Steve Blank

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Leaving Government for the Private Sector – Part 2

Steve Blank

At first many start-ups hire a lobbying firm. Larger companies hiring a Chief of Staff often look for someone who has an MBA, experience with one of the big consulting firms, or experience doing the job already. They can vote to hire and fire the CEO. A Board of Directors has a formal and legal role.

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Leaving Government for the Private Sector – Part 1

Steve Blank

Unless you can translate how your skills provide commercial value, you won’t get hired. Meanwhile, three years before I left the Agency I had done a cold outreach on LinkedIn to the person I suspected was the hiring manager for a job advertisement for a company that I liked. You will get asked a question like this.

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Hiring – Easy as Pie

Steve Blank

Over the last few weeks I’ve gotten involved in hiring for two startups, a public agency and a non profit. In the last week I had four separate groups through the ranch all wanting to talk either about hiring a senior exec or a senior exec looking for a new job. Are you hiring for search or execution skills? Draw a pie chart.

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Leadership is More Than a Memo

Steve Blank

At first the company just consisted of the founders, but Ben soon started to hire his engineering team. But as each engineer was hired and started work I began to notice that after a few days they started to wear suits… wait for it… with sneakers. And back then they were all men.)

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Even the Smartest VCs Sometimes Get it Wrong – Bill Gurley and Regulated Markets

Steve Blank

Hire/advisors from the inside industry but use them to make you smarter not just to outsource the work. (The books The Fixer and Regulatory Hacking give examples of regulatory pitfalls, problems and suggested solutions.) Most early stage startups don’t have the regulatory domain expertise in-house. Get outside advice at each step.

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How to Keep Your Job As Your Company Grows

Steve Blank

The company was going to hire a VP of Marketing. This sentence is worth reading multiple times as no one – not the person who hired you, the VC’s or your peers -is going to tell you when you’re hired that the company will likely outgrow you. Your original hires embody the company culture. I was devastated.

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Why good people leave large tech companies

Steve Blank

Before the rapid rise of Unicorns, (startups with a valuation over a billion dollars), when boards were still in control, they “encouraged” the hiring of “adult supervision” of the founders after they found product/market fit. These new CEOs would also act as a brake to temper the founder’s excesses.