Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

Who can I hire later? Activities define the unique expertise your company needs to deliver the value proposition, customers, channels, customer relationships and/or revenue. (If But what about for us, a consumer hardware hardware company? Trying to figure out what the right set of co-founders isn’t so clear.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

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. 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. 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 11, 2010

Later I realized six salespeople without revenue to match was a proxy for an out of control burn rate that now had the boards serious attention. These “friends and family orders” made the first nine months of their revenue plan. With that initial sales “success” they began to hire and staff the sales department per the ”plan.”

Burn Rate 248

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 248

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

Next, take a look at your actual revenue each month – not forecast, but real revenue coming in each month. Subtract your monthly gross burn rate from your monthly revenue to get your net burn rate. All your assumptions about customers, sales cycle and most importantly, revenue, burn rate and runway are no longer true.

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

He hired an operating exec as the CEO a few years ago. While our revenue is looking good, we can be out of business in two years if we can’t keep up with our customer’s rapid shifts in platforms. As we’ve grown we’ve become less and less responsive to changing market and customer needs. Who Wants to Work on The Old Product.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

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. innovation.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

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. If so, which one?

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

Companies horde cash and squeeze the most revenue and margin from the money they use. And to keep executing large organizations hire employees with a range of skills and competencies. Yet in the face of all this change, traditional firms continue to embrace a management ethos that values efficiency over innovation.

Private Equity 325

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

The first hint lies in its name; this is a product development model, not a marketing model, not a sales hiring model, not a customer acquisition model, not even a financing model (and we’ll also find that in most cases it’s even a poor model to use to develop a product.) So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2013

It turns out that for commercialization, the business model (Customers, Channel, Revenue Model, etc.) Medical Device Distribution Channels in general are a sales team hired directly by the company. Expect little or no revenue for 2- 3 quarters after they start. Expect little or no revenue for 2- 3 quarters after they start.

Distribution 224

Distribution Channel Lean Intellectual Property 224

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

Hiring VPs and execs with the right titles but the wrong skills leads to further trouble as high-powered sales and marketing people arrive on the payroll to execute the “plan.” The business plan, its revenue forecast, and the product introduction model assume that every step a start-up takes proceeds flawlessly and smoothly to the next.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

For decades startups were managed by pretending the company would follow a predictable path (revenue plan, scale, etc.) The Revenue Plan – The Third Fatal Assumption. Notice that the traditional product introduction model leads to a product launch and the execution of a revenue plan. Albert Einstein. Ritualized Crises.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2009

If you hire subcontractors or friends to do some work, get assignment agreements as well.). Your intellectual property may be an additional revenue stream or may add substantial value to your company. Take the time to create a well documented, clear chain of title to your intellectual property. In the U.S. Offer for sale in the U.S.

Intellectual Property 213

Intellectual Property IP Software Review Non-disclosure Agreement 213

Steve Blank

APRIL 1, 2020

Your revenue plans are no longer valid. What’s your monthly cash burn at your new low revenue level? The CEO should dial through as many of the largest existing customers to get a firsthand understanding of the magnitude of any revenue shortfall. When hiring began again, everyone was relieved: “The worst is over.

South Korea 333

South Korea Salary Business Model China 333

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. VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Large companies have a habit of hiring outside agencies to do market research and customer discovery. You can’t hire outside professionals to test and learn from customer interactions and make decisions for you. Remedy: For radically new ideas you should defer hiring outside agencies until you’ve found product/market fit.

Non-Compete 329

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 329

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

— Unremarked and unheralded, the balance of power between startup CEOs and their investors has radically changed: IPOs/M&A without a profit (or at times revenue) have become the norm. Typically, this caliber of bankers wouldn’t talk to you unless your company had five profitable quarters of increasing revenue.

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Hire around you to fill those weak spots. …. Being in Ohio, which lacks the startup ecosystem of an entrepreneurial cluster like Silicon Valley, made it difficult for Will to get funding for his first startup, Huddlewoo : The type of business that we were building needed an investment of capital ahead of revenue.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2019

Investors bet that by offering prospective hires a stake in the company’s future growth- with a visible time horizon of a payoff – employees would act more like owners and work harder– and that would align employee interests with the investor interests. That made sense.

Stock Options 333

Stock Options Stock Vesting Common Stock 333

Steve Blank

JUNE 24, 2013

Instead of offering better products or better service at lower prices, rent seekers hire lawyers and lobbyists to influence politicians and regulators to pass laws, write regulations and collect taxes that block competition. Strategies at this stage include: Hire your own lobbyists. i.e. revenue/profit sharing, two-tier hiring, etc.

North Carolina 335

North Carolina New Jersey New York Government 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

We were impressed when we found that they did the in-person interviews by hiring usertesting.com for $39 to set up test scenarios, gave the users specific tasks to accomplish with their minimum viable product, videotaped the customer interactions and summarized customer likes and dislikes.)

Customer 234

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 234

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

A college degree is great if you’re looking to get hired. Our revenue model was wrong. You’re never going to come up with a different strategy for how you approach the world. You’re never going to raise funding or bring in different teams by virtue of your degree. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Resources are what the team needs to hire or own inside their company — the team’s physical, financial, human and intellectual property. Customers, for example, are recast as “beneficiaries,” and instead of identifying revenue streams, these diplo-preneurs are interested in defining “mission achievement.”).

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Resources are what the team needs to hire or own inside their company — the team’s physical, financial, human and intellectual property. Customers, for example, are recast as “beneficiaries,” and instead of identifying revenue streams, these diplo-preneurs are interested in defining “mission achievement.”).

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

For example, some startup sales execs believe hiring the core sales team is a key objective. Once the product begins to ship, startup sales execs use orders and revenue as its marker of progress in understanding customers. And if first customer ship is on this date over here, then I need to hire and staff a sales organization by then.”

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

A college degree is great if you’re looking to get hired. Our revenue model was wrong. You’re never going to come up with a different strategy for how you approach the world. You’re never going to raise funding or bring in different teams by virtue of your degree. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

MAY 20, 2010

It was the Internet bubble and after almost three years our startup had found a business model and we were scaling revenue and headcount fast. However, the new CEO was as hungry to join a hot Internet startup and work with legendary VC and not miss the bubble, as we were in hiring him. We thought he’d be worth it.

Founder 275

Founder Cofounder Salary Naming 275

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Now with customers and early revenue, it was out raising its first round of venture money. They hired a world-class team with co-founders and early employees who shared their vision. After that, there was no doubt to existing employees and new hires what the company was aiming for. One founder quit and joined Google.)

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2011

Hiring technology talent in Silicon Valley is getting difficult, and the time it takes to drive across Palo Alto has tripled—all signs of the impending apocalypse. Long before others, they saw that these applications could have hundreds of millions of users with “off the chart&# revenue and profits.

Silicon Valley 327

Silicon Valley Stealth Valuation Mississippi 327

Steve Blank

JUNE 24, 2013

Instead of offering better products or better service at lower prices, rent seekers hire lawyers and lobbyists to influence politicians and regulators to pass laws, write regulations and collect taxes that block competition. Strategies at this stage include: Hire your own lobbyists. i.e. revenue/profit sharing, two-tier hiring, etc.

North Carolina 227

North Carolina New Jersey New York Government 227

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 20, 2010

Paradoxically, as your revenues and market share increase the risk of competitors damaging your company increases. Doing all those demos took up a lot of my travel time so I hired someone from one of the customers as our Washington sales person.” My ex-student asked, “Are you suggesting we hire a new Washington sales person?”

Washington 272

Washington Los Angeles Startup Cofounder 272

Steve Blank

JANUARY 10, 2011

The revenue plan had the new product baked into the numbers and it was clear that this division General Manager was going to crater his forecast (happens all the time, nothing new here.) In large companies executives are hired and compensated for pristine and efficient execution. Cover-up Or Look Like an Idiot.

Forecast 264

Forecast Agile Revenue Founder 264

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

We’re at 70 people, and we’ll do $40 million in revenue this year and should get to cash flow breakeven this quarter. ” Unfortunately as you hire more people, the casual, informal “do what it takes” culture, which worked so well at less than 40 people, becomes chaotic and less effective. It sounded like he was living the dream.

Startup 120

Startup Lean Venture Capital Advisory Board 120

Steve Blank

MAY 13, 2010

After a bit more discussion, I discovered the “problem in getting traction” meant revenue was zero. But I knew getting customer input was important so I hired this great consultant who told me all about the features customers need.“ We’re in Customer Validation but we can’t seem to close a deal.”

Founder 199

Founder Cofounder Business Model Customer Development 199

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 13, 2016

Large companies have a habit of hiring outside agencies to do market research and customer discovery. You can’t hire outside professionals to test and learn from customer interactions and make decisions for you. Remedy: For radically new ideas you should defer hiring outside agencies until you’ve found product/market fit.

Non-Compete 120

Non-Compete Agile Business Model San Francisco 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Drive for a repeatable and scalable business model (revenue in Dave McClure’s investment thesis, “ network of scale &# in Union Square’s.). Their strategies for their startups differ – some focus on revenue, others build large networks of users. They build a minimum feature set. Lean VC’s are Different.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258