venture capital. I blogged about, commented about, and eventually bumped into a fellow web programming who loved the idea and ran with it (Tyler Gillies). link] Nivi.

Stealth 68

Stealth Startup NDA Cofounder 68

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2009

ESL sent me overseas to a secret site run by one of the company’s “customers.” And we were using thousands of chips in a configuration no rational commercial customer could imagine or afford. It was so secret the entire site was could have qualified as one of Dick Cheney’s “undisclosed locations.”

Silicon Valley 276

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

Terman proudly pointed out that only Stanford, MIT and Harvard had a military sponsored electronics program. The eventual goal of this program would have been to radar-map the Soviet Union. The crash program to produce the Lockheed U-2 aircraft was initiated when the balloon program was abandoned. By 1947 the U.S.

Silicon Valley 169

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Steve Blank

JULY 23, 2009

I had to decide what I wanted to do with my career – go back to ESL, try to work for the Customer, or stay at Zilog? Hundreds of thousands of people worked on developing strategic weapons, bombers, our ICBM and SLBM missile programs, and the Apollo moon program. These projects are incredibly seductive. Let me explain why.

Silicon Valley 121

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

Ampex’s first customer was Bing Crosby who wanted to record his radio programs for rebroadcast (and had exclusive distribution rights.) And for the first time, private companies like Continental Capital, Pitch Johnson & Bill Draper and Sutter Hill were formed to take advantage of the government largesse from the SBA.

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