Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Hacking for Diplomacy takes the Lean Startup methodology and applies it to problems sourced from the State Department. Each team continues to capture its work on a Mission Model Canvas – a modified version of the Business Model Canvas that’s at the heart of the Lean Startup methodology.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 1, 2023

By Daniel Sokolovksy, Co-Founder and CEO, WARP and Troy Lester, Co-Founder and CRO, WARP The dissolution of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was more than just a bank collapse, it was a reality check for both startups and the VCs that fund them. We’re hitting record revenue months, weeks, and margins. That includes us.

Early Stage 112

Early Stage Los Angeles Silicon Valley Cofounder 112

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. We hired union laborers to do that. I hired a Director of Product Marketing who in his last company had ran its marketing and then went out into the field and became its national sales director.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. VC’s invested in things that ran on electrons: hardware, software and silicon. Here’s why.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Austin Startup

JANUARY 20, 2021

The Ferrari Museum in Modena, Italy The defining characteristic of the Silicon Valley startup is speed. In 2006, I joined Yelp as employee #20 when the company had $1M in annual revenue. It can also rapidly iterate your sales motion, build your sales team, help you win deals, and grow revenue more quickly. It’s up to you.

Sales 64

Sales Startup Sales Cycle Revenue 64

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

The best and most consistent funds in Silicon Valley (e.g. But my conversations in the private corridors on Sand Hill Road in Silicon Valley is that many fund sizes will be smaller going forward. You don’t have to hire as many sales people because much can be sold online. Others will, too.

LP 311

LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

The implications for entrepreneurs is that each of these (market risk versus invention risk,) require radically different financing models, a different type of venture investor, different timing for hiring sales and marketing, etc. These two numbers have direct impact on revenue and financial health. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

A year goes by, you miss your revenue plan, and you’ve burned through your first VP of Sales. If that’s you, by all means hire a VP of Sales with a great rolodex and call on established mainstream companies – and ignore the rest of this post. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup. Lets see why.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Luckily (or maybe because we were in Silicon Valley where there was a domain expert for everything) there was a very smart consultant in the retail computer space, Seymour Merrin, who preached about the importance of packaging. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Worry about the sales results.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. With Netscape’s IPO , there was suddenly a public market for companies with limited revenue and no profit. Carpe Diem.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 5, 2013

Small Business Marketing Tip: Send Email Campaigns At Night To Increase Revenue | crowdSPRING Blog – [link]. Being Kind To Your Prospective Customers Is Good Business – (Lean Business: Do Unto Others) – [link]. Why I No Longer Advise Startups to Hire M.B.A.s | The Accelerators-WSJ – [link].

Social Media 92

Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This theory has become so influential that I have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science?

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Just like in the world of startups, we can start to use micro-scale pilot programs, executed in lean fashion, to gather real facts for making ROI decisions about new project investment. Most publishers are still caught up in an outdated “vision vs. metrics&# argument, which is already obsolete here in Silicon Valley.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

Finally, I’ll write about how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. For example, some startup sales execs believe hiring the core sales team is a key objective.

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

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. Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2016

We were depending on investor funding, but with $60,000 in revenue no one would fund it. . Jessica ran things as lean as she could for the next few months while figuring out what to do. When Peggy first arrived in Silicon Valley, she worked for Boole & Babbage , before founding her own firm. No one was interested.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Cofounder Customer Development 120

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 25, 2012

The company now boasts millions of dollars in revenue, and more than 30 petabytes of managed storage in its data centers. We even had a funny period of a few months where we hired our first employee (a support person), and he made more than all of the seven of us combined at that point!".

Management 149

Management Balance Sheet Silicon Valley Salary 149

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. After twelve months Handspring’s revenue was $170 million. End result?

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

I was asked to explain why a marketing program that cost $150,000 bucks literally generated nothing in revenue for the company. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. They hit each other with baseball bats until one of them dropped.) This first Zen moment happened at a SuperMac exec staff meeting. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Through trial and error, hiring and firing, successful startups all invented a parallel process to product development. As you stated, the VCs only want to hear about product development and, I would add, revenue models. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 127

ReadWriteStart

MAY 30, 2022

One in particular from a famous VC in Silicon Valley. Hire a bunch of new staff? . You’re lean, agile, and responsive to external changes, ready to test a new idea or head in a new direction. Money makes things feel easy, but it can be a false economy: What’s the point in growing revenue if it doesn’t come with profits?

Bootstrapping 147

Bootstrapping Startup Equity Silicon Valley 147

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

We Changed Our Mind In 1966, 10 years after Hewlett’s memo, Hewlett Packard’s revenue and headcount had grown ten fold; $200 million and 11,000 employees – all from test and measurement equipment. It got bigger by inventing new test and measurement equipment and it hired people who knew how to execute that strategy.

Silicon Valley 164

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 164

Steve Blank

AUGUST 25, 2015

I’ve spent this year working with corporations and government agencies that are adopting and adapting Lean Methodologies. Several pockets of innovation in his agency have begun to look to startups and have tried to adopt lean methods. In Silicon Valley, the operative word in any pitch is “disrupt.”

Lean 120

Lean Entrepreneur Business Model Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Entrepreneur-in-Residence After SuperMac I had been approached by one of our venture investors to be an entrepreneur in residence (EIR), a Silicon Valley phrase which says one thing but means another. Peter described the first company in which “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” and we were enthralled.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Call it facts for hire. It would be a bit like the hired gun in the old west, but more suited for today’s times. Today, brands are hiring social media specialists for customer support, crowdsourced product development, promotions and even leads generation. The Proof Is In The Revenue. Hiring The Right Candidate.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Eric Friedman

AUGUST 18, 2021

From who we hire to the way we go to market, from how we engage with our limited partners to how we engage with founders, it’s all about being very focused on quality and consistency so as to affect strategies to generate meaningful carry for ourselves and our limited partners. On Leaving Silicon Valley Bank.

Silicon Valley 88

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Cofounder Africa 88

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. Step 1: Start with a lean plan. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. Introducing Lean Planning: How to Plan Less and Grow Faster.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 11, 2019

Ann will be speaking at this year’s Lean Startup Conference in October about all of this and more. Well known founders within Silicon Valley demanded this kind of change across the board, and if they wanted to see it internally, they also had to see it within the organizations that touched their group.

Founder 68

Founder Lean Venture Capital Cofounder 68

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Page views drive his ad revenue, which is probably CPM based. He spoke at the Founder Institute last week, and his advice was to not hire a PR agency until there were so many inbound requests that you can’t handle them yourself. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Mike Arrington is a capitalist.

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 22, 2015

Lean Doesn’t Always Create the Best Products [link] crowdspring.co/1FcPnhs NerdWallet raised $64 million in Series A led by Institutional Venture Partners – Silicon Valley Business Journal [link] crowdspring.co/1IClQlq 5 Mistakes You’re Making When Hiring Millennials [link] crowdspring.co/1A6ihAR link] nyti.ms/1bWa0Uz

Small Business 48

Small Business Design Social Media Startup 48

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 11, 2020

Sam is one of the most prolific company builders in Silicon Valley. Eric Ries : You were one of the first people who when the crisis was breaking, I saw your name all over Silicon Valley, in the Y Combinator forums. I would encourage people to just reach out to the normal crew of Silicon Valley Investors [for].

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley Technical Review Government .Net 68

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 24, 2012

Dan: My question is related to all this talk that I hear in the Silicon Valley about Internet scale. Trying to figure out how the Silicon Valley… again, my last venture was not built here. Then we hired two people and got profitable again in another six months. I was in a 10-year company.

Silicon Valley 204

Silicon Valley Software Review Internet Technical Review 204

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. And then, at my first Silicon Valley startup , I watched friends get laid off in successive waves as it started to fail. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

These are areas that may be gaps in the portfolio of large companies, and are perfect for M&A deals in three to five years after building enough validation and $10-$20 million in revenue. Raymond has built a nice business through efficient distribution deals and will do about $250,000 in revenue this year.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

These are areas that may be gaps in the portfolio of large companies, and are perfect for M&A deals in three to five years after building enough validation and $10-$20 million in revenue. Raymond has built a nice business through efficient distribution deals and will do about $250,000 in revenue this year.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52