Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

However, there’s a growing belief that the “design preferences” of Chinese consumers are just bad design. TenCents WeChat , (designed for an international market) is the first incredibly popular app in China to dramatically raise the bar for what a good user interface and user experience looks and feels like.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

The company had designed and built their product and assumed it was going to sell well based on their initial early orders. Filed under: Customer Development , Venture Capital. Tags: Customer Development Venture Capital. There was no deep corporate understanding about customers or their needs.

Burn Rate 248

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 248

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2009

The assets you can protect may include your “core technology&# like source code, hardware designs, architectures, processes, formulas. Just about anything can be patented : circuits, hardware, software, applied algorithms, formulas, designs, user interfaces, applications, systems. Posted in Technology, Venture Capital.

Intellectual Property 213

Intellectual Property IP Software Review Non-disclosure Agreement 213

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

Engineering designs made back then with the aim of figuring out the product were not the right designs for the company’s current task of expanding to new platforms. Filed under: Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. Making the wrong choice can crater your company.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

However, there’s a growing belief that the “design preferences” of Chinese consumers are just bad design. TenCents WeChat , (designed for an international market) is the first incredibly popular app in China to dramatically raise the bar for what a good user interface and user experience looks and feels like.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

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

JANUARY 27, 2011

Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.) Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Teaching , Venture Capital. Therefore the very foundations of teaching entrepreneurship should start with how to search for a business model.

Business Model 275

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 275

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

These tools—Customer Development, Agile Engineering, and Business Model design—became the lean start-up methodology , a rigorous approach to testing hypotheses and building prototypes, and, on the basis of data and evidence, adjusting or pivoting to a variant of the original hypothesis.

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

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. Not all new ventures are at the same stage of maturity. Silicon Valley – a Corporate Innovation Candy Store.

Acquisition 332

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 332

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

The plan describes the execution strategy for addressing these “knowns.&# In the early days of venture capital, investors and entrepreneurs were familiar with the format of business plans from large company and adopted it for startups. Without much thought it has been used ever since.

Business Plan 312

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 312

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

First, we brought all 21 teams to Stanford for 3-days of 10 hour-a-day classes in business model design and customer development. We recruited two veteran Venture Capital partners to be part of the 10-week teaching team: Jon Feiber , at Mohr Davidow and John Burke of True Ventures. The class syllabus is here.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

Brendan McManus said: “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [link] #startup #advice [.] Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch « Steve Blank (tags: presentations presuation vc startup) [.] Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [.]

Venture Capital 209

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Now with a new infusion of $8 million dollars of venture capital, SuperMac had been resurrected from the dead and was attempting to restart. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Yet two smart VC firms, Sigma and Matrix Partners, realized that somewhere in this mess there was value. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 146

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. (My Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Named one of BusinessWeek’s Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech, Eric served as a venture advisor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers before moving on to advise startups and venture capital firms independently. At the same time, the jerky manufacturer they had designed their first flavors with decided to make their own jerky.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

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

MAY 13, 2015

Mar Hershenson co-founder of the VC firm Pejman Mar Ventures. All three of my guests started their careers as scientists or engineers and ended up starting companies or venture capital firms. Kathryn Gould is the co-founder of the VC firm, Foundation Capital and the owner of Battle Mountain Vineyard.

Channel 120

Channel Silicon Valley Cofounder Venture Capital 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

Before moving to Bend last year, my career took me from engineering development roles at defense contractors in the 80’s to product management and executive marketing roles in companies like Qualcomm in the 90’s, to the world of venture capital at several firms including Bay Partners, Formative Ventures and Vulcan Ventures.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

As the venture capital business has come roaring back in the last 5 years, startups are awash in available capital. These will enable firms to embrace innovation by design not by exception. Perhaps that’s because where established companies might see risks or threats, startups see opportunity.

Private Equity 325

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

Steve Blank

JULY 19, 2011

When we were trying to raise money for E.piphany, my last startup, I was negotiating with a venture capital firm called Infinity Capital. I had sat on a board of an Electronic Design Automation company with this VC, and we had gotten to know each other. Filed under: E.piphany , Venture Capital.

Post-Money Valuation 250

Post-Money Valuation Venture Capital Valuation IPO 250

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. Filed under: Lean LaunchPad , Teaching , Venture Capital. It provides private funds for untested and unproven technology and entrepreneurs. And it will lead to more startups and job creation.

Engineer 278

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 278

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. I was an idiot. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

One would think that designing a medical device would be a simple engineering problem, and startups would be emerging right and left. 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.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

Filed under: Customer Development Manifesto , Investment Readiness Level , Venture Capital. Customer Development Manifesto Investment Readiness Level Venture Capital' This means the IRL is also a Prescriptive tool. The Investment Readiness Level enables better mentoring.

Sacramento 306

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 306

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

The key things I want students to take from the class are: Understand that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a profitable business model. After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner. Learn how to put together a business model , not a business plan.

Business Model 226

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.) He had spent 12 years at DEC , first as a hardware engineer designing part of the PDP-16 , then as the marketing manager for the LSI-11 and then into sales.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

We hired a PhD in computational fluid dynamics from Duke who had worked on helicopter design. Years later he would become a venture capitalist at Sequoia Capital.) Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. At the time this was a pretty controversial decision. These hires were definitely not your standard marketing types.

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

The design was actually a negative drag on selling anything off a retail shelf. From grumbling skeptics, they all became packaging design converts. And for sure they were never going to win any design awards. So we not only sent everyone through packaging school, we also brought the packaging design in-house.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

ARM, a competitor, not only had a better, much lower power processor, but a better business model – they licensed their architecture to other companies that designed their own products. 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.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

MAY 12, 2015

The SBIR/STTR program made ~6,200 seed stage investments in 2014, dwarfing the seed investments made by venture capital. startups that don’t fit whatever’s hot in venture capital. The SBIR/STTR program represents a critical source of seed funding for U.S. In fact, half of all seed stages in tech companies in the U.S.

SBIR 120

SBIR Maryland Lean Seed Stage 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

assess intellectual property and regulatory risk before they design and build. Incubators are designed for teams with an idea. It will have a fabrication space where device startups can build minimum viable products and iterate on their designs while in the facility. identify financing vehicles before you need them.

San Diego 261

San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 261

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Customer Development Manifesto , Market Types « “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch Closure » 21 Responses Tweets that mention Times Square Strategy Session – Web Startups and Customer Development « Steve Blank -- Topsy.com , on November 16, 2009 at 7:20 am Said: [.]

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

In the past, when venture-funded startups told their investors they’d found a profitable business model, the first thing VC’s would do is to start looking for an “operating exec” – usually an MBA who would act as the designated “adult” and take over the transition from Search to Build.

Startup 120

Startup Lean Venture Capital Advisory Board 120

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Blog at WordPress.com.

Customer Development 124

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 124

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

We talked about some simple design rules and I remember him thanking me for coming, saying we were the only chip company who cared enough to call on him (little did he know.) Long gone from Zilog I saw the picture of the original Macintosh design team. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

In less than a month they designed a low-cost video-capture board that plugged into the Mac and allowed you to connect a video camera and VCR. He showed me a little Korean hard drive portable music player, not much more than the Compaq reference design it was based off of. Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer.

Video 164

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

the “schedule fantasy factor,”) or his eleven rules of supercomputer design but also a real appreciation for how a technical visionary thinks. (I Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. I would learn a ton from Gordon for over a decade, not only about practical heuristics for managing complex engineering projects (i.e.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125