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.

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North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 129

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. would look in each of the verticals. Product Development – How do you engineer it? Others you need to know when you execute the plan.

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Marketing is Heard From Engineering was discussing how sophisticated the graphics portion of our computer should be, debating cost and time-to-market tradeoffs of arcane details such as double-buffering, 24 versus 32-bits of color, alpha channels, etc. The conversation that day would become one of my professional watermarks. However the U.S.

Silicon Valley 282

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 282

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

When I learned that Cray users would be giving papers at the Society of Petroleum Engineering conference in Denver the next day, I got on a plane to listen and learn. Follow the Leader At the conference I attended a bunch of technical sessions, and got lost when the speaker got past, “My name is xxx.”

Silicon Valley 163

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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.) release of the product.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 243

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

A month or two before the QuickTime public announcement in May, the SuperMac hardware engineers (who had a great relationship with the QuickTime team at Apple) started a “ skunk works ” project. So SuperMac engineering also developed video compression software, called Cinepak. The software was idiot proof.

Video 180

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 180

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Since no benchmarks existed, we enlisted our engineering department in a serious software development effort and wrote our own. We listed the editors, writers, what they had previously had written, deadlines, what the competitive products were, how our benchmarks stacked up, what “upgrades” our boards needed from engineering to win, etc.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 126

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

The Army offered Fred Terman, the Dean of Engineering at Stanford, a $5M contract to build an electronics countermeasures lab. HP had an ethical culture, entrepreneurial spirit, and deep Stanford engineering department connections. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. Seven years later in 1971 ESL went public.

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Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 190

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. Luckily while I was teaching classes at headquarters, Zilog’s field application engineers (the technical engineers working alongside our salesmen) would work side-by-side with our large customers as they designed their systems with our chips.

Silicon Valley 195

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 195

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires. And our Director of Technical Marketing was superb at understanding customer needs and communicating them to engineering.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 268

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering. No kidding. Play spooky music here.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

If you’re a startup raising money or just want to see your name online, there’s not a better blog on the web. Reading this TechCrunch post made me remember the first time I saw someone confront a worldview they didn’t expect. Discovering that your worldview is wrong or mistaken can be a life-changing event.

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steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Home Books for Startups Guide Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Tools Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Email Subscription Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Categories Air Force (12) Ardent (10) Audubon (1) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (39) Business Model versus Business Plan (..)

Software Review 110

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

A large number of these customers had mailed back their registration cards (this was pre-Internet) with their names, phone numbers, job titles, etc. All with names, addresses, phone numbers, job titles; all wonderful data longing for human contact. This was a company that had sold 15,000 graphics boards and monitors to consumers.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 206

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 4, 2021

In June of 2019, I got a cold e-mail with a single link: “My name is Braeden Kelekona and I’m the founder of Kelekona, a drone service for passengers and cargo. As a vertical take off and landing vehicle (VTOL) whose engines turn, you need little more than a helipad or an empty lot. Below is a link to the pitch video.

Silicon Valley 97

Silicon Valley Oklahoma New York City New York 97

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

If you are an entrepreneur seeking funding, try our free Funding Recommendation Engine to identify a list of angels, venture capital and state grant programs that best match your business. Best of luck in your venture. If you’ve read this far, you definitely should : Try out our Funding Recommendation Engine.

Software Review 79

Software Review Startup Technical Review Vesting 79

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2011

I first met the founder of Pose, Dustin Rosen , when he was a junior person with an LA-based venture capital firm called The Mail Room Fund. ones were enhanced because they coincided with hardware that allowed us to capture more content instantly – namely images and video – otherwide Web 2.0 Pose is no different.

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Term Sheet Mobile Cofounder Early Stage 303

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

Frederick Terman, Stanford’s Dean of Engineering, enlisted Stanford University as a major arms suppliers in this war. Stanford as a Center of Microwave and Electronics In 1946 after running the military’s secret 800 person Electronic Warfare Lab at Harvard, Fred Terman returned to Stanford as the dean of the engineering schoo l.

Silicon Valley 169

Silicon Valley RSS Europe Germany 169

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

Now we were faced with the fact that even though we were gaining market share daily, there was nothing coming out of Engineering. Instead of eight boards, Engineering was going to be able to deliver one new graphics board. One of the reasons I had joined the company was seeing these boards as hope for the future. What could we do?

Silicon Valley 143

Silicon Valley Product RSS Engineer 143

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

The startup develops its first positioning statement and uses this to explain the company and its benefits to venture capitalists. Combined with product costs, an engineering budget, and schedules, this results in a spreadsheet that faintly resembles the first financial plan in the company’s business plan. Ortho kills.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 268

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2009

Before leaving California, the engineers gave me a course in this specialized receiver design. We were combining Stanford Engineering theory with ESL design engineers and implementing it with chips so new we were debugging the silicon as we were debugging the entire system. Taking concepts that had been only abstract Ph.D

Silicon Valley 276

Silicon Valley RSS California Washington 276

Steve Blank

JULY 23, 2009

They were national efforts of hundreds of companies employing 10’s or 100’s of thousands of engineers. There was a ton of engineering innovation and coordination along the way, and the project could have failed at any point. How delightful it would be to have a presidential candidate named Frost. Very few of us do.

Silicon Valley 121

Silicon Valley RSS California Chad 121

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If you think you are going to offend your customers or embarrass your engineering organization, get out of the marketing department. Visually, demo’s, wild colors, etc. IBM doesn’t have to shout to get noticed, but you do.

Silicon Valley 199

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 199

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

As its name should communicate, the Customer Development model focuses on developing customers for the product or service your startup is building. These steps mesh seamlessly and support a startup’s ongoing product development activities. Each step results in specific deliverables.

Customer Development 252

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 252

Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

I’m sure its customers wonder, “Why is an organic grocer named RydeOn?”. This pivot fundamentally changes your required organizational competencies, from Sales and Marketing to Engineering, Operations, and Support. The company was named FieldLink at that point; very few people know that name was ever part of PayPal.

Startup 36

Startup Silicon Valley Business Model Mobile 36

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

Mental Pandiculation » Why I Don’t Hang Out With People Named David. Name one widely acclaimed or groundbreaking technology or technique to come out of the.NET realm in the past 5 years? Now name one that didn’t come from Microsoft? It’s like arguing against vertical software. How about ABAPer?

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