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

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 19, 2019

Andy Rachleff co-founded the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital in 1995. Andy and I will be having a fireside chat at this year’s Lean Startup Conference in October. And how has that affected venture capital? He’s currently the CEO of the company. You’ve been in Silicon Valley since the early days.

Silicon Valley 159

Silicon Valley Lean Venture Capital Pre-Money Valuation 159

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Step 1: Start with a lean plan. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods. Introducing Lean Planning: How to Plan Less and Grow Faster. How to Write a Traditional Business Plan.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. . Lean Case provides standard business models & metrics, so you can apply a standard approach to business planning, modeling, and profitability tracking. What’s Your VC Tech Stack?

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

GoTo.com went on to ink huge distribution deals with Microsoft, AOL & Yahoo! Secondly, they had an owned & operated (O&O) website – Google.com – and Overture had shut down GoTo.com at the request of their very profitable and large distribution partners. Immediately thereafter Amazon became a large business.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Venture Capital Cafe > Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). Lean Methodology Sources. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Part 3- Lean Cust. Steve Blank’s Lean Startup Resources. Lean Startup Circle â?? free, distributed source code control management system. About VC Cafe.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 26, 2013

Empower Your Small Business: trust & loyalty, marketing insight, lean business – [link]. If there’s one video 1st time founders should watch to understand VC financing it’s this one – [link]. “So many folks in the venture capital business are sheep that just want to follow the herd.

Social Media 90

Social Media Small Business Design Media 90

Eric Friedman

AUGUST 18, 2021

I lovingly call him the curmudgeon of fintech – in this episode we go deep into how he is building a venture capital firm and practice, not just running a fund and how he views the world of fintech investing. One of the ones that really bothers me is how Venture Capitalists try and conflate what they do as being complicated.

Silicon Valley 88

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Cofounder Africa 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2011

The Lean Startup Book is done. If you've been waiting for a comprehensive account of the Lean Startup and how it can help you achieve dramatically better business results, this is it. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Metrics Private Equity 167

Up and Running

MAY 3, 2012

Eric Ries , author of The Lean Start-up , puts it best: ‘ The grim reality is that most start-ups fail. Most new ventures do not live up to their potential. Sean Seton-Rogers of PROfounders Capital recently claimed that of the more than 3,500 business plans they had received, his London, U.K. Most products are not successful.

Entrepreneur 82

Entrepreneur Technical Review Silicon Valley Lean 82

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.) So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Finance | Tuesdays. Financing a Small Business. Financing A Small Business. Personal Finance. Dave Graham Business Venture Capital Private Equity GlobalLogic Inc. Venture Capital Firms. But Ive definitely had to lean on Dave. Were not a venture capital firm.". Franchises.

Arizona 40

Arizona Equity Iowa Venture Capital 40

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

AgileZen – project management visually see and interact with your work Kanbanery – Simple online team or personal kanban board LeanKit Kanban – Great for visualizing work of product development Kanban Pad – “Nice and lean” and free online Kanban tool Banana Scrum – A tool simple as Scrum itself.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

500hats.com

AUGUST 2, 2012

TL:DR : This post aims to recap significant changes in the venture capital industry over the past ten years, and then make some [biased] predictions as to major forces at play in the next five years. However, all three shifts are related and can be summed up simply as: Geeks are Taking Over Venture Capital.

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Capital Valuation 74

abovethecrowd.com

DECEMBER 18, 2017

In their marvelous book, Lean Solutions , James Womack and Daniel Jones unpack what it means to apply the discipline of lean manufacturing to service industries. Our venture capital firm, Benchmark, has made four investments consistent with the “customer-first” theme. That same shift is now coming to healthcare.

Customer 59

Customer Technical Review Venture Capital Software Review 59

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 29, 2020

Most importantly, the phrase “ bootstrapping a startup ” translates into “growing your business with little or no venture capital or outside investment. It is also important to realize that, statistically speaking, most startups become operational without any venture capital or external funding sources.

Bootstrapping 85

Bootstrapping Global Startup Hungary 85

Genuine VC

JANUARY 3, 2013

Look back to the reasons why there was a Cambrian explosion of seed funding in the first place – a dramatic reduction in the initial capital requirements to launch a new company because of cloud hosting infrastructure, social graph distribution platforms, open source and low-cost development tools/methods, etc.

Seed Stage 166

Seed Stage Venture Capital Audience New York 166

Up and Running

OCTOBER 21, 2014

Given the number of funding resources available today, you shouldn’t have too much of a problem getting that initial start-up cash, especially if you focus on a lean business model or MVP route to market. Week 2 – Getting financed. Angel investment/venture capital funds. Order and distribute leaflets.

Elevator Pitch 166

Elevator Pitch Software Review SBA Business Plan 166

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 6, 2012

For a number of years, my partner Jason Mendelson has been teaching an extremely popular course at CU Boulder Law School with Brad Bernthal titled Venture Capital – A 360 Degree Perspective. Reading: The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (Ries).

Venture Capital 133

Venture Capital Leadership Lean Community 133

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

And thanks to Ann Miura-Ko of Floodgate (my first Lean LaunchPad co-instructor) for her suggestions. Btw, the definition of each startup financing stage has changed in the last decade. Step 2: The Seed round – you raise $1-$3M (in some cases even $2-5M). Step 3: The Series A – you raise $5-$10M. Step 5: Series, C, D….

Cofounder 429

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

Austin Startup

JUNE 26, 2019

As a boot-strapped founder aka our biggest investor, one of the things I leaned into uncovering was the unknown. Lean into it. By the by, women donors, I recommend diversifying some of your capital distributions to reap that ROI to keep doing good… (+ this is a whole ‘nother blog post…) Undeterred. Step on the scale.

Silicon Valley 54

Silicon Valley Startup B2C Sweat Equity 54

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 25, 2013

The food movement is one of the reasons for the rapid growth of Plated , a ff Venture Capital portfolio company which makes it easy and fast to prepare home-cooked meals. Particularly in the finance and tech industry, many follow a paleo or Tim Ferriss diet. Many of us use them in the ff Venture Capital “ Fitness Office.”

Venture Capital 114

Venture Capital Portfolio Distribution Finance 114

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 26, 2012

In an interview with ReadWriteWeb, Davidson explains how the latest industry to receive the disruption treatment has been the venture capital business itself, with the epicenter of the quake right around San Francisco. When you keep it lean, everybody has better options, and a better outcome when all the dust settles.".

IPO 115

IPO Stock San Francisco Lean 115

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Waterfall, Agile, Lean? Seed and Follow-on Financing – How do your finance it? At a glance, you can see how startup capital needs differ by markets, how distribution channels and demand creation activities differ by market, and even how VC’s assess risk and reward by market. Regulatory Issues – What are they?

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

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.) The venture firm was funded by Laurance Rockefeller and Lazard Freres, but after some dispute lost to the sands of time, Rockefeller pulled his financing, and the firm was dissolved after the first fund.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley SBIC San Francisco RSS 125

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

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

You have heard, I am sure, that venture capitalists only invest in very large market opportunities - $500 million to $1 billion. So, please note the TAM Analysis is a vitally important aspect of building any financing strategy. Raymond is wondering why he cannot attract financing.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

You have heard, I am sure, that venture capitalists only invest in very large market opportunities - $500 million to $1 billion. So, please note the TAM Analysis is a vitally important aspect of building any financing strategy. Raymond is wondering why he cannot attract financing.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 3, 2019

It’s just a model of the share price of a company going up and to the right smoothly until it exits for $300mm, and the outcomes for the shares purchased in each round of financing. They hold their cash back until they have more data, and lean in as a company is outperforming. Seed round investors get a tidy 18.2x

Portfolio 110

Portfolio Burn Rate LP Distribution 110