Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

This post is about the rise of Chinese venture capital and how it helped build the countries entrepreneurial ecosystem. The Rise of Chinese Venture Capital. This helped the startups qualify for funding from banks and venture capital firms. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 271

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

As there was no venture capital, these early startups were funded by early sales to weapon systems prime contractors and subcontractors. Within a decade, the rise of venture capital in Silicon Valley enabled startups to find commercial customers rather than military ones.

Government 308

Government Artificial Inteligence Silicon Valley North Korea 308

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. There was nothing suggesting that startups and new ventures needed their own tools and techniques, different from those written about in HBR or taught in business schools.

Technical Review 327

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 327

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers?

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

Startup Accelerators: Startup Sauna and Vigo which includes Lifeline Ventures , KoppiCatch , and Veturi. Venture Capital: FVCA , NextIt Ventures , Primus Ventures , Open Ocean Capital , Connor VC , and Inventure. 9-to-5 Venture Capital. Startup Blog: Arctic Startup.

Finland 324

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 324

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

None of that can compare with being the CEO of a startup facing a rapidly diminishing bank account, your best engineer quitting, working until 10pm and rushing to the airport and catching a redeye for a “ Hail Mary ” close of a customer, with your board demanding you do it faster. venture/operating partners to get them into new industries.

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Early Stage Technical Review Startup 332

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

This post is about the rise of Chinese venture capital and how it helped build the countries entrepreneurial ecosystem. The Rise of Chinese Venture Capital. This helped the startups qualify for funding from banks and venture capital firms. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

Venture Capital 163

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 163

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

The first hint lies in its name; this is a product development model, not a marketing model, not a sales hiring model, not a customer acquisition model, not even a financing model (and we’ll also find that in most cases it’s even a poor model to use to develop a product.) Where Are the Customers? Product Development Diagram 1.

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

Finally, I’ll write about how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. Three to six months after first customer ship, if Sales starts missing its numbers, the board gets concerned.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. There was nothing suggesting that startups and new ventures needed their own tools and techniques, different from those written about in HBR or taught in business schools.

Technical Review 219

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 219

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

I think customer feedback comes in a very unstructured manner, hence it is difficult to apply an algorithm on it. to make sense of the unstructured feedback received from customers. luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building. Order Here.

Customer Development 124

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 124

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. Let’s Fire Our Customers Part of the DNA of great entrepreneurs is a bias towards decisive and immediate action. Get it done, now.

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

APRIL 26, 2022

Except, that is, for the bottom feeders of the Venture Capital business – investors who “ cram down ” their companies. Venture capital, like most private equity, is an unregulated financial asset class – anything goes. ” On one hand they’re right.

Cram Down 404

Cram Down Founder Venture Capital Recapitalization 404

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

The Customer Development process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model , reducing customer and market risk. The first step of Customer Development is called Customer Discovery. outside the building and test them in front of customers. At least that’s the theory.

Burn Rate 248

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 248

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2015

We had 130 students in 30 teams who got out of the classroom and did 2154 customer interviews in 5 days – a remarkable effort for 120 hours. This raises an interesting question: is the credibility of female entrepreneurs in the eyes of New York VC’s something about the venture firms, or is it about the industries they are funding?

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley New York City New York Venture Capital 120

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 IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

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. Finnish culture makes risk-taking and sharing hard.

Finland 324

Finland Naming Russia Government 324

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Customer/Market Risk Versus Invention Risk One day I was having lunch with a VC sharing what I learned from my students. Our firm has a portfolio of companies across a broad range of markets and the way we look at it is pretty simple – the deals fall into two types: those with customer/market risk and those with invention risk.”

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

The benefits of customer and agile development and minimum features set are continuous customer feedback, rapid iteration and little wasted code. But over time if developers aren’t careful, code written to find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' They are the signs of a leadership frightened not by external enemies but by their own people. It usually doesn’t end well.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. The traditional business plan is an essential organizing and planning document to launch new products in existing companies with known customers and markets. The 47th (-46) Annual Business Model Competition.

Business Model 275

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 275

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

Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

Founders can now access the largest pool of risk capital that ever existed –in the form of Private Equity (Angel Investors, family offices , Venture Capitalists (VC’s) and Hedge Funds.). At its core Venture Capital is nothing more than a small portion of the Private Equity financial asset class. Talk to them.

Liquidity Event 120

Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

We found 4 different major groups of startups that all have very different behavior regarding customer acquisition, time, product, market and team. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. Congratulations. Download the full Startup Genome report here. ——-.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Our first question was, did the total number of customers that had already bought products from our competitors and us represent a saturated market or the tip of the iceberg? Since I was heading a marketing department, not acting as an individual contributor, I needed to teach all of marketing the importance of customer data.

Silicon Valley 134

Silicon Valley Customer RSS Philippines 134

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2013

Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Customer Development Manifesto , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching , Venture Capital.

Lean 330

Lean Venture Capital Customer Development Startup 330

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2009

You can protect business processes, know how, customer information, product road map. customer lists, formula. _. Startups acquiring their first customers may give special licensing terms in key markets, territories, etc. Posted in Technology, Venture Capital. Tags: Technology Venture Capital.

Intellectual Property 213

Intellectual Property IP Software Review Non-disclosure Agreement 213

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

In response, venture capital firms like Sequoia and Andreessen/Horowitz are hiring new partners just to work with their portfolio companies and match them to corporations. A business model is all the parts of a strategy necessary to deliver a product to a customer and make money from it.

Acquisition 332

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 332

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.” The idea of exploitation versus exploration was central in my own work in building the lean methodology for start-ups.

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

A business plan is the execution document that large companies write when planning product-line extensions where customer, market and product features are known. Most startups are facing unknown customer needs, an unknown product feature set and is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

Business Plan 312

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 312

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' They are the signs of a leadership frightened not by external enemies but by their own people. It usually doesn’t end well.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

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. We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. And since the rest of the slides were about Customer Development, I taught those.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

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

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2013

To indicate where their customers for this new market would come from they drew the 5 adjacent market segments : corporate, higher education, startup ecosystem, institutions, and adult learning skills that they believed their future customers were in today. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital.

Venture Capital 335

Venture Capital Customer Development Business Model Lean 335

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 17, 2012

Filed under: Customer Development , Venture Capital. I often get asked, “how do I get a meeting with a VC?” ” Here is my slightly tongue-in-cheek view.

Venture Capital 328

Venture Capital Customer Development Developer Customer 328

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. Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2013

Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Customer Development Manifesto , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching , Venture Capital.

Lean 222

Lean Venture Capital Customer Development Startup 222