Version One Ventures

MAY 3, 2023

Many of the most talented entrepreneurs and engineers left India to study and then work in the US and Canada. With the right product or service for the Indian market and strong execution, an “India for India” start-up can see incredible growth. Venture Capital The VC scene is dominated by US and US-affiliated funds.

India 87

India LP Silicon Valley Vertical 87

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink. Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter?

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

At NextView Ventures we have written many pieces about venture capital — how to raise it, build your business, engage with investors, iterate your product, navigate expanding industries, etc. I’ve Been in Venture Capital for Two Months. VCs sure do love writing. ” (Rob Go).

Seed Stage 177

Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing Raising Venture Capital (VC) series. When people refer to a strategic investor they are usually talking about an investor that comes from the industry you serve as opposed to an independent venture capital investor. The reality is that their core business is not venture capital.

Strategic Investors 279

Strategic Investors Venture Capital Due Diligence Early Stage 279

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? Six Things Physical Product Development Taught Me About Experience Design | UX Magazine – crowdspring.co/X7NCjD. 1m69Rmd.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Media 94

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

Transformify

MARCH 14, 2020

Startup hubs like Berlin, London, New York, Los Angeles, Bangalore, Hong Kong and Singapore offered access to venture capital and vibrant start ecosystems thus attracting the brightest founders. Over the last decade, a new trend emerged as tech talent was scarce where it was needed the most.

Hiring 98

Hiring Bulgaria Italy Spain 98

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

Most startups view venture capital funding as a blessing from above — eager to take it as soon as they can get it. Tempted by large sums of money and the perceived validation that comes along with being funded, founders turn to venture capitalists to accelerate their company’s growth. Focus on Product Development First.

Early Stage 85

Early Stage Venture Capital Bootstrapping Pre-Money Valuation 85

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 13, 2020

To combat the lack of private venture funding in Canada, growth-stage businesses are leveraging public venture capital. Public venture capital has been vital in establishing Canada’s leadership in the resource space. On their part, tech companies are taking their fates into their own hands.

Canada 127

Canada Government Venture Capital Early Stage 127

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.) They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. Their engineers hated us.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

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. He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 6, 2014

This is a quote from Leander Kahney’s recently published book on Apple design chief Jony Ive: “In the world according to Steve Jobs, the ANPP would rapidly evolve into a well-defined process for bringing new products to market by laying out in extreme detail every stage of product development.

Product 84

Product Venture Capital Lean Finance 84

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Market Risk vs. Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. Here’s what the product development diagram looks like from a sales perspective.

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

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

Up and Running

JANUARY 30, 2014

My partner is a full-time developer and math teacher, and I’m an engineer. Marketing the site and creating a business behind the product proved much more challenging. To thrust our venture forward, gain business skills quickly, and increase our chances of raising capital, we searched for an accelerator program.

Incubator 105

Incubator New York City Venture Capital Startup 105

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Look for some “ skunk works &# project where the product developers are actively seeking alternatives to their own engineering organization. In Apple’s case Burrell Smith was designing a computer in a skunk works unbeknownst to the rest of Apple’s engineering.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Money to be used for hiring and additional product development. Current round: $20.0mm Series-B led by Andreesen Horowitz, with USV and O’Reilly AlphaTech Ventures. 2. -Palantir’s products are used for integrating, visualizing, and analyzing multiple large datasets. Tags: This Week in Venture Capital.

San Francisco 248

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. This post describes such a model.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

www.informationarbitrage.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

Selecting value-added angel investors and advisors can also help with the camaraderie issue, as they can provide advice and counsel during the solitary period of hard-core coding and product development. A full-time business partner is definitely not required at this point in the company's life.

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire Founder Cap Table Vesting 40

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2010

Lean, when used in the context of lean startup, refers to a process of building companies and products using lean manufacturing principles applied to innovation. That process involves rapid hypothesis testing, validated learning about customers , and a disciplined approach to product development.

Lean 167

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 167

This is going to be BIG.

OCTOBER 18, 2012

Top talent drives revenues, business development, great product development. Oh, you're going to hire 15 engineers with my $5mm? Yet, where a company can *really* differentiate itself is in its ability to identify and recruit top talent. sounds good.". %^%#@@!!

Hiring 111

Hiring PR Differentiation Acquisition 111

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

In times when venture capital is hard to get, investors extract high costs for failure (down-rounds, cram downs , new management teams, shut down the company.) Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.)

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Up and Running

JULY 24, 2015

Product development. If you need a little help with your product development and getting it on store shelves, you can check out Edison Nation. They can help with development and licensing, too. Paychex is a search engine for business loans. This site is a search engine for federal and state grants.

Entrepreneur 60

Entrepreneur Small Business Administration SBA Pennsylvania 60

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Execution by Vertical Market As the class progressed, students asked how the activities/functions of a startup; (Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Product Development, etc.) How does product development differ in communications hardware versus enterprise software, etc. would look in each of the verticals.

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Who better to answer than the company's engineering lead. Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. Ask a question and get an answer - that is, after all, what all Q&A sites offer.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2015

And take what it learns and regularly update the corporate engineering, strategy, VC groups and business unit heads, on technology and market shifts. In Stage 2, the corporation adds venture capital and/or mergers-and-acquisition teams to provide these functions. Stage 3: Productizing the Solution to Corporate Problems.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Incubator Acquisition Business Model 120

K9 Ventures

OCTOBER 10, 2017

You see, Dan knows more about venture than most people; and if Dan isn’t aware that “pre-seed is a thing,” then I haven’t done a good enough job of explaining to the world what I and K9 do! K9 Ventures is of course a Pre-Seed fund — that’s the reason for me to be standing on the Pre-Seed soap box. Engineering Capital.

Seed Stage 82

Seed Stage Finance Later Stage Equity 82

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. My blog has over 14000 subscribers, for example. Is that a lot? Is that good?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

Aligning the Startup Team Strategy with the Capitalization Strategy. The single most important factor to raising capital for any tech startup is the management team. This is true for early stage funding as well as venture capital funding. Typically, these hires fall into 2 buckets: product development and sales.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

I’ve seen a range of options for supporting entrepreneurs, which I can rank from least to most involvement in companies by investors: financier VCs, e.g., Correlation Ventures. portfolio operator VCs, e.g., Andreessen Horowitz, ff Venture Capital, First Round Capital, Google Ventures. mentor VCs, e.g., most VCs.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2013

government’s role in setting investment policy, venture capital has set the direction for what new industries attract capital. Office of Scientific Research and Development – Scientists Against Time. Nearly 10,000 scientists and engineers received draft deferments to work in these labs. In lieu of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 243

Silicon Valley Government Germany Japan 243

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

You have your general management meeting and in your general management meeting you talk about product development, about marketing and about finance. So again, none of this is me trying to say what you should do for product development, in fact, or what you should write in code in fact. Edwin: I know. Jason: Yeah.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP. This is the simplest version of your product minus the frills and frosting. It’s a particularly popular strategy in the world of product development and is used to quickly and quantitatively test a product or a product feature.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 22, 2023

He comes from a background in venture capital from inside and outside the Valley, as well as entrepreneurship work with startup efforts around the world. I second his list of top innovation challenges and strategies to capitalize on untapped global startup opportunities: Create new markets rather than disrupt existing ones.

Global 345

Global Silicon Valley Marketing Indonesia 345