Steve Blank

My guests this past week on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were:

• Pete Newell, managing partner of BMNT Partners
• John Kuhn, who works at BMNT Partners
• Matt Weingart, program development manager in the Strategic Development Office at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
• Takashi Tsutsumi and Masato Iino, founders of Learning Entrepreneur’s Lab in Japan

Listen to the full interviews by downloading them from SoundCloud here, here, here and here. (And download any of the past shows here.)

The focus of our first segment is how Silicon Valley and the U.S. military can work together – for access to advanced technology and to learn how to move with agility, speed and urgency. Our guests Pete Newell, John Kuhn and Matt Weingart served for decades in the U.S. military and are now helping government agencies operate with the speed and urgency of Silicon Valley.

Pete Newell retired from the US Army in 2013 as the director of the Rapid Equipping Force (REF), responsible for rapidly understanding problems of soldiers in combat and rapidly providing solutions. Pete directed the investment of over $1.4B to these efforts over a three-year period. He was named by Defense News as one of the 100 most influential people in the defense industry in 2012. (Read the Stanford case study about the Rapid Equipping Force.) Pete is managing partner for BMNT Partners and serves on the Board of Directors for Solace Power and Savonix. He is a frequent contributor to Defense Innovation studies, is a member of the Center for a New American Security’s Beyond Offset Working Group and most recently supported a study on Defense Innovation for the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Listen to my entire chat with Pete

If you can’t hear the clip, click here

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Or, click on the links to hear Pete discuss:

If you can’t hear Pete discuss Meeting the Army Robotics Guy, click here

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If you can’t hear Pete discuss the Origin of the Army’s REF, click here

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If you can’t hear Pete discuss What BMNT Does, click here

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If you can’t hear Pete discuss Talk About the Problem Not the Technology, click here

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John Kuhn served 20 years in U.S. Army special operations before retiring from active duty service in 2014. During his military career he served in Bosnia, Afghanistan, Iraq, the Arabian peninsula, Egypt, and the Horn of Africa. John was awarded the Silver Star; six Bronze Stars, including one for valor; an Army Commendation Medal for valor; and two Purple Hearts. John recently co-founded P360, a business that produces animated training content for the military, and he works for BMNT Partners.

Listen to my entire chat with John

If you can’t hear the clip, click here

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Or, click the links below to hear John discuss

If you can’t hear John discuss Military Skills that Translate, click here

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If you can’t hear Hacking for Defense Explained, click here

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If you can’t hear John discuss his Business to Government class, click here

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If you can’t hear John discuss his Advice for Other Veterans, click here

Matt Weingart is a program development manager in the Strategic Development Office at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He connects the Lab with the defense user community.  His responsibilities include establishing the partnership frameworks between government, private sector, and academia needed to deliver end-use solutions to national security challenges (cybersecurity, undersea warfare, communications, etc.)

Listen to my entire chat with Matt

If you can’t hear the clip, click here

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Or, click on the links below to hear Matt discuss

If you can’t hear Matt discuss Defense Valley, click here

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If you can’t hear Matt discuss Self-Selecting Like an Entrepreneur, click here

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If you can’t hear Matt discuss The Nation is Upside Down, click here

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If you can’t hear Matt discuss Strategic Deterrence, click here

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If you can’t hear Matt discuss Grist for the Innovation Mill, click here

In this second segment, Takashi Tsutsumi and Masato Iino talk about how they brought the Lean Startup to Japan. Today they are helping large companies in Japan relearn how to innovate at speed.

Takashi Tsutsumi has been a venture capitalist 15 years incubating and investing in startups in Japan. Prior to that, he worked for an integrated trading company in which he built several new businesses by collaborating with high-tech startups in California.

Masato Iino has been entrepreneur of a couple of startups and an investor for the last twenty years. Prior to that, he worked for the Industrial Bank of Japan and General Electric specializing in deliberative trading, private equity investment, and post merger integration.

Takashi and Masato founded Learning Entrepreneur’s Lab (LEL) in 2014. This seed accelerator uses my Lean LaunchPad class to help incubate startups as well as create new business for enterprises in Japan. Learning Entrepreneur’s Lab is the leader in evangelizing Customer Development/Lean Startup in Japan, being active in lecturing and publishing books including Japanese translations of my books, The Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Startup Owner’s Manual.

Listen to my entire chat with Takashi and Masato

If you can’t hear the clip, click here

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Or, click on the links below to hear them discuss

If you can’t hear Tsutsumi and Masato discuss Going Lean In Japan, click here

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If you can’t hear Tsutsumi and Masato discuss Lean in Large Companies in Japan, click here

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If you can’t hear Tsutsumi and Masato discuss How Failure is Regarded in Japan, click here

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If you can’t hear Tsutsumi and Masato discuss What Doesn’t Translate for Startups in Japan, click here

Listen to all four full interviews by downloading them from SoundCloud here, here, here and here. (And download any of the past shows here.)

Filed under: SiriusXM Radio Show |