Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The problem is that professional investors (angels and venture capital) want a proven business model before they invest, ready to scale, rather than early projections and product development. For the rest of us, the following suggestions will help you survive the valley of death: Accumulate some resources before you start.

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Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 134

Up and Running

AUGUST 30, 2021

Solve the rest later. Angel investors, venture capital firms, accelerators, and (maybe) the newer equity crowdfunding will look to see if you have previous experience in startups. Go lean with your planning. A startup is about execution and speed, so you need to start lean. Your startup becomes irrelevant.

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Up and Running

MAY 28, 2015

We recently had Tim Berry, Palo Alto Software founder and business planning expert, present our Bplans audience with his latest advice on lean business planning. Start your lean business plan today: Download our Free Lean Plan Template one-page-pitch-download.pdf. I’m going to start with what’s a lean business plan.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 1, 2017

For the rest of us, the following suggestions will help you survive the valley of death: Accumulate some resources before you start. Software apps that once required a 10-person team can now be done with the Lean Development methodology by two people in a couple of months. It always reduces risk to plan your business first.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

“We’ve been reading your blog about your Lean Launchpad class.” We want to make a bet that your Lean Launchpad class can apply the scientific method to market-opportunity identification. The Innovation Corps – Using the Lean LaunchPad as an Incubator for Scientists and Engineers. Filed under: Lean LaunchPad , Teaching.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 8, 2015

According to a classic Gompers and Lerner study, the challenge is very real, with a majority of new ventures that don't attract investors failing within the first three years. For the rest of us, the following suggestions will help you survive the valley of death: Accumulate some resources before you start.

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Up and Running

JULY 6, 2016

In fact, during my consulting years in the 1980s and 1990s, I had multiple consulting engagements with venture capital firms that contracted me to evaluate software as an expert. For business owners, I recommend a lean business plan as a dashboard and GPS. See Also: Introducing Lean Planning: How to Plan Less and Grow Faster.

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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. Electron-based Venture Capital. When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. Here’s why.

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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?

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 11, 2014

Guest post by Sarah Milstein , CEO of Lean Startup Productions The 2013 Lean Startup Conference was a hit on several levels, with many people telling us it was the most valuable business conference they’d ever attended. Quick Consulting , an evening event on March 27 in San Francisco. Quick Consulting.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). It ultimately failed because she was focused on engineering the product, but didn’t validate the rest of her business model (product/market fit, distribution channel, customer acquisition, etc.). Clay : Yeah.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. So he had adopted Steve’s Lean LaunchPad class and was using The Startup Owner’s Manual as his core text. Serendipity. His name is Alex Lawrence.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

So if youre new, consider not paying any attention to the rest of this post, and just diving into the archives, if you havent already. Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) Eventually, I came to summarize these themes with the phrase " the lean startup."

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Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

When I first read about the Investment Readiness Level (IRL) on Steve’s blog, I was excited by Steve’s attempt to bridge the capital-efficient Lean Startup process for founders with the capital-raising process for funders. Filed under: Customer Development Manifesto , Investment Readiness Level , Venture Capital.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

However the Customer Development Model and the Lean Startup work equally well for startups on the web. Union Square Ventures The next morning I got to spend time with Brad Burnham , partner at Union Square Ventures talking about their investment strategy and insights about web-based businesses. It is related to business model.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 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. Why is it only alarming now? Without the revenue to match its expenses, the company is in now danger of running out of money.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development. Brendan McManus said: “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [link] #startup #advice [.] The rest is just fluff. Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [.] Your results may vary.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

The rest of the vertical marketing recruits had similar backgrounds (and similar careers.) (I never could find one from the petroleum industry so I wore that hat along with the VP of Marketing title.) Our head of finite element analysis came from General Motor’s Chevy division, where he headed up one of their analysis groups. (He

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2019

Lean LaunchPad class developed for Stanford. And the Lean LaunchPad class I developed at Stanford was the first such class. I believe the analogy is identical for entrepreneurship.The capstone entrepreneurship classes like NSF I-Corps or a Lean LaunchPad class, are for those who have already decided they want to be entrepreneurs.

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Up and Running

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

” As the managing editor of Bplans, I’ve had the good fortune to learn about business via the content we share; through interviews with LivePlan customers and other business owners; and thanks to brilliant, informal coaching from people like Tim Berry, Noah Parsons, and the rest of the executive leadership team at Palo Alto Software.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

But, as any startup can tell you, this opens up a tremendous set of opportunities for the rest of us. We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. If they don’t, there are a new breed of lean startups who understand this deep in the bones ready to take their place.

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

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. In Apple’s case Burrell Smith was designing a computer in a skunk works unbeknownst to the rest of Apple’s engineering.

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The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 13, 2013

The venture capital landscape in Asia is varied and complex, as most of the active firms on the continent are concentrated in just a few areas. China’s top dogs include the likes of GGV Capital , Sequoia China , IDG , Qiming , and a handful of others. Where are all of the VCs in Asia?

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Each week will be new adventure as you test each part of your business model and then share the hard earned knowledge with the rest of the class. Read: Steve Blank, “Lessons Learned – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch”, [link]. Update your blog/wiki/journal. Guest: Alexander Osterwalder. For March 1 st or 8 th.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Reply steveblank , on June 29, 2009 at 1:07 am Said: Charlie, Nivi at Venture Hacks has great advice at [link] – look at the “Equity&# section. The rest is worth reading as well. If you have, I’d be very interested in your take on it. steve Am I a Founder? The Adventure of a Lifetime. carry on reading.

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

They had this great architecture, and Apple had figured out to get movies into their own computers for a demo, but for the rest of us there was no physical device that allowed an average consumer to plug a video camera or VCR into and get video into a Mac. But the rest of the management team really skeptical. Little did we know.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

You can imagine the rest of the conversation; my sounding reluctant to let our own tests outside our building, the magazines begging us to let them have them, and finally a deal gets struck where we let the benchmarks out to the test labs of these magazines under their own name “The Potrero Benchmark Suite” without attribution to us.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Instead of focusing on “technical specs&# like the rest of the category, we are redefining to Information Delivery as the category with time/cost to Actionable Info as the metric, which is something we can compete on very well. Reply Dave Goulden , on March 26, 2009 at 11:04 pm Said: I love the redefinition of the market.

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Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

sgblank Lean Startup Cirle 111909 This movie requires Adobe Flash for playback. Reply Mark Essel , on November 25, 2009 at 7:02 am Said: Diggin’ the presentation so far, looking forward to catching the rest of this later in the day. Big thanks for the continued sharing, and certainly the link to Lean Startups.

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 212

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

And the rest is history. Mike may have “fathered&# FM-CW OTH ardar at Stanford and SRI, but the rest of OTH radar technology had its beginnings at NRL, Raytheon, Sylvania, and ITT. Gorbachev, now the Soviet Premier, had to grapple with the spiraling cost of military systems that weren’t amortized by consumer purchases.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) so at least some parts are being run by people who know what they are doing.

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

Steve my name is Donald xx, and I’m the head of external affairs of the CIA’s venture capital firm and we’d like you to keynote our conference.” So I gave my “ The Secret History of Silicon Valley ” talk as the keynote to the CIA’s venture capital conference. It gave me a sense of purpose for the rest of the war.

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 25, 2013

I rest my case. “I don’t know the exact math, but I hear it again and again: the top 2% of firms generate 98% of the returns in venture capital.” In my mind, the best VCs actually deliver outsized returns by “leaning on the scale” not by “deal sourcing.” The second is not.

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Hunter Walker

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

Starting a venture capital blog post with 1970s country music lyrics is pretty uncommon, but so is writing about when and why an investor might choose to sell equity before the company exits. We’re aligned with the founders and the rest of the cap table until we aren’t.

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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. Those are the "requireds" and the rest are the "preferred". Write down all the tasks done, skills used, etc.

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Up and Running

OCTOBER 3, 2017

If you don’t have a specific immediate need to show a formal business plan to a banker or investor, then you are probably better off doing just a lean business plan , for your internal use only. Your business plan should present what a banker or venture capitalist expects to see, in the order they expect to see it in. Competition.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 6, 2010

If you have good experience then the VC will be leaning forward for the rest of the presentation. They might want you to start lean. Tags: Raising Venture Capital Startup Advice. If I feel a priori that the CEO can’t cut it I’m highly unlikely to invest. Investors invest in The Big Mo.

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