Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Building an Advisory Board In my travels outside the building I kept my eyes out for articulate and visionary scientists and engineers who had expertise we lacked, and were willing to help in an advisory capacity. I chose to hire engineers from within each of our target markets and set up “Steve’s one month MBA course for engineers.”

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

The techniques invented in what has become the Lean Startup movement are now more than ever applicable to reinventing the modern corporation. Large companies like GE, Intuit, Merck, Panasonic, and Qualcomm are leading the charge to adopt the lean approach to drive corporate innovation. Go read it. Then go do it.

Technical Review 219

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 219

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2015

Just before the holidays I had coffee with Anne, an ex MBA student running a fairly large product group at a search engine company, now out trying to raise money for her own startup. I was in New York last week teaching my annual 5-day version of the Lean LaunchPad class at the Columbia Business School.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley New York City New York Venture Capital 120

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

I interviewed Eric for an hour for - This Week in Venture Capital. Timecodes: 00:00 Welcome, our guest is Eric Ries, founder of the Lean Startup Movement. 01:17 Background, before the Lean Startup. 22:53 Eric’s book: The Lean Startup. 26:44 Too much capital is not good. 46:50 Engines of Growth.

Silicon Valley 301

Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

Up and Running

AUGUST 30, 2021

Angel investors, venture capital firms, accelerators, and (maybe) the newer equity crowdfunding will look to see if you have previous experience in startups. Go lean with your planning. A startup is about execution and speed, so you need to start lean. You could also find people with complementary skills you might lack.

Entrepreneur 132

Entrepreneur Lean Colorado Engineer 132

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 19, 2013

According to a Gompers and Lerner study, the challenge is very real, with 90% of new ventures that don't attract investors failing within the first three years. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people. Joint venture with distributor or beneficiary.

Intellectual Property 309

Intellectual Property Technical Review Venture Capital Startup 309

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 30, 2019

Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people. Joint venture with distributor or beneficiary. Software apps that once required a 10-person team can now be done with the Lean Development methodology by two people in a couple of months.

Intellectual Property 219

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 219

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

He also nails the reason why venture capital is still necessary to grow large businesses quickly in a world where the costs of running startups have fallen dramatically. After all, growth equals high valuations and loads of venture capital! It’s ok to raise venture capital and try to build a monster business.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 15, 2022

Over time, this revenue reduces the dependency on outside venture capital sources. For example, Lean Startup offers many benefits to emerging organizations, especially considering its focus on crafting a minimum viable product (MVP). Today’s Talented Engineers & Designers Need Top-Shelf Tools of the Trade.

Incubator 188

Incubator Startup Software Developers Software Development 188

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

They launched an incubator for the top scientists and engineers in the U.S. 63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks , turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. government agency that supports research in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. billion U.S.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 14, 2014

According to a Gompers and Lerner study, the challenge is very real, with a majority of new ventures that don''t attract investors failing within the first three years. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people. Joint venture with distributor or beneficiary.

Entrepreneur 283

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 283

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than early projections and product development. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people.

Intellectual Property 134

Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 134

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

The idea of exploitation versus exploration was central in my own work in building the lean methodology for start-ups. Today, lean is the de facto method for building new start-ups. However, relatively few have successfully scaled new internal ventures to enable them to stay ahead of disruption. Companies that survive do both.

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. The last couple of years has also seen the huge initial success of Ycombinator, the Lean Startup and many other product driven approaches to going to market. This information isn’t hard to find.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Up and Running

MAY 28, 2015

We recently had Tim Berry, Palo Alto Software founder and business planning expert, present our Bplans audience with his latest advice on lean business planning. Start your lean business plan today: Download our Free Lean Plan Template one-page-pitch-download.pdf. I’m going to start with what’s a lean business plan.

Lean 60

Lean Business Plan Video Software Review 60

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2017

Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people. Joint venture with distributor or beneficiary. Software apps that once required a 10-person team can now be done with the Lean Development methodology by two people in a couple of months.

Product Development 177

Product Development Cost Developer Product 177

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. The combination of Venture Capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. The NSF will fund 100 science and engineering research projects every year. billion U.S.

Engineer 278

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 278

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley , was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. It might be its most important. ———-. Cold War Spin Outs.

Engineer 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2015

According to a classic Gompers and Lerner study, the challenge is very real, with a majority of new ventures that don't attract investors failing within the first three years. Exchanging your services for services is possible with legal counsel, accountants, engineers, and even sales people.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 120

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Some very early dollars may be required to assemble the early team, in which case I’d lean towards bringing on some angels who are willing to invest in a company at a very favorable price. There are always exceptions, on both the positive and negative side, and many companies really shouldn’t be raising venture capital at all.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 22, 2018

He also shared that, initially, he was leaning toward building an experience management solution in-house, and that it was only at the insistence of the firm’s CMO that he relented and engaged our firm. For the past four years Ryan has been a senior associate with late-stage venture capital firm Next Level Ventures.

Iowa 113

Iowa Investment Bankers Cloud Software Review 113

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

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 8, 2023

Search engine optimization, paid search, social media channels, online stores, and even pop-up spots are examples of practical omnichannel usage. In my experience, I follow different resources, for instance, the Andreessen Horowitz blog , one of the top venture capital funds reporting trends in their newsletters, and INC.5000

eCommerce 185

eCommerce Technical Review Software Review Analytics 185

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Dino and I kept in touch as he moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Since I wasn’t an engineer, my contribution was around the team-building and fund raising. 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.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. Looking forward for your future posts.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 11, 2014

Guest post by Sarah Milstein , CEO of Lean Startup Productions The 2013 Lean Startup Conference was a hit on several levels, with many people telling us it was the most valuable business conference they’d ever attended. Quick Consulting , an evening event on March 27 in San Francisco. Quick Consulting. Apply here to be considered.)

Lean 166

Lean San Francisco Startup Distribution 166

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Yet startup companies have traditionally used this model to manage and pace not only engineering but also non-engineering activities. The flaw in this thinking is that “first customer ship&# is simply the date when engineering thinks they “finished” the 1.0 Product Development Diagram 1. release of the product.

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

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 I began to gain an appreciation of how world-class venture capitalists develop pattern recognition for these common types of problems. My mother kept asking if they were going to make me pay the money back.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 22, 2011

When you’re building a startup and can’t hire the engineers you need, can’t retain staff, can’t get press coverage and can’t hire sales people – it certainly affects you. It’s what I love about entrepreneurship and about venture capital. If you are interested the Vimeo is here.

Saudi Arabia 309

Saudi Arabia Valuation IPO Technical Review 309

crowdSPRING Blog

SEPTEMBER 19, 2014

The Myth of Venture Capital | Re/code by Jon Oringer – crowdspring.co/1tNFeV7. Bad Notes on Venture Capital – crowdspring.co/1u3NJvn. Hiring startup engineers? Busting the Lean-Startup Myth – crowdspring.co/1ozOXHA. 8 Excellent Reasons to Redesign Your Website – [link] crowdspring.co/1xDca5k.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Media 94

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2011

I spent a few days in March in Ann Arbor Michigan as a guest of Professor Thomas Zurbuchen , Associate Dean for Entrepreneurial Programs, and Doug Neal , Director of Center for Entrepreneurship in the Engineering School at the University of Michigan. Venture Capital ; met with the local hardware/software venture capital firm.

Michigan 307

Michigan Silicon Valley Venture Capital Incubator 307

VC Cafe

MAY 23, 2023

More and more, established companies are leaning into generative AI by either adding generative AI features to their existing suite of tools or partnering with AI companies (mostly OpenAI or the open source HuggingFace) to launch entirely new products. There’s an interesting thing happening in the generative AI world.

Generative AI 165

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence ChatGPT API 165

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend. Our vision was that just as the PC was revolutionizing the business market, we were going to do the same for scientists and engineers.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 18, 2010 Four myths about the Lean Startup Myth: Lean means cheap. Lean startups try to spend as little money as possible. Truth: The Lean Startup method is not about cost, it is about speed. Myth: The Lean Startup methodology is only for Web 2.0/internet/consumer

Lean 167

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

In my last post I described my approach to one of the three classes I teach at Stanford in the engineering school: Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship. After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner. ——————-.

Business Model 226

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 28, 2014

But the biggest thing to know is this: Companies who are scaling quickly in revenue and with a high gross margin often should invest as much capital in growth as they can manage responsibly because when you find a product / market fit and your company is growing at a very fast scale you want to capture market share before competition sets in.

Burn Rate 383

Burn Rate Balance Sheet .Net Valuation 383