Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

— Andy explained that, years ago, a PR person’s was to turn so-called influencers like journalists and analysts into advocates for your client. Positioning must be authentic, she stresses: Here’s the thing about great positioning or great PR: You have to be aligned with who you are. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Washington 285

Washington Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Cofounder 285

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2016

all with their engines running. And having us stand on the deck less than 50 feet away from these planes as they landed trapping the arrestor wires , and launched via a catapult was a testament to the Navy’s PR acumen. It’s clear that the public affairs office has a finely tuned PR machine.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley PR Offshore Engineer 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s engineered financial transactions, working with entrepreneurs to brand, hype and take public un profitable companies with grand promises of the future. Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. Thus began the 5-year dot-com bubble.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

My engineers say our website is old school, and we need to be on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, my VP of Sales says we’re wasting our marketing dollars not targeting the right people and my board keeps giving me their opinions of how we should describe our product and company. they’ll win.). Often, they themselves are the thought leaders.

Marketing 310

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 310

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

— Andy explained that, years ago, a PR person’s was to turn so-called influencers like journalists and analysts into advocates for your client. Positioning must be authentic, she stresses: Here’s the thing about great positioning or great PR: You have to be aligned with who you are. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Washington 120

Washington Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2010

I was getting feedback from customers, and I’d pass on every list of what customers wanted to engineering and tell them that’s the features our customers needed. There was no doubt my boss was a jerk, but unlike the other time I got my butt kicked , I didn’t immediately understand the point. I was a great marketer.

Customer Development 307

Customer Development Singapore Channel PR 307

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

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. Engineering focuses on building the product; it designs the product, specifies the first release and hires a staff to build the product. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. Some think that hiring a PR agency, starting the buzz and getting coverage in hot blogs or on the cover of magazines at launch are objectives. The plan calls for selling in volume the day Engineering is finished building the product.

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

The quintessential California couple, they stood out in our crowd as the engineer (in his late 20′s, respected by his peers and the customer) had hair down to his shoulders, sharply contrasting with the military crewcuts of the customers and most of the other contractors. Is this behavior an outlier or is it the norm in the PR industry?

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

It’s lazy thinking (and expensive engineering) to try to build for both at the same time. It has a growth engine. There are two viable growth engines for tech companies: Viral, or “inherently viral” growth: Customers either intentionally or unintentionally recruit new customers by using your product. Final Thoughts.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

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 153

Silicon Valley RSS Europe Germany 153

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

The Message Sitting around a conference room table brainstorming messages that might resonate with customers, or worse having a PR agency doing that for you, is a firing offense in a small company. If you think you are going to offend your customers or embarrass your engineering organization, get out of the marketing department.

Silicon Valley 178

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

Extra credit if you can explain the significance of both of these spots and why the HP PR machine won the rewrite of Valley history. Walk to downtown Palo Alto at lunchtime, and see the excited engineers ranting to one another on their way to lunch. Lockheed came to the valley in 1956 and grew from 0 to 20,000 engineers in four years.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley San Francisco San Jose Venture Capital 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 9, 2015

When any special custom engineering effort was required to match the over-the-top sales commitments (almost every deal), the engineers were treated as heroes as well. Each subsequent deal with a major computer customer was celebrated (deals were worth ten of millions of dollars) and our salespeople were feted as heroes.

Startup 120

Startup Silicon Valley Incubator Matching 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

If you believed the opinions in the marketing department, the customers were in science, engineering, color desktop publishing, and a variety of applications with no single industry or application dominating the list. The obvious one’s were who were they? What did they do that they needed an expensive color graphics card?

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 185

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. It had no PR agency. It shunned publicity.

Silicon Valley 270

Silicon Valley RSS California Washington 270

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

Every marketing communication hire couldn’t wait to produce the next great ad or PR program. And the same time we were also going to do all the other strategic stuff about pricing, positioning, promotion and customer discovery and validation to help engineering understand customer needs. But sales came first. (By

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 126