Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

JULY 22, 2010

Startup CEO’s can’t delegate sales and expect it to happen. Here’s an example in a direct sales channel. Sales Process. Next, he took me through his sales process. In fact, the few times he had asked to go out in the field the VP of Sales said, “Not yet, I don’t want to waste your time.”. Too Good to Be True.

Forecast 270

Forecast Sales Customer Customer Development 270

Steve Blank

JULY 11, 2017

The belief then was that most founders couldn’t acquire the HR, finance, sales, and board governance skills rapidly enough to steer the company to a liquidity event, so they hired professional managers. In contrast, professional managers attempt to bring order to chaos and often kill the startup culture in the process.

Part-Time VPE 308

Part-Time VPE Liquidity Event Stock Engineer 308

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

For decades startups were managed by pretending the company would follow a predictable path (revenue plan, scale, etc.) As we described in previous posts , startups fail on the day they’re founded if they are organized and managed like they are a small version of a large company. Albert Einstein. That’s the definition of insanity.

Burn Rate 247

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 247

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

The Energy Storage division is acting like a startup, and Prescott Logan its General Manager, has lived up to the charter. A Sales Closer – a salesman who can make up the sales process on the fly and bring in deals without a datasheet, price list or roadmap. They will build the sales team that follows.

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

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. Read the preceding sentence again. It’s a big idea.)

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2019

As there was no venture capital, these early startups were funded by early sales to weapon systems prime contractors and subcontractors. But this quarter-century relationship between the military and universities ended with a bang in 1969. In some agencies, large contractors seem to “own” sections, offices, organizations, or programs.

Government 308

Government Artificial Inteligence Silicon Valley North Korea 308

Steve Blank

APRIL 21, 2011

This week they were testing their hypotheses about the sales “Channel” – how a company delivers its value proposition (i.e. Physical channels include Direct Sales, Rep Firms, Systems Integrators, Value-added Resellers, Distributors, Dealers, Mass Merchandisers, and Original Equipment Manufacturers. Two more weeks of the class to go.

Channel 215

Channel Artificial Inteligence San Francisco Business Model 215

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job. He tripled Microsoft’s sales to $78 billion and profits more than doubled from $9 billion to $22 billion. 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.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job. He tripled Microsoft’s sales to $78 billion and profits more than doubled from $9 billion to $22 billion. 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.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

This Stanford class will introduce management tools for entrepreneurs. Working with your team you will encounter issues on how to build and work with a team and we will help you understand how to build and manage the startup team. General Marketing, Sales Funnel, etc. What’s Different About the Class? Multi-sided markets.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

We came to the Lean LaunchPad class wanting to build a mobile/web research management system aimed at helping qualitative researchers better manage the media they captured in the field. Here’s how that happened. We were ready to learn, but pretty confident we would end the journey in the same market space in which we started.

Lean 315

Lean Customer Development Sales Cycle Business Model 315

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2020

Reforms in each of these areas will strengthen the foreign military sales process. Risk Management Tools. The department launched a pilot program with commercial risk management tools. And increasing industrial capacity. And in addition to strengthening our interoperability with allies and partners. The same kind of idea.

Acquisition 284

Acquisition Technical Review Technology Security 284

Steve Blank

AUGUST 23, 2010

We’re Not Here for a Sales Call. Disabusing the audience of the notion that the visit is a sales call is vital to the customer discovery mission. Short-circuiting that process is a major “foul” that often leads to premature business models and suboptimal sales results.). But we are not here for a sales call.&#.

Customer Development 235

Customer Development Developer Customer South America 235

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

When I asked our trade show manager she looked at me like I was the house idiot and said, “Steve, don’t you know that my job is to set up our trade show booth?” But my favorite was when the public relations manager said, “we’re here to write press releases and answer the phone in case the press calls.” This is a big idea.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? These formalized structures, necessary for managing execution/exploitation, actually strangle disruptive innovation before it can start. In short, it requires a different way not only to manage a company, but a different way to organize it as well.

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

They have fewer cash reserves and less margin of error for managing sudden downturns. All your assumptions about customers, sales cycle and most importantly, revenue, burn rate and runway are no longer true. If you are selling to businesses (a B-to-B market) have your customers’ sales dropped? Or you change sales strategy.

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

Running a company is distinctly different from simply having operating experience – (working in bus dev, sales or marketing.) We want to find someone who has a lot of consumer internet product experience as either product manager, founder, VP Product, etc. Then take a year as a product manager in a startup in the firm’s portfolio.

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Early Stage Technical Review Startup 332

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

On Being the First Practitioner of Lean : “ For me the challenge was how do you systematize this and turn it into a management practice that actually does not just have people pay lip service to it but really actually do it.”. . — Click the links below to hear more of Eric’s interview. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

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. My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

Opportunities are not just about sales, marketing or product. I had let my board tell me that the opportunity I saw was a commodity that could be managed by a spreadsheet. That requires you to identify opportunities and seize the day. In this case it was about a resource I had in my hands and let go of.

Advisory Board 260

Advisory Board Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Stock 260

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2016

After talking to teams in office hours (the teaching team meets every team for 20 minutes every week,) and watching teams present, and then seeing a team send a sponsor an email that read like a bad business school sales pitch, we realized some students had skipped their homework/and or still hadn’t grasped the basics of Customer Discovery.

Social Media 132

Social Media Customer Programming Video 132

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

Traditionally, engineering, sales, and marketing have all focused on the immovable launch date. Neither management nor investors tolerate “wrong turns” that result in delays. Even worse, a start-up’s investors are managing their financial expectations by this date as well. Executing on a sales and marketing plan.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

20 th century Management Tools for Execution In the 20 th century business schools and consulting firms developed an amazing management stack to assist companies to execute. These tools brought clarity to corporate strategy, product line extension strategies, and made product management a repeatable process. StageGate Process.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

As the company goes from searching for a business model to growth , only then will they bring in a new “professional” management team to scale the company (along with a business development executive to search for an acquirer) or prepare for an IPO. Do you wait 7 years until you’ve built enough revenue for a billion-dollar sale?

Liquidity Event 120

Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 4, 2011

This week, our first team up was PersonalLibraries (the team that had software to help researchers manage, share and reference the thousands of papers in their personal libraries.) Sales process: buyer/ user/ influencer etc.? We offered some examples of what a sales funnel looked like. The news from customers was not good.

Customer 234

Customer Business Model Nebraska Cloud 234

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2016

After talking to teams in office hours (the teaching team meets every team for 20 minutes every week,) and watching teams present, and then seeing a team send a sponsor an email that read like a bad business school sales pitch, we realized some students had skipped their homework/and or still hadn’t grasped the basics of Customer Discovery.

Social Media 120

Social Media Customer Programming Video 120

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

Our small training department had been without a manager for months and finding a replacement didn’t seem to be high on the VP of Sales list. Then it hit me – no one else wanted to be manager – what was the worst that could happen? All I had to do was ask. For entrepreneurs good things come to those who ask.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2020

If you can’t measure it you can’t manage it. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it. Mid-term, Limited Use of Force: The year is 2025, Taiwan has yet to budge on the sale of microchips. It’s incredibly slow, because of all the stakeholders. More like a surgical strike. 1 is measurement. 2, rewards.

Technical Review 322

Technical Review Taiwan Technology Design 322

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2011

When I was in my 20’s, I was taught the relationship between marketing and sales over a bonfire. And once we went public, we hired a veteran VP of Sales from Honeywell. I had joined the company as the product marketing manager and now found myself as the VP of marketing for this new division. Again, I managed to answer, “A lot.”

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley Channel Cofounder Demand 267

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

. ———— T o: Marketing Department From: Steve Subject: Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters Generating Leads Ownership If your company is going to a show to generate leads, then sales owns the show. This is worthy of an open and honest discussion with sales up front. And inviting to the booth/dinner/private demo.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

Evangelos Simoudis’ is the founder and managing director of Synapse Partners. Prior to his investing and advisory career, Evangelos spent 20+ years in high-technology industries, in executive roles spanning operations, marketing, sales and engineering. If you can’t hear the clip, click here. He was the CEO of two startups.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Prior to founding Carely , Michael Eidsaune earned his MBA in finance and spent several years in investment management, eventually earning his level 1 CFA certification. We were charging a really high up-front annual fee to these providers and the end result of that was a pretty long sales cycle. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

And there are more to come: your first job, getting married, buying a house, having a child, becoming a manager, starting a company, retirement – and eventually commencement speaker. Your life is already full of milestones: Your first steps, your first kiss, passing a driving test, this graduation.

Lean 221

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 221

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

I’m recovering from a reading spree of Chandlers Strategy and Structure , Gary Hamel’s The Future of Management and The Other Side of Innovation by Trimble and Govindarajan, Henry Chesbrough’s Open Innovation , as well as The Innovator’s DNA from Dyer, Gregersen and Christensen. Full disclosure. General Motors Organization Chart ~1925.

Business Model 333

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 333

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. What happened?

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131