Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2011

I spent the month of September lecturing, and interacting with (literally) thousands of entrepreneurs in two emerging startup markets, Finland and Russia. —— I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. 9-to-5 Venture Capital.

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Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 324

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

This post is about the rise of Chinese venture capital and how it helped build the countries entrepreneurial ecosystem. The Rise of Chinese Venture Capital. This helped the startups qualify for funding from banks and venture capital firms. It went bankrupt in 1997.). Investing in China Today.

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Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 163

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

Venture Capitalists who are serious about turning their firms into more than one-fund wonders may want to have their associates actually start and run a company for a year. Running a company is distinctly different from simply having operating experience – (working in bus dev, sales or marketing.) Filed under: Venture Capital.

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Venture Capital Early Stage Technical Review Startup 332

Steve Blank

APRIL 26, 2022

Except, that is, for the bottom feeders of the Venture Capital business – investors who “ cram down ” their companies. Startups that can’t find product/market fit and/or generate sufficient revenue and/or lacked patient capital are scrambling for dollars – and the bottom feeders are happy to help. Why do VCs Do This?

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. I would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. Context here.)

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Customer/Market Risk Versus Invention Risk One day I was having lunch with a VC sharing what I learned from my students. Steve,&# he said, “you’re missing the most interesting part of vertical markets. Markets with Customer/Market Risk are those where the unknown is whether customers will adopt the product.

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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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Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

For the last 10 years China essentially closed its search, media and social network software market to foreign companies with the result that Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Dropbox, and 30,000 other websites were not accessible from China. business models. Note that the inner ring shows their global equivalents.). I can’t imagine a U.S.

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China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

Founders can now access the largest pool of risk capital that ever existed –in the form of Private Equity (Angel Investors, family offices , Venture Capitalists (VC’s) and Hedge Funds.). At its core Venture Capital is nothing more than a small portion of the Private Equity financial asset class. Timing is everything.

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Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Founders overestimate the value of IP before product market fit by 255%. . Startups need 2-3 times longer to validate their market than most founders expect. Startups that haven’t raised money over-estimate their market size by 100x and often misinterpret their market as new. Download the full Startup Genome report here.

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Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

For a company in a rapidly changing market, that’s usually the beginning of the end. As we’ve grown we’ve become less and less responsive to changing market and customer needs. While the code rewrite is going on, competitors who aren’t enamored with architectural purity will be adding features, platforms, customers and market share.

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Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

For the last 10 years China essentially closed its search, media and social network software market to foreign companies with the result that Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Dropbox, and 30,000 other websites were not accessible from China. business models. Note that the inner ring shows their global equivalents.). I can’t imagine a U.S.

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China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2009

An intellectual property strategy will map out: Who are the key players and technologies in its market(s)? Startups acquiring their first customers may give special licensing terms in key markets, territories, etc. Posted in Technology, Venture Capital. Tags: Technology Venture Capital.

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Intellectual Property IP Software Review Non-disclosure Agreement 213

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

The traditional business plan is an essential organizing and planning document to launch new products in existing companies with known customers and markets. But this same document is a bad fit when used in a startup, as the customers and market are unknown. And they are ready to share!

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Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 275

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Was SuperMac attempting to introduce radically new products and create a new market ? Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? No, not really.

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Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2014

In response, venture capital firms like Sequoia and Andreessen/Horowitz are hiring new partners just to work with their portfolio companies and match them to corporations. The founding team is testing for the right combination of product, market, revenue, costs, etc. Silicon Valley – a Corporate Innovation Candy Store.

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Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 332

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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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Why are some companies able to reinvent themselves while others, once market leaders, are disrupted? Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? So they prepare for future markets by exploring new ventures. Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter?

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Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2013

The slide is a holdover from when existing companies launched products into crowded markets. Most of the time this graph is inappropriate for startups or existing companies creating new markets. The X/Y axis competitive analysis slide is a used by existing companies who plan to enter into an existing market. ——-.

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Venture Capital Customer Development Business Model Lean 335

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

Their presentation looked like this: Market/Opportunity Lessons Learned Slide 1 Lessons Learned Slide 2 Lessons Learned Slide 3 Why We’re Here Telling the Cafepress Customer Discovery and Customer Validation story allowed Fred and Maheesh to take the VC’s on their journey year by year.

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Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209

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. Why they were looking to me to run marketing wasn’t clear. The company was the laughing stock of the Mac market. The first step was to recruit a new management team.

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Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 146

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

The previous post described the evolution of the Chinese Venture Capital system. China Venture Capital. If it’s driven by profit then the ecosystem needs both entrepreneurs as well as Venture Finance. China has the biggest Venture Capital industry outside the U.S. Given the closed market to U.S.

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Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 267

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. (My I began to gain an appreciation of how world-class venture capitalists develop pattern recognition for these common types of problems. My mother kept asking if they were going to make me pay the money back.

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Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

A business plan is the execution document that large companies write when planning product-line extensions where customer, market and product features are known. One of my favorites: “ Judging will include such factors as: Market opportunity, reward to risk, strategy, implementation plan, financing plan, etc.”)

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Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 312

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

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. Leveraging my marketing skills, I successfully made what Steve calls an “onslaught launch”, generating a lot of press coverage and apparent early success.

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Japan Customer Development Developer Customer 292

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Named one of BusinessWeek’s Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech, Eric served as a venture advisor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers before moving on to advise startups and venture capital firms independently. He was named entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School in 2010 and is currently an IDEO Fellow.

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Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2012

Facebook has adroitly capitalized on market forces on a scale never seen in the history of commerce. For the first time, startups can today think about a Total Available Market in the billions of users (smart phones, tablets, PC’s, etc.) Filed under: Technology , Venture Capital. And who can blame them.

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Silicon Valley Venture Capital Social Media Media 336

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

Think about this; 7 years ago Nokia owned 50% of the handset market. Fast-forward to today—Apple is the most profitable Smartphone company in the world and in Spain Android commands a market share of more than 90%. Its worldwide market share of Smartphones has dwindled to 5%. Apple owned 0%.

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Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

It wasn’t pure research, but rather a culture of taking sufficient risks to get to market. While this signaled that investments in technology companies could be very lucrative, both Shockley and Fairchild could only be funded through corporate partners – there was no venture capital industry. But by the early 1960?s

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Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2013

I had a group of ex-students out to the ranch who were puzzling over a dilemma – they’ve been working hard on their startup, were close at finding product/market fit and had been approached by Oren, a potential angel investor. Filed under: Venture Capital. Venture Capital' Your board of directors is your boss.

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Advisory Board Venture Capital Angel Investor Limited Partner 319

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

We want to make a bet that your Lean Launchpad class can apply the scientific method to market-opportunity identification. 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. Uh oh, where’s this heading? “We

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Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 301

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

If you’re a venture capitalist … you have limited partners that give you money to invest on their behalf, and you’re responsible for giving them outsize returns. Therefore a venture capitalist needs to invest in startups that can turn into billion dollar companies. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

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Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

This post and the two that follow highlight what Dino has learned about the characteristics of the startup and investing landscape in a regional market, and what it takes to intentionally engineer a thriving regional tech cluster. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds. I visited Bend last year and caught up with his progress.

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Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

If you take funding from a venture capital firm or angel investor and want to build a large, enduring company (rather than sell it to the highest bidder), this isn’t the decade to do it. The collapse of the IPO market and dysfunctional math in the venture capital community has stacked the odds against you.

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Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” The first question to ask is: “Does your startup have market risk or is it dominated by technical risk?” Lean Startup /Customer Development is used to find answers to the unknowns about customers and markets.

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Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2013

This was the China I grew up with – the one where private enterprise was a crime and marketing wasn’t a profession. China has embraced state capitalism in a way Wall Street can only dream about. Startups, Venture Capital and the Communist Party: how did this happen in China? Like the U.S.

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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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