Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

Whether or not you’re raising money for your business, getting advice from venture capitalists can be invaluable. But, getting in the doors of a Sand Hill Road VC in Silicon Valley can be an incredibly difficult undertaking. Inside the Minds of Top Venture Capitalists: Blogs You Need to Read to Understand How VCs Think.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Silicon Valley Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 180

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

There are very few people in Silicon Valley who have such a precise grasp on what defines success of early-stage startup companies than Eric Ries. I interviewed Eric for an hour for - This Week in Venture Capital. Importantly we also discussed: should startups raise small amounts of money or large?

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Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks , turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. government agency that supports research in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. “We’ve been reading your blog about your Lean Launchpad class.” The Innovation Corps Startup Team.

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Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

In some cases, branches of the military contracted directly with Stanford which worked with local contractors in Silicon Valley to build these components or systems for the military. The prototype ELINT receivers built by the Applied Electronics Lab used the Stanford Traveling Wave Tubes.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Government 142

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.

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Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Posted on December 7, 2009 by steveblank In my 21 years of startups, I had my ideas “stolen” twice. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. See part one for the first time it happened.

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Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

The Japanese edition of The Startup Owner’s Manual hit the bookstores in Japan this week. The book has been shepherded and edited by a great Japanese VC at Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, Takashi Tsutsumi, with help from Masato Iino. Finding a repeatable process for startups. ————-. .

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Japan Customer Development Developer Customer 292

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

And he recognized it was making his startup feel and act like a big ponderous company. Most decisions in a startup must be made in the face of uncertainty. One of the things he mentioned was that when it came to decision-making he still tended to think and act like an engineer. The same is true in your company.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Startups in Bend. Startups in Bend.

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Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

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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Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Now with a new infusion of $8 million dollars of venture capital, SuperMac had been resurrected from the dead and was attempting to restart. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Yet two smart VC firms, Sigma and Matrix Partners, realized that somewhere in this mess there was value. Order Here.

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Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 146

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.

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Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

One is the “denominator problem&# which says that if an LP invests X% (the denominator) into “alternative investments&# such as venture capital and if their total amount available to invest (the numerator) goes down by 30% then the amount they allocate to VC will by definition need to go down by 30% to stay the same percentage.

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LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Technical Marketing Years later in my career I would realize I had simply reinvented what the early pioneers in Silicon Valley knew and did – hiring engineers who were domain experts who could talk as peers to customers and communicate effectively with their own company’s engineers.

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 13, 2013

Thomas Clayton has started and run numerous high-tech startups in Silicon Valley. He is currently CEO of Bubbly , a social media startup backed by Sequoia Capital, SingTel Innov8, and JAFCO. The company is one of the largest VC–backed startups in Southeast Asia, having raised over $60M in funding.

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Asia Silicon Valley India Term Sheet 132

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

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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Lean Business Plan Video Software Review 60

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Understanding the left-side of the mission model canvas ( activities, resources , partners , and costs) forces all teams to ask, “Are we building a product for a DOD/IC customer only or do we have a “dual-use” product that could be sold commercially and get funded by venture capital?”. This post is a continuation of the series.

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Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. (My It was a long way from Ellis Island.)

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Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

Customer Development 124

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 124

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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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

how on Earth could the venture capital market stand still? One of the most common questions I’m asked by people intrigued by but also scared by venture capital and technology markets is some variant of, “Aren’t technology markets way overvalued? The legends of Silicon Valley?—?two Of course we can’t.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. This post was mentioned on Twitter by Brendan McManus, [Startup Digest]. Startup Digest] said: Thanksgiving Day [link] [via @sgblank] [.]

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Silicon Valley Turkey United States RSS 137

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 19, 2011

I recently sat down with Matt Coffin , the founder of LowerMyBills, which sold for $400 million but was very nearly a bankruptcy only a few years early, and talked “startups.&#. Matt is one of the most transparent, focused & honest startup guys you’ll meet. Or read the quick, informative summary below the image!

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Acquisition Warrant Customer Term Sheet 304

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. We were on the University of North Carolina campus to meet with Fred Brooks and Henry Fuchs. We were sitting in our cheap hotel room when the phone rang.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 19, 2019

We’ve spent a lot of time this past year running Lean Startup tests on our annual flagship conference to really nail down what you’re most interested in. Our goal—again, based on feedback—is to continue broadening the reach of Lean Startup and embracing the numerous ways people are using it.

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Lean Programming San Francisco Silicon Valley 68

Steve Blank

APRIL 8, 2022

Innovation incorporates lean methodologies (customer discovery, problem understanding, MVPs, Pivots), coupled with speed and urgency, and a culture where failure equals rapid learning. We pointed out that Silicon Valley and Stanford have done this for 50 years.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

Two years out of the Air Force, serendipity (which would be my lifelong form of career planning) found me in Silicon Valley working for my first company: ESL. But part of his life that that doesn’t even merit a Wikipedia entry is that Bill Perry used Silicon Valley to help end the cold war.

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Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 171

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

This tendency is a two edged sword: by iterating strategy a startup can dramatically improve the size and trajectory of the company, but at times this process can be the bane of venture investors (and why they have prematurely grey hair.)

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Startups and Sales If you read this post you can come away with the impression that every startup with a direct salesforce needs a consultative sales team. what Market Type is your startup? Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

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Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 19, 2010

Our guest this week on #TWiVC was Dana Settle , partner at Greycroft Partners , a venture capital firm with offices in New York and Los Angeles. Another topic we debated early in the program was “lean startup” vs. “ fat startup ” where we both took the obvious hedge and said “it depends.” Total raised: $15.0mm.

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crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 30, 2012

These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Small Business and Startups: 5 DIY Things To Do For Your Brand! How To Choose A Market For Your Startup Or Small Business – [link]. crowdSPRING Blog – [link].

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Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley , was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. Why It’s “Silicon” Valley. It might be its most important.

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Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

are much softer and much, much harder to measure (or believe) in a very early stage startup. We’ll talk about how to reduce risk in each type of market in the next post. It’s something VC’s can ask about, rationally analyze and feel comfortable if you can articulate a defensible technical and patent strategy.

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