Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner. Ideally we attempt to match the guests with the case or class session subject. For example, when we taught the value of getting out of the building and agile development, we had Eric Ries talk about the Lean Startup.

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Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 235

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

It typically takes multiple iterations and pivots to find product/market fit – the match between what you’re building and who will buy it. And come to think of it, in the Search phase, there are Incubators and Accelerators and even your Lean LaunchPad/I-Corps class, to give us practice. Time to Make New Friends. Lessons Learned.

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Startup Lean Venture Capital Advisory Board 120

Hunter Walker

JANUARY 11, 2021

Traditional venture capital models lean into what’s called ‘power laws.’ Basically the idea that you are backing risky new ventures, many of which will stumble along the way, but one or two of the companies you back will be such outsized successes that the investment gains from those will more than offset the others.

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Startup Venture Capital Seed Capital Software 124

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

When venture capital teamed up with technology entrepreneurs in the 1960’s they brought with them the canonical MBA planning tool – the business plan. But for startups, business plans fail to match the chaotic reality they encounter in the real world. The Business Plan ?- a roadmap for execution. It what winners do.

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Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 267

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

5) The customer’s needs don’t match your long term direction. While I completely agree with this notion, the signals might be more important (when you might fire them): 1) You don’t have a bi-directional (respectful) relationship. 2) They don’t care about your profitibility and ultimately, your staying power.

Customer 216

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 216

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The next thing you need to do is match your sales team with your market type. It’s only after you’re done with customer discovery and are in the final steps of customer validation (building a repeatable and scalable sales process) that you start hiring a sales executive. You need to hire the right type of sales people for the type of market.

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 22, 2017

Once you compile it, pay more attention to building on your strengths and matching those with the market opportunities. Approaching the market while leaning forward, and with eyes wide open, increases a company’s ability to attract the right talent. Keep in mind that your company has different strengths than your competitors.

Private Equity 113

Private Equity Later Stage IPO Early Stage 113

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

dumped Détente and embraced a new strategy to counter the Warsaw Pact by not matching them tank for tank or solider to solider. The Chief of Staff of the Red Army said that this “Offset Strategy&# was revolutionizing contemporary warfare and posed a military threat that the Red Army could not match. “We Yet while the U.S.

Silicon Valley 194

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 194

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Generate end user demand (to match our revenue goals) Drive that demand into our sales channels Value price our products to achieve our revenue and margin goals (create high-value) Educate our sales channel(s) Help engineering understand customer needs That was it.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

If we tried to match them on their playing field we’d never catch up. But with a little bit of thought it struck us that if we attempted to do that, our competitors had a pretty substantial advantage, since they held nearly 90% of combined market share. They had more than enough dollars to outspend and out market us.

Silicon Valley 157

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 157

This is going to be BIG.

APRIL 29, 2011

You may decide that where you are now compared to where you'll be in three months isn't a good time, and that's fine, but let's not pretend that you're not a tech entrepreneur in the office of a venture capital firm. If Chris gives me big thumbs up on someone who I wind up in a meeting with, I'm going to lean forward that much more.

Technical Review 121

Technical Review Early Stage Due Diligence Venture Capital 121

genylabs.typepad.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Even the best venture capital firms have a lot of failures and few successes. The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Wall Street Journal: With New Technology, Start-Ups Go Lean. venture capital. However, Ive learned four lessons the hard way: 1. Most tech start-ups fail. outsourcing.

Equity 40

Equity Technical Review San Jose Stock 40

Up and Running

JUNE 23, 2015

She was initially drawn to Wirth’s passion for the cause of maternal health, but she also came to see that the two of them were well-matched for a business partnership because their skill sets were so complementary. The Lean Startup by Erik Reis. Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell.

Cofounder 60

Cofounder Sweat Equity Social Media Business Model 60

David Teten

APRIL 25, 2012

My mother and I met Daniella Norwood, the owner of ella j designs , and her husband Brian Bigda at a Lean Startup Machine weekend at which I was a judge. We changed the color scheme of teten.com to green, in order to match the color scheme of ffvc.com. Assembling a WordPress Website. fixing some existing errors. A New Website Design.

XML 122

XML Database Social Media SEO 122

The Equity Kicker

JULY 8, 2019

When I started in venture capital in the late 1990s VCs were regularly lambasted for taking long summer holidays and spending too much time on the golf course. In addition to Platform and Applied Venture strategies, the trend towards hiring ex-operators into partner roles at VC firms can be seen in this light.

Portfolio 84

Portfolio LP Venture Capital Partner 84

This is going to be BIG.

DECEMBER 5, 2011

He was interested in venture capital and was a year away from graduation. I realized that a position at Union Square Ventures was going to be open in a year and that he had a terrific chance of getting it. Then again, how many lean startups are out there with lots of stuff to do without the time to do it.

Engineer 146

Engineer Venture Capital Analytics Lean 146

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Rule 2 : In an existing market Customer Development means understanding whether your hypothesis of why customers will buy match reality. If you’ve gone out and talked to customers early, by the time your product launches your positioning should match the attributes _customers have already told you_ they want.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 206

Up and Running

MARCH 1, 2016

Boris Wertz, founding partner of Version One Ventures, believes that if you’ve worked in an industry you’re passionate about for a long time, you may know something about the market that nobody else knows. If You Want Venture Capital, You Need It. You can do this on your own too using the lean planning methodology.

Non-disclosure Agreement 60

Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Non-Compete Naming 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Your presentation doesn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. We also talk about cash flow management rather than fund-raising though – watch and justifying expenses by cash coming in that matches or exceeds. They will realize that you have built a startup that’s agile, resilient and customer-centric.

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If there aren’t any that match your company, create some. Tradeshow Seminars Almost all tradeshows have conferences and seminar sessions; is your company keynoting any? Leading or speaking at any? No is the wrong answer. I can’t imagine your company going to a tradeshow to create awareness and not being a speaker.

Silicon Valley 203

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 203

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 25, 2011

The guy leans in and says, "Hey Charlie, sorry to interrupt, my name is Alan, I'm with bre.ad, I'm going to follow up with an e-mail to you about our startup. Just wanted you to match the name to a face." I not only didn't love his take, but I'm not really forward leaning on the whole space. No pitch, nothing more.

Elevator Pitch 113

Elevator Pitch Lean Mobile Naming 113

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2015

Each stage needs a clearly defined set of objectives, and the right team to match those objectives. In Stage 2, the corporation adds venture capital and/or mergers-and-acquisition teams to provide these functions. Do we have a Lean Startup Methodology in place? Google just named the organization’s leader.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Incubator Acquisition Business Model 120

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

It wasn’t that I didn’t have a smart VP of Marketing who was getting early feedback from customers and screaming that the games didn’t match the hype. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to listen to customers. I had outsourced customer feedback and ignored the input.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Up and Running

OCTOBER 21, 2014

Given the number of funding resources available today, you shouldn’t have too much of a problem getting that initial start-up cash, especially if you focus on a lean business model or MVP route to market. What kind of location matches your strategy? Angel investment/venture capital funds. Personal investment.

Elevator Pitch 166

Elevator Pitch Software Review SBA Business Plan 166

blog.simeonov.com

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Initial vesting typically matches employee founders. Tags: VC Venture Capital startups agile entrepreneurship founder agreements investing lean startups. Typically, the agreement is a mash-up of a board member and a service provider agreement. The usual role that fits this is a founding executive chairperson.

Founder 44

Founder Vesting Agile Startup 44

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

His wife, about my age, could have been a poster child for the stereotypical California hippie surfer, with politics that matched her style – antiwar, anti government, antiestablishment.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 210

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Another idea would be to say matching up. the sort of pain solution match-up process can work. But assuming it’s a fair exit, a venture capitalist, and I’m explicitly not saying angel because we could talk about angel and they’re sort of special so that might work out. For venture capital, right?

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

Then, I needed to determine who is the right match for me. What are my ideal match’s skill sets, background, age, geography, work style, level of commitment, compensation requirements, friend vs. new acquaintance, etc…? At this point, she was assessing if there were other people in the pool of candidates who would be good matches.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Does any of this match your experience or people you know? Yet I am surprised given how much is written about the attributes of a startup founder, how little has been written about what “makes” a founder. Let me know what you think. Comments and brickbats welcomed.

Founder 310

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 310

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Obama’s own campaign used Moneyball and Lean Startup strategies to win the ultra high stakes Presidential Election. A recent article on Venture Beat talks about how Venture Capital firms are starting to take a Moneyball approach: “ In Silicon Valley, new firms are going a step further by creating an entire investment thesis around data.

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Design Analytics Software Review Conversion 100

abovethecrowd.com

JANUARY 30, 2015

Armed with this new data, Uber leaned on its legendary “math department” to help drive prices even lower. These are the systems that help balance the more than one million rides per day that are matched on the Uber system. Jeff Bezos.

Technical Review 40

Technical Review Algorithm San Francisco Demand 40

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

If you are an entrepreneur seeking funding, try our free Funding Recommendation Engine to identify a list of angels, venture capital and state grant programs that best match your business. Hiring is hard, and without proper experience, we should have leaned more heavily on our investors to help us with this decision.

Software Review 79

Software Review Startup Technical Review Vesting 79

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

And thanks to Ann Miura-Ko of Floodgate (my first Lean LaunchPad co-instructor) for her suggestions. Product/market fit means that you’ve found the match between your potential customers’ pains, gains and jobs to be done and the features of your minimal viable product. I.e. your product fits the needs of your target customers.).

Cofounder 431

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 431

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2009

Since we were the hip, new, edgy, “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” video game company (more about “ big hat, no cattle ” startups in subsequent posts,) our office obviously had to match the image. Our receptionists’ desk was built on the wing of a WWII P-51 fighter plane, and the rest of the office décor matched.

Silicon Valley 137

Silicon Valley San Francisco RSS Vertical 137

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

Each of my competitors each had 5-10 graphics boards covering a range of prices with performance to match. I went home to think about this. Instead of a product family, we had a single point product. Even our current product line had four graphics boards in it. Now our new product line would only have one board?! What could we do?

Silicon Valley 145

Silicon Valley Product RSS Engineer 145

crowdSPRING Blog

AUGUST 3, 2012

Lean Marketing Tips: Increasing Lifetime Value With Email Campaigns – [link]. Trends In Venture Capital Over The Last 12 Years – [link]. Lean Marketing Tips: Increasing Lifetime Value With Email Campaigns – [link]. Bad returns be damned: Venture capital fundraising jumps 31 percent in U.S.

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

Both Sides of the Table

DECEMBER 22, 2011

In any event, they had such scale advantages in providing this Internet infrastructure that to this day nobody in the industry has come close to matching them. Teams that have a “lean” mentality. In other words, storage might have been a “loss leader.” The Cloud is the future at Amazon has an enormous lead. Exactly what I’ve outlined.

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Non-Compete Startup Internet Cost 386