Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

When you first start your company and raise initial venture capital your board probably consists of 1-3 founders and 1-2 VCs. Brett was formerly SVP of the Marketing Cloud at Salesforce with an enormous organization of sales, marketing, implementation, sales engineers, etc. In the Early Days.

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Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

VC Cafe

MAY 23, 2023

As I mentioned in my post on the LLM Benchmarking , venture capital investment in AI startups was down 43% in Q1 2023. The company is shutting down its consumer product in early June. In the future, there will be less platform dependency (as not all startups will be built on 1-2 APIs only in the application layer).

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ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 3, 2011

Finally, for those of you who need some additional infusion of courage, please study the story of Ryan Allis in North Carolina who bootstrapped his company iContact to $1 million in revenue and THEN raised venture capital to get to $40 million. In that case, the verticals of choice could be manufacturing, wholesale and retail.

North Carolina 116

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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

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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.

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Simulation to Reduce Invention Risk If you’re in a vertical where “invention risk” is dominant, then you want to do everything you can to manage and reduce those risks. When I wrote the Four Steps to the Epiphany , the Customer Development text, I hadn’t yet thought about what vertical markets it might be appropriate for.)

Vertical 128

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 128

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. I was an idiot.

Silicon Valley 179

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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

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VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

They are accustomed to more frictionless buying, easier payments, smarter recommendation engines, sharper display (product images, 3D, HD), short fulfillment time, and excellent customer service. That marketing, however, is dependent on capital, and that capital means Venture Capital.

eCommerce 94

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Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

One of the things he mentioned was that when it came to decision-making he still tended to think and act like an engineer. Since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any engineering, customer or competitor problem, and you shouldn’t agonize over trying to find one. The same is true in your company.

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Ben's Blog

MARCH 1, 2011

In my career, I have never seen a position in any industry with more varying criteria than General Partner at a venture capital firm. When we started Andreessen Horowitz, our vision was to build the kind of venture capital firm that we would have wanted to take money from. One night on my knees, here it comes, the prayer.

Partner 78

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ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

In fact, in the discussion on JuJu brands is yet another validation of the verticalization and niche-ization of the Internet. This week, I published an article called The Top 10 Vertical and Social Web Trends where I have discussed this at length. Photo by yirsh. Discuss.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

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.) Their engineers hated us. Engineers as Salesmen I thought (and still do) that this sales guy walked on water.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

What a pleasure that I got to spend an hour talking with both Om Malik (whom I’ve always respected his views) and Paul Jozefak , a venture capital partner at Neuhaus Partners in Germany (and formerly the head of Europe for SAP Ventures). Real-time search engine. first vertical to launch by 2010 Holiday Season.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

Brendan McManus said: “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [link] #startup #advice [.] Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch « Steve Blank (tags: presentations presuation vc startup) [.] Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [.]

Venture Capital 209

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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 164

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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 release of the product.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 14, 2021

We’re aiming to bring that boost in productivity and cost-efficiency both to CPA firms and other professional services firms in other verticals (i.e. legal), as well as directly to consumers in their every-day lives. Professional services – accounting, white-shoe law, and more – just aren’t playing at that level yet.

CPA 138

CPA Founder Vertical Cofounder 138

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Unfortunately most startups learn this by going through the “Fire the first Sales VP&# drill: You start your company with a list of potential customers reading like a “who’s who&# of whatever vertical market you’re in (or the Fortune 1000 list.) Your board nods sagely at your target customer list.

Silicon Valley 131

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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.

Silicon Valley 171

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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 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

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.

Silicon Valley 180

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 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 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

And I understood engineering since I interacted with them almost daily. And finally, I had a great working relationship with our engineers who designed the chips. I found that having a senior marketer responsible for business strategy surrounded by ex-engineers and domain experts makes one heck of a powerful marketing department.

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Some students who were getting their engineering graduate degrees wrote masters and PhD thesis that were classified. Four years later Ayer and another Granger engineer would leave Granger and found one of the preeminent electronic warfare and ELINT companies: Applied Technologies. The future of the valley was clear – microwaves.

Silicon Valley 142

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thebarefootvc

JUNE 6, 2013

Over the years I have looked at recommendation engines, wearable technology (in this case, fabric that detected heart activity), biosensors, home monitoring, video analysis and natural language processing algorithms. Entrepreneurship Mobile Startups Technology Venture Capital interpretative intelligence Social Entrepreneurship technology'

Venture Capital 88

Venture Capital Mobile Vertical Algorithm 88

David Teten

JANUARY 21, 2021

V: Should you raise venture capital from a traditional equity VC or a Revenue-Based Investing VC? GCVF is pioneering the future of venture capital and high growth startups for all small communities. II: Who are the major Revenue-Based Investing VCs? IV: Should your new VC fund use Revenue-Based Investing?

Equity 78

Equity Revenue Cofounder Colorado 78

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. The plan calls for selling in volume the day Engineering is finished building the product. While the product is being engineered, Marketing begins to create web sites, corporate presentations and sales materials.

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

www.informationarbitrage.com

FEBRUARY 24, 2010

And if this business partnership doesn't work out, the CTO / Founder, the engine of value for the company, is stuck in a bad, bad place. And if this business partnership doesn't work out, the CTO / Founder, the engine of value for the company, is stuck in a bad, bad place.

CTO Hire 40

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David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. . Fund/SPV management services specifically are provided by Assure Services and Proteus Capital. ff Venture Capital hired two full-time engineers to build out Totem.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

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

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

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Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

I am also a pilot, and computer engineer, and love to read stories about sigint and black aircraft programs. Besides it being harder to get funding, it seems like this would be a good time to get cheap labor, rent, and product. Also, it would be nice to do something that helps this country (but not solely for that reason).

Silicon Valley 170

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. The problem is that there are no other metrics they can look at to judge the content of a book to know if it’s worth reviewing. August 24, 2009 2:17 PM Norbert Mocsnik said.

San Francisco 113

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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. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

VC Cafe

JANUARY 29, 2024

It’s easy to find bad news about venture capital these days. In other words, the venture capital bust has only just started. 2023 was a rough year for Venture Capital and for startups, and it might get even worse. Global venture funding fell 42% year over years to $248.8

Generative AI 171

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

We decided to work with our engineering department to create the Potreo benchmarks because we really wanted to see how our boards performed with the four applications customers told us that they used; Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator and PageMaker. These were applications we had never seen or ran before when the boards were designed.

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