Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

We’re now in the second Internet bubble. At the same time, acquisition opportunities will expand as large existing companies, unable to keep up with the pace of innovation in these emerging Internet markets, will “innovate&# by buying startups. Filed under: Technology , Venture Capital. Carpe Diem.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

70% of Chinese Internet users are under 30. Internet penetration in Beijing is greater than 70% while it’s less than 25% in Yunnan, Jiangxi, Guizhou and other provinces. The slide below from the Zhen Fund shows the breadth of business coverage of each of the Chinese Internet incumbents. New Rules for China.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

The previous post described the evolution of the Chinese Venture Capital system. But what made the overwhelming impression for me was finding an entrepreneurial software cluster on par with the Internet software portion of Silicon Valley. China Venture Capital. venture capitalists invested $26.5

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 267

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

Just look at the disruptive challenges that businesses face today– globalization, China as a manufacturer, China as a consumer, the Internet, and a steady stream of new startups. As the venture capital business has come roaring back in the last 5 years, startups are awash in available capital.

Private Equity 325

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

We recruited two veteran Venture Capital partners to be part of the 10-week teaching team: Jon Feiber , at Mohr Davidow and John Burke of True Ventures. I thought about the common wisdom that only 20-year olds doing Internet startups could be agile. (The class syllabus is here. Assembling the Teaching Team.

Incubator 301

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

It took me 8 startups and 21 years to get it right, (and one can argue success was due to the Internet bubble rather then any brilliance.) No internet, no blogs, no books on startups, no entrepreneurship departments in universities, etc. It took lots of trial and error, learning by experience and resilience through multiple failures.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

The previous post described the evolution of the Chinese Venture Capital system. But what made the overwhelming impression for me was finding an entrepreneurial software cluster on par with the Internet software portion of Silicon Valley. China Venture Capital. venture capitalists invested $26.5

Silicon Valley 159

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 159

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Lets take venture capital and grow this thing into a real business.”. Typically the size of their opportunity and company doesn’t lend itself to attracting venture capital. The Internet has created a series of new and innovative business models. The question was: what did the founders want to do?

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Rather than invent a new form of corporate governance, venture investors adopted the traditional board meeting structure from large corporations. In the age of the Internet why do we need to get together in one room on a fixed schedule?

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. Rather than invent a new form of corporate governance, venture investors adopted the traditional board meeting structure from large corporations. In the age of the Internet why do we need to get together in one room on a fixed schedule?

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

I didn’t know the first thing about how to start a company, but I kept reading Wired and learning about all the different venture capital firms and what people were getting funded for and that sort of thing. If you can’t hear the clip, click here. You don’t need money; you just need to carve out a little bit of time.

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 17, 2011

The major adoption wave for the Internet technology platform will hit in the next 8 years; 3) the economics of building Internet businesses has changed; 4) the markets are much bigger. Filed under: Venture Capital. In it the usual cast of characters appear; the Smart Money , the Shills , the Marks and the Promoters.

Investment Bankers 310

Investment Bankers Stock Valuation Venture Capital 310

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2011

Some precursors to the bubble happened when Chinese Internet companies listed on United States stock exchanges. Filed under: Venture Capital. It sent a signal that there is an irrational demand for tech IPOs. Silicon Valley startups are falling over each other to file their S-1 documents to go public. million in 2010 sales).

Silicon Valley 327

Silicon Valley Stealth Valuation Mississippi 327

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Later he would leave for a few years to start the Computing Directorate at the National Science Foundation , help spec what became the Internet and then come back and run Ardent’s engineering.) A few days later Gordon became a founder.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2011

Ben and his partner Marc Andreessen (the founder of Netscape and author of the first commercial web browser on the Internet ) are the definition of Smart Money. I’ve followed them with a few observations about the Internet that may help frame the scope of the debate. The Internet May Liberate Us. The Internet May Kill Us.

Internet 295

Internet Silicon Valley United States .Net 295

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Welcome to the Internet bubble.) Disbelief, Anger, Resignation and Acceptance My cofounders and I went through the stages of disbelief, anger, resignation and acceptance. Here was a competitor who had appropriated our idea and gotten funded. There was lots of venting as we talked about lawsuits and issuing nasty press releases.

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2016

Jessica has been starting her own Internet businesses and programming since middle school. Especially difficult were the days after the Internet bubble burst: 2001 was a staggering blow to technology. I started working with startups and venture capitalists. ” If you can’t hear the clip, click here. Everything disappeared.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Cofounder Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Our first thought was to spread the news ourselves, perhaps in a press release or a “white paper,” (remember this was pre-Internet.) Tell Me How to Find You But having benchmarks in hand that showed us as the winner did us no good unless all our potential customers could see them.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2011

Small businesses are grocery stores, hairdressers, consultants, travel agents, Internet commerce storefronts, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc. Scalable startups require risk capital to fund their search for a business model, and they attract investment from equally crazy financial investors – venture capitalists.

Government 335

Government Silicon Valley Startup Venture Capital 335

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

At the time no one (including Apple) knew exactly what consumers were going to do with multimedia, it was still pre-Internet. Present at the Creation It was early 1991 and Apple’s software development team was hard at work on QuickTime , the first multimedia framework for a computer.

Video 164

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

In times when venture capital is hard to get, investors extract high costs for failure (down-rounds, cram downs , new management teams, shut down the company.) Preserve your cash: When you have unlimited cash (internet bubbles, frothy venture climate,) you can iterate on your mistakes by burning more dollars.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

However, there was no way for founders to share this information with other founders (this was life before the Internet, incubators and accelerators). Filed under: Venture Capital. Replacing the founder when the company needed to scale was almost standard operating procedure.

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

This is of course, pre-Internet. It wasn’t like chess taught me how to think multiple layers deep, it was actually that it was a closed system of knowledge, kind of like investment banking or venture capital or startups that once you got in the club someone would actually teach you. I’m surprised you went there.

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Silicon Valley New York 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

These posts cover two distinct periods – the first, the rise of “ Microwave Valley ” chronicles the decade of 1946-1956 as Stanford University became the hub of military/industry contracting in the Bay Area. If you want to refer to PVO by name, call it just PVO (acronym for “Air Defense&# in Russian). Reply Nelson A.

Silicon Valley 153

Silicon Valley RSS Europe Germany 153

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2015

There’s nothing more wasteful than having an Innovation Outpost reporting on disruption heading for the company’s core business (autonomous vehicles, machine learning, Virtual Reality, Cloud, Internet of Things, et al.) when no one at headquarters wants to listen.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Incubator Acquisition Business Model 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

During the Internet bubble, one more function of the marketing department was to “buy” customer loyalty with enormous advertising and promotion spending to create a brand.) The PR agency helps the company understand and influence key bloggers, social networks, industry analysts, luminaries, and references.

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

These sources are a lot more forgiving of iterations and pivots than later-stage venture-capital funds. In times of unlimited cash (internet bubbles, frothy venture climates) you can fix your mistakes by burning more dollars. Filed under: Venture Capital. Venture Capital' When to raise money.

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 333

Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

And that he might want to think about aligning all his video and Internet products under that name. As we were plotting marketing strategy, I mentioned that the phrase “Speaking to the Big Dogs” might end up as his corporate brand.

Silicon Valley 176

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 176

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

consumer Internet) might have a really, really high bar of achievement for funding. Even if you have the worlds best Lessons Learned slides you might find out that your particular market (i.e.

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

These sources are a lot more forgiving of iterations and pivots than later-stage venture-capital funds. In times of unlimited cash (internet bubbles, frothy venture climates) you can fix your mistakes by burning more dollars. Filed under: Venture Capital. Venture Capital' When to raise money.

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 225

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Reply Why Startups Die | Kikabink News - Internet Marketing News , on October 3, 2009 at 9:20 pm Said: [.] Steve Case makes a strong case that the major reason for startup failuer is management using the classic Product Development management process rather than the emerging Customer Development process. [.]

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2022

In 2021 venture capital funds invested over $2 billion in 90+ Quantum technology companies. The Internet and computer networks use network time servers and the NTP protocol to receive the atomic clock time from either the GPS system or a radio transmission. Over a $1 billion of it going to Quantum computing companies.

Technology 436

Technology Algorithm Stealth Distribution 436

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 8, 2011

Small businesses are grocery stores, hairdressers, consultants, travel agents, internet commerce storefronts, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, etc. As they can’t provide the scale to attract venture capital, they fund their businesses via friends/family or small business loans. Filed under: Technology , Venture Capital.

America 318

America Silicon Valley Washington Venture Capital 318

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

The Digital Dream Team Way before the Internet phenomenon, we had created “Rocket Science the brand ” that was much bigger in size and importance than Rocket Science the company. Companies in the entertainment business around the world knew who we were, and were interested in meeting us, if only to see what the hype was about.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

So bowing to popular demand the 2009 blog posts are now available on Amazon on a portable device which provides instant and random access to any post and does not require power or an internet connection. Lessons Learned – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch……… 52. Now available on Amazon. Recursive History.

Silicon Valley 202

Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 202

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

A large number of these customers had mailed back their registration cards (this was pre-Internet) with their names, phone numbers, job titles, etc. This was a company that had sold 15,000 graphics boards and monitors to consumers. So I asked the fatal question, “Has anyone ever looked at the customer registration cards?

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 185