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.

Lean 120

Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 19, 2011

30 months ago he raised a Series A venture round from two name brand Silicon Valley VC firms. Great VC’s in brand name firms don’t have these problems” is the line I hear. The problem is as bad in large brand name funds as in the smaller firms. The Bad Board Member. I had coffee last week with one of my ex students.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Software Review Technical Review 235

Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

Step 3: List the names of the business development, technology scouts and other people involved in acquisitions and note their names next to the name of the target company. The odds on day-one are that you can’t name anyone. How will you figure this out? Step 4: Generate the business case for the potential acquirer.

Liquidity Event 120

Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2018

Assume someone has just given you a package wrapped in a bow with your name on it. Treat advice and suggestions as a gift, not a distraction. Then think of how they’ll feel when you ignore it and toss it aside.

Technical Review 318

Technical Review Email Naming Conversion 318

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2020

The idea sat there for a decade until a naval officer named Deak Parsons discovered it, went around to every bureau chief, pounded the table on why it mattered, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, until he got them to cough up a check for $5,000 to fund the project. They were great inventors, but lousy champions.

Taiwan 322

Taiwan Technical Review Technology Design 322

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

He called the combination “ The Lean Startup ” and wrote a great book with that name. Eric Ries, who took my first Customer Development class at Berkeley, had the insight that Customer Development should be paired with Agile Development.

Technical Review 327

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 327

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2023

A contract for a system named O’Malley followed. What Did ERA Build For the National Security Agency (NSA)? By the end of ERA’s first year, ERA had contracts for a digital device called Alcatraz which used thousands of vacuum tubes and relays. Then two “exhaustive trial” systems called Hecate for $250,000 ($3.2 million today.)

Minnesota 281

Minnesota Engineer Minneapolis Silicon Valley 281

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

He called the combination “ The Lean Startup ” and wrote a great book with that name. Eric Ries, who took my first Customer Development class at Berkeley, had the insight that Customer Development should be paired with Agile Development.

Technical Review 219

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 219

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

Even back then the advisor was a well-known name in Silicon Valley. I could get him the stock he asked for approved at my board meeting and then reply. Death by Spreadsheet. I was so excited to break the news to the board that I put this new advisor on as the first agenda item.

Advisory Board 260

Advisory Board Part-Time VPE CTO Hire Stock 260

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Still, unless your startup has access to large pools of capital or have a brand name like Katzenberg, Lean still makes sense. The amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to do is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. The Lean Startup isn’t dead.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2019

Beyond the possible loss of revenues, this early decision may be difficult to change, or even irreversible: it influences how you develop your technology going forward, raise money, write patents, recruit employees and pick a brand name. Each of these markets varies significantly in its business context and in its promise for growth.

Lean 333

Lean Marketing Agile Customer Development 333

Steve Blank

AUGUST 11, 2020

And have their microphone off, their full name visible, and a virtual background with their team ID. Don’t be afraid to call out students by name, as Zoom format makes raising hand or asking a question more awkward. A list of remote teaching tools suggested in the breakout sessions are here. Create deeper connection with the students.

Lean 420

Lean San Francisco Silicon Valley Florida 420

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2012

With a massive leap of creativity we decided that it should it should have our company name and the letter “E” with a swoop over it. And with that same massive leap of creativity Microsoft decided that their logo would have their product name and the letter “E’ with a swoop over it. property of Microsoft.

SQL 282

SQL Naming Internet Software 282

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Your name has come up a lot in that regard. The email closed by saying, “The project is a hybrid between academic and entrepreneurial circles and I’d really love to begin a dialogue with people in the academic world also interested in solving this problem. Let me know if this interests you and if you have any time to speak.&#.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

MARCH 15, 2017

This year, marketing needs to provide sales with 40,000 active and accepted leads, company and product name recognition over 65% in our target market, and five positive product reviews per quarter. We will accomplish this through demand-creation activities (advertising, PR, tradeshows, seminars, web sites, etc.),

Startup 310

Startup PR Public Relations Channel 310

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

As we were out looking for our Series B round, our company had gotten the attention of “name of big VC firm here” who wanted a play in enterprise software. Never Get Even, Get Ahead With a set of orders from brand name customers, we had growing confidence that we had achieved product/market fit. Are These Your Slides?

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2010

He quickly left and when I passed him in the hall, he was in deep conversation with the program manager, and I could hear snippets of my name and the word “terrible.”. After about 20 minutes my manager said, “Thanks Steve, that’s enough.” Even I knew I had done horribly.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Technical Review Hiring Programming 258

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers. He even remembered the names of their wives and kids and some details about schools or events. (I I couldn’t believe it, here we were wasting precious time and the dumb sales guy is talking about other stuff.)

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 21, 2020

To build this dev SEC ops, AI ops environment, which is to give everybody in the Department of Defense equal access to everything from data, to AI tools, to all the security environment, to Jupyter notebooks , you name it, everything you would need to develop AI. The JAIC is building that as a common foundation.

Artificial Inteligence 246

Artificial Inteligence Technology Agile Architecture 246

Steve Blank

MAY 20, 2010

Big Name CEO. Our second round of funding was from a firm and VC whose names were household words. Now that the big name CEO had tentatively accepted our job offer we were having a board meeting via conference call to approve his compensation package. But as we would find out the hard way – zero experience as an entrepreneur.

Founder 275

Founder Cofounder Salary Internet 275

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

I found a willing co-conspirator in Capt Ryan Silva, a star instructor who mentors a project named Neumimic , using technology to aid in the rehabilitation of patients with chronic loss of limb motion. In the first year, they had developed a proof of concept around the Xbox Kinect – and Ryan had high hopes for the future.

Lean 262

Lean Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 262

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

Where are the charitable foundations, business schools, and hospitals named after the founder of GM? Yet, you never hear who built GM to that size. Who was the entrepreneur who founded what would become General Motors 16 years earlier, in 1904? What happened to him? The founder of what became General Motors was William (Billy) Durant.

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Finally, since no one would believe a set of benchmarks named after our company, we needed a façade of independence, so we named them after the street the company was headquartered on in Sunnyvale California – they became known as the Potrero Benchmarks.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

JANUARY 14, 2013

Its director, Vannever Bush became in all but name the first presidential science advisor. The material to make the bombs – Plutonium and Uranium 235 – were made by civilian contractors at Hanford Washington and Oak Ridge Tennessee. OSRD was essentially a wartime U.S. Department of Research and Development.

Silicon Valley 243

Silicon Valley Government Germany Japan 243

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2015

Google just named the organization’s leader. Four excellent examples of this transition include BMW’s brand , Verizon’s online video business unit , Telefonica’s Open Future business unit, and Samsung’s Connected Home business unit. Google’s Car organization is in the process of making this transition.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Incubator Acquisition Business Model 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2021

These would include the fields of artificial intelligence, machine learning, biotech, hypersonics, and microelectronics, to name just a few. This adviser would ideally sit on both the National Security Council and National Economic Council, where they could coordinate policies covering a range of technological and scientific issues.

Security 418

Security Artificial Inteligence Taiwan United States 418

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2021

Xi Jinping, “Uphold and Develop Socialism with Chinese Characteristics,” (speech delivered on January 5, 2013, published in Qiushi (“Seeking Truth”), the Central Party School’s main theoretical journal, under Xi’s name on April 1, 2019, and translated in Palladium Magazine in May 2019).

Technology 376

Technology China United States Russia 376

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

When I read the funny names of these microwaves devices… Backward wave oscillators, TWT’s, Magnetrons…long silent memories came back. Another piece of trivial: the road that is the side-entrance (during business hours) to Agilent Corporation HQ in Santa Clara is named “Terman Lane&# after Terman.

Silicon Valley 270

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 270

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

Hello, my name is xx. And if they’re working at home, they may have a different email address. Don’t use the same opening email pitch you did before the virus. Your email should recognize and acknowledge the new normal. I know this must be a crazy time for you. I’m a student/PI at xx University. All our classes have gone online.

Customer 413

Customer Business Model Restful Video 413

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2016

Initially, things were going well for the company Graeme originally named SnoopGuard. His launch was short-circuited by a lawyer, though: We got a cease and desist letter from a very well-known celebrity whose name had the word Snoop in it. . If you can’t hear the clip, click here. Although the U.S.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Fort Worth America Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 12, 2017

While the economy has continued to grow, in the name of corporate efficiency and profitability we’ve closed the shipyards and factories and moved those jobs overseas. In fact, more than half of Americans fall into the working class. And the conversations I was listening to were a real-life narrative of the “middle-class squeeze.”

San Francisco 332

San Francisco Silicon Valley Washington New York 332

Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2019

It’s altogether fitting and proper that in a college named after Rachel Carson , to share four short stories of what happened when truth and justice faced money and power – for the seven years I served as a public official on the California Coastal Commission.

California 321

California Silicon Valley Michigan San Francisco 321

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

If you’re a visiting dignitary whose country has a Gross National Product equal to or greater than the State of California, your visit to Silicon Valley consists of a lunch/dinner with some combination of the founders of Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter and several brand name venture capitalists.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley San Francisco San Jose Venture Capital 335

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2009

Or it can be your brand , logo or domain name. The assets you can protect may include your “core technology&# like source code, hardware designs, architectures, processes, formulas. You can protect business processes, know how, customer information, product road map. For some of these assets, you get protection automatically.

Intellectual Property 213

Intellectual Property IP Software Review Non-disclosure Agreement 213

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 6, 2020

The good news is that DoD has recognized this and has announced a new policy for acquiring software , and have start building ‘software factories’ with names like Kessel Run (USAF) and Kobiyashi Maru (Space Force). Over the last few decades, the ability of the DoD to design and even understand modern software design had atrophied.

Technology 397

Technology Afghanistan Iraq Vietnam 397

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

If you’re a startup raising money or just want to see your name online, there’s not a better blog on the web. Reading this TechCrunch post made me remember the first time I saw someone confront a worldview they didn’t expect. Discovering that your worldview is wrong or mistaken can be a life-changing event.

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Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184