Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers? And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” They’re putting money into web services/business – most without early revenue. End of theory.&#

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2011

Napkin Entrepreneurs. They’re a great way to brainstorm outside the building, getting real customer feedback as you think through your ideas about value proposition/customer/demand creation/revenue model. You’re just a “napkin entrepreneur.&#. What’s holding us back? Lessons Learned.

Entrepreneur 267

Entrepreneur Web Demand Customer Development 267

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

He turned to the other VC’s and added, “That’s why we write the checks and entrepreneurs run the company.”. Unlike the stories in the popular press, entrepreneurs who build successful companies don’t get it right the first time. The Search for the Business Model. Pivoting the Business Model.

Business Model 332

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 332

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

By then, I had become a venture capitalist at Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance and found myself talking to a lot of entrepreneurs who were proclaiming their great technology yet were struggling with little revenue, and claiming they were “crossing the chasm”. Maysee now enjoys hockey stick revenue growth.

Japan 292

Japan Customer Development Developer Customer 292

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. There’s lots of lore, emotion, and misconceptions of what VC’s do or don’t do for entrepreneurs. While there was an occasional bad apple, the public markets rewarded companies with revenue growth and sustainable profits.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

If the Microsoft board was managing for quarter to quarter or even year to year revenue growth, Ballmer was as good as it gets as a CEO. They remain entrepreneurs. Apple under Cook has doubled its revenues to $200 billion while doubling profit and tripling the amount of cash it has in the bank (now a quarter of trillion dollars).

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

If the Microsoft board was managing for quarter to quarter or even year to year revenue growth, Ballmer was as good as it gets as a CEO. They remain entrepreneurs. . Apple under Cook has doubled its revenues to $200 billion while doubling profit and tripling the amount of cash it has in the bank (now a quarter of trillion dollars).

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2013

To get some perspective on this question, I recently talked with Steve Blank , a serial entrepreneur, co-author of The Start-Up Owner’s Manual, and father of the “lean start-up” movement. So why doesn’t innovation thrive in mature organizations?

Business Model 332

Business Model Technical Review Business Plan Search 332

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

In a startup cluster (Silicon Valley, Beijing, Tel Aviv) a failed entrepreneur is known as “experienced.” Some of the speed differences are because commercial companies and academics face Darwinian competitive pressures for revenue or recognition. In a government agency, they’re likely known as being out of a job.

Government 308

Government Artificial Inteligence Silicon Valley North Korea 308

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

The entrepreneur who founded and grew the largest startup in the world to $10 billion in revenue and got fired is someone you have probably never heard of. Who was the entrepreneur who founded what would become General Motors 16 years earlier, in 1904? A version of this article appeared in the Harvard Business Review.

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

Steve Blank

MARCH 12, 2014

. — Teaching students to think like entrepreneurs not accountants. We realized that past K-12 Entrepreneurial classes taught students “the lemonade stand” version of how to start a company: 1) come up with an idea, 2) execute the idea, 3) do the accounting (revenue, costs, etc.).

Lean 334

Lean Customer Development Startup Silicon Valley 334

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2020

Revenue models and forecasts are no longer valid. While there’s agreement that companies need to adapt to changing markets, rapidly find new markets, new customers and new revenue models, the question is how ? Accounts receivables are stretching way out. What tools and methods can a C-suite team use to do so? Here’s how.

Customer 436

Customer Marketing Customer Development Lean 436

Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

For the first few years, your VCs want you to keep your head down, build the product, find product/market fit and ship to get to some inflection point (revenue, users, etc.). For example, in your industry do companies build value the old fashion way by generating revenue? If so, how is the revenue measured? FDA approvals?

Liquidity Event 120

Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2013

To get some perspective on this question, I recently talked with Steve Blank , a serial entrepreneur, co-author of The Start-Up Owner’s Manual, and father of the “lean start-up” movement. So why doesn’t innovation thrive in mature organizations?

Business Model 224

Business Model Business Plan Technical Review Search 224

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

The Golden Age for Entrepreneurs and VC’s. The two decades from 1979 when pension funds fueled the expansion of venture capital to 2000 when the dot-com bubble burst were the Golden Age for entrepreneurs and venture capital firms. Until 1995 startups going public typically had a track record of revenue and profits. Here’s why.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

Steve Blank

AUGUST 21, 2013

And we recruited a team of world class Venture Capitalists and entrepreneurs to teach and mentor the class including Alan May , Karl Handelsman , Abhas Gupta , and Todd Morrill. The course is free to UCSF, Berkeley, and Stanford students; $100 for pre-revenue startups; and $300 for industry. – See more here.

SBIR 314

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 314

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

What it’s like to go from the comfort of the lab bench to the chaos of a startup was the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. What that meant was that until the test results came back the food can’t ship and that’s lost revenue for them.

Cofounder 190

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 190

Steve Blank

MAY 5, 2016

Two lessons from the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. It gets you to a business faster. …”.

Brazil 158

Brazil Entrepreneur Cleveland Cofounder 158

Steve Blank

AUGUST 23, 2010

The temptation is to transform the vision of a large market into a solid corporate revenue forecast – before Customer Development even begins. That means you may find that revenue appears later than the plan called for, or that there are no customers or fewer than the plan suggests.

Customer Development 235

Customer Development Developer Customer South America 235

Steve Blank

APRIL 21, 2011

Yet like passionate entrepreneurs, the team ignored our advice and pressed on. (To The Week 6 Lecture: Revenue Model. This week’s lecture covered the Revenue Model including questions like these: How does your company make money? What types of revenue streams are there? If you can’t see the slides above, click here.

Channel 215

Channel Artificial Inteligence San Francisco Business Model 215

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2016

And world-class entrepreneurs never quit. How founders cope with startup challenges was the focus of today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Jessica Mah started InDinero in 2010 to help entrepreneurs with their accounting and tax needs after going through the same challenges with her own businesses. Jessica Mah.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Cofounder Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

Instead of a Sales team and organized to sell with a consistent and successful sales roadmap generating revenue, it is a disorganized and unhappy organization burning lots of cash. Because the company based its headcount and expenses on the expectation that the Sales organization will bring in revenue according to plan.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

Steve Blank

MAY 5, 2016

Two lessons from the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. It gets you to a business faster. …”.

Brazil 120

Brazil Entrepreneur Cleveland Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2016

What it’s like to go from the comfort of the lab bench to the chaos of a startup was the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. What that meant was that until the test results came back the food can’t ship and that’s lost revenue for them.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Engineer California 120

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Back then, an entrepreneur used a serial product development process that proceeded step-by-step with little if any customer feedback. And too often, after months or even years of development, entrepreneurs learned the hard way that customers were not buying their product because they did not need or want most of its features.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And it was going to mention the two words that SuperMac marketing needed to live and breathe: revenue and profit. If marketing can’t deliver the 40,000 leads what else can we do for sales to still achieve our revenue and profitability?”) They understood the mission intent was our corporate revenue and profit goals.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. But at times it’s why entrepreneurs can sink their own companies. More on this in later posts.)

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 2, 2015

Resilience – the ability to bounce back from adversity – is one of the key attributes of entrepreneurs and was the focus of my first weekly radio show, Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , on Sirius XM Radio Channel 111. Sometimes the best lessons are the most painful. There are 3500 students that signed up for this.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur New York Cofounder Equity 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2010

The company loses customers, then revenues and profits decline and it eventually gets acquired or goes out of business. If you’re an entrepreneur, you spend your time worrying about how to get out of the box on the left and move to the right. Over time, innovations outside the company (demographic, cultural, new technologies, etc.)

Search 242

Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 242

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

Lean LaunchPad Colombia starts again today in Bogota with 25 more teams of tech entrepreneurs and at 25 mentors from the country’s universities, incubators, and chambers of commerce. SENA and the Colombian Ministry of IT: targeting 15,000 young entrepreneurs. He’s back to Bogota, Colombia this week for round two.

Colombia 321

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 321

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Lean 333

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 333

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

Lean LaunchPad Colombia starts again today in Bogota with 25 more teams of tech entrepreneurs and at 25 mentors from the country’s universities, incubators, and chambers of commerce. SENA and the Colombian Ministry of IT: targeting 15,000 young entrepreneurs. He’s back to Bogota, Colombia this week for round two.

Colombia 271

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 271

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter. With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit. For VC’s and entrepreneurs the gold rush to liquidity was on.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Was the sales revenue model based on actually testing the hypotheses outside the building? Greg Boutin Founder, Growthroute Ventures, [link] Reply TO REVENUE » Talking on Techie-Biz Divide at Communitech Guelph on Sept. As entrepreneurs we must never settle for allowing our hypothesis to go unchecked.

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 25, 2014

The heart of the therapeutics IRL also required “Proof of relevance” – was there a path to revenues fully articulated, an operational plan defined. It also creates a common language and metrics that investors, corporate innovation groups and entrepreneurs can share.

Incubator 310

Incubator Intellectual Property Startup Lean 310

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2009

It may seem full of legal definitions and terms but my two takeaways are: 1) Entrepreneurs need to know about these legal options, 2) Consulting an intellectual property attorney is a good move even before you get funded. Your intellectual property may be an additional revenue stream or may add substantial value to your company.

Intellectual Property 213

Intellectual Property IP Software Review Non-disclosure Agreement 213