Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

So if you’re the founder of a startup, you may want to consider who you take money from. Is Your VC Founder Friendly? How many of their founders are still with their company? How many of their founders are still with their company? Will they tailor your vesting to your contribution as a founder?

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Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2019

In tech startups stock options were here almost from the beginning, first offered to the founders in 1957 at Fairchild Semiconductor , the first chip startup in Silicon Valley. The investors were giving away part of their ownership of the company — not just to the founders, but to all employees. Here’s why.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Why do these founders get to stay around? Because the balance of power has dramatically shifted from investors to founders. VCs competing for unicorn investments have given founders control of the board. A pre-IPO board usually had two founders, two VCs and one “independent” member. Technology Cycles Measured in Years.

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Steve Blank

JULY 19, 2010

As a founder I fought with VC’s over vesting as they brought in a new CEO and walked me out the door. As a board member I negotiated with founding CEO’s over vesting when I thought it was their time to go. The fallacy is believing that a founders value is evenly distributed over four years. Preparing For Chaos.

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Steve Blank

MAY 19, 2015

I got answers that sounded like the Tom’s – new stock grants for the executive staff, great new building, and oh, by the way, Tom and his co-founder got to sell some stock in the new round. Aren’t you concerned about losing qualified people that the company spent the last few years training but never compensated adequately?”

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 2, 2015

Richard Witten , special advisor on entrepreneurship to the President of Columbia University ; and Kathryn Minshew , co-founder of the popular online career platform TheMuse.com both joined me in Sirius’ New York studio and shared their version of being knocked down and coming back stronger. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2021

It was a rallying cry of our founders as they built a single unified nation from a collection of states. Many American families no longer have a personal vested interest in our nation’s decisions about foreign policy. This post previously appeared in Real Clear Defense. It’s a good reminder of where we need to go.

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