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. I knew everything about our operating system, hardware and applications – and I was going to prove it.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2011

Running a company is distinctly different from simply having operating experience – (working in bus dev, sales or marketing.) Board skills (Startup coaching, mentoring, strategy, operational/growth). venture/operating partners to get them into new industries. Fund raising skills. Carrying the Cat By The Tail.

Venture Capital 332

Venture Capital Early Stage Technical Review Startup 332

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. Microsoft left the 20 th century owning over 95% of the operating systems that ran on computers (almost all on desktops).

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. Microsoft left the 20 th century owning over 95% of the operating systems that ran on computers (almost all on desktops).

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

I had joined MIPS Computers, my second semiconductor company , as the VP of marketing and also took on the role of the acting VP of Sales. and get the chip designed into companies building engineering workstations – powerful personal computers, all while trying to refine how to find the right markets, customers, and sales process.

Part-Time VPE 333

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 333

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2017

So is John Rice, the head of Global Operations along with CFO Jeffrey Bornstein. Increase operating margins to 18% (by cutting expenses). Or they may even put the entire company up for sale. . — In June 2017, the board “retired” Jeff Immelt and promoted John Flannery to CEO. Beth Comstock is out.

Institutional Investors 233

Institutional Investors Dividend Stock Technical Review 233

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

Each sale requires us to handhold the customer and takes way too long to close. He took a deep breath, looked around the boardroom table and then proceeded to outline a radical reconfiguration of the product line (repackaging the products rather than reengineering them) and a change in sales strategy, focusing on a different customer segment.

Business Model 332

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 332

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

And he proceeded to lay out a fairly complex and innovative sales and marketing strategy for our next 18 months. I was mostly operating in this box what I got chewed out by our CEO.) One day the CEO called me into his office and asked, “Steve I’ve been thinking about this as our strategy going forward. What do you think?”

Business Model 305

Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 305

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

This was the fault of my cofounder since he was in charge of game development, it was the engineers who bailed on me, it was the sales and marketing people who didn’t tell me how bad the games were, it was the VC’s who refused to put any more money in the company, it was Sega’s fault for making a bad gaming platform….

Redemption 330

Redemption Cofounder Silicon Valley Burn Rate 330

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? In sharp contrast, start-ups operate in “search/ explore ” mode, seeking a repeatable and profitable business model. Why are some companies able to reinvent themselves while others, once market leaders, are disrupted? Is it that some CEOs are better than others?

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

Activities cover clinical trials, FDA approvals, Freedom to Operate (IP, Licenses) software development, drug or device design, etc. Customer Relationships is what we think of as traditional sales and marketing; assembling a SAB, getting the KOL’s, conferences, articles, etc.

Intellectual Property 281

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 281

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

Here are a few thoughts about operating in uncertainty in a pandemic. 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

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

OCTOBER 7, 2011

Finnish private investors don’t yet have enough time-in-grade to have developed good pattern recognition skills, and most lack operating backgrounds. The number of serial entrepreneurs is very low and until recently most of the talented sales and marketing professionals choose to work for Nokia.

Finland 324

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 324

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

Yet everyone – investors, entrepreneurs, academics — expected new startups to follow the same practices that worked for large companies – write a business plan, forecast 5-year sales projections and build the product without ever talking to customers.

Lean 221

Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 221

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2013

This was the fault of my cofounder since he was in charge of game development, it was the engineers who bailed on me, it was the sales and marketing people who didn’t tell me how bad the games were, it was the VC’s who refused to put any more money in the company, it was Sega’s fault for making a bad gaming platform….

Redemption 222

Redemption Cofounder Silicon Valley Burn Rate 222

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Investors who provide hands-on help have little or no effect on the company’s operational performance. more likely to successfully scale with sales driven startups than with product centric startups. But the right mentors significantly influence a company’s performance and ability to raise money. Solo founders take 3.6x

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

JUNE 6, 2016

Prior to his investing and advisory career, Evangelos spent 20+ years in high-technology industries, in executive roles spanning operations, marketing, sales and engineering. You need to be able to understand how to take advantage of the market you’re operating in, including how to take advantage of corporations. .

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Fractional CTO Analytics 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

We knew from back-of-the-envelope calculations that I would need 3 times the combined marketing and sales budgets of the incumbents for a head-on assault. (I It wasn’t until I found the extremely obscure Lanchester Strategy for market share that I realized that these ratios had their basis in operations research and the Lanchester’s Laws.)

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. Hiring Channel Sales. “So Why doesn’t this sound like the right thing to do for channel sales?” They thought about it for a moment and said, “Well we feel like we understand how to build things, but sales is something we thought we’d hire an expert to do.”.

PR 314

PR China Lean Channel 314

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

In turn, these new strategies drove the need for companies to be structured around functions (manufacturing, purchasing, sales, etc.). In the 1920’s companies restructured from monolithic functional organizations (sales, marketing, manufacturing, purchasing, etc.) Operating divisions execute the known business model.

Business Model 333

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 333

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2023

Sales in their first fiscal year were $1.5 Warlock was so large that it was kept at the ERA factory and operated as a remote operations center. ERA Disk Drives One of the problems code breakers had was the difficulty of being able to store and operate on large sets of data. ERA’s headcount grew rapidly. A year later, 420.

Minnesota 281

Minnesota Engineer Minneapolis Silicon Valley 281

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2021

Investors are also likely to express impatience with the long timelines of defense sales. The best prepared companies can either raise sufficient funds to keep operating or count on revenue from other sources. Palmer Luckey’s Anduril has aggressively pursued financing to sustain growth. Recently public enterprise-AI firm C3.ai

Artificial Inteligence 326

Artificial Inteligence Marketing Startup Silicon Valley 326

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

understand who their core and tertiary customers are, and the sales and marketing process required for initial clinical sales and downstream commercialization. Scheduling time to look over a surgeon’s shoulder in an operating room is tough. assess intellectual property and regulatory risk before they design and build.

San Diego 261

San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 261

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

Sales teams are commission-based, executive compensation is based on EPS, revenue and margin, business units on revenue and margin contribution, etc. One of the least obvious but most important HR Process, and ultimately the most contentious, issue in corporate innovation is the difference in incentives. What Does this Mean?

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 1, 2020

Operating Numbers. Sales pipeline/forecast. I listened in on a board call with an enterprise software company this week, and when the CEO said, “Our VP of sales assured me our pipeline won’t be affected.” Days 3 and 4: Prepare new business model and operating plan. Internal Assessment.

South Korea 333

South Korea Salary Business Model China 333

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

Traditionally, engineering, sales, and marketing have all focused on the immovable launch date. Established companies execute business models where customers, problems, and necessary product features are all knowns; start-ups, on the other hand, need to operate in a “search” mode as they test and prove every one of their initial hypotheses.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Steve Blank

AUGUST 22, 2011

Are you looking for a visionary or an operating executive? Founders search, operating executives execute. If you’re hiring an operating executive (CEO, VP, Executive Director, etc.). Don’t start with the candidate (board member x has a great VP of sales he knows, founder y wants this CEO he met at a conference, etc.).

Hiring 290

Hiring Non-Compete Search Customer Development 290

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

But we were meeting to talk about sales and marketing. Hiring Channel Sales. “So Why doesn’t this sound like the right thing to do for channel sales?” They thought about it for a moment and said, “Well we feel like we understand how to build things, but sales is something we thought we’d hire an expert to do.”.

PR 206

PR China Lean Channel 206

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 25, 2010

At the same time every computer company was writing its own operating system. Soon standard operating systems (e.g. Confronting the reality that one of these hypotheses is wrong (finding out you have the wrong sales channel, revenue model, target market or customer) creates a crisis. x86 , ARM.) Windows, Linux ) emerged.

Customer Development 329

Customer Development Business Model Developer Customer 329

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2011

When I was in my 20’s, I was taught the relationship between marketing and sales over a bonfire. They were an improvement over the dumb terminals hanging off of mainframes and minicomputers, but ran proprietary operating systems and software. And once we went public, we hired a veteran VP of Sales from Honeywell.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley Channel Cofounder Demand 267

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

They suggested I get a VP of Sales to help.”. They helped me hire the best VP of Sales I could find. He’s been in sales for almost 15 years.”. I thought our new Sales VP would be out in front helping us lead Customer Validation and help us find the Pivot. He was supposed to be a great VP of Sales.

Startup 312

Startup Business Model Customer Development Bandwidth 312

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2016

This knowledge will help the students understand the overall environment that their Mission Model Canvas is operating in. We posted the slides here and more important, an annotated narrative for each of the slides here. It’s truly a landmark presentation. Even if you think you know how the DOD works, read the narrative alongside the slides.

Social Media 132

Social Media Customer Programming Video 132

Steve Blank

JUNE 24, 2013

Smart startups prepare to face off against rent seekers and map out creative strategies for doing so… First, however, they need to understand what a rent seeker is and how they operate… ———-. Understand who has political and regulator influence and where they operate. PayPal – Dodging Bullets.

North Carolina 335

North Carolina New Jersey New York Government 335

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2019

For innovation to succeed inside of a large company, you need a parallel set of processes, not to replace the existing ones, but to operate on a fast track. The hard part in a company is not getting a demo or setting up an internal accelerator, it’s getting something delivered all the way through your existing sales channel.

Incubator 331

Incubator Lean Programming Government 331

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