Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

He hired an operating exec as the CEO a few years ago. If they’re an operating exec brought in to replace a founding technical CEO, then it looks like an easy decision – just listen to your engineering VP compare the schedule for a rewrite (short) against the schedule of adapting the old code to the new purpose (long.)

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

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. Often they have brought in an operating executive as the new CEO. Silicon Valley – a Corporate Innovation Candy Store.

Acquisition 332

Acquisition Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 332

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?

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

In sharp contrast, start-ups operate in “search/ explore ” mode, seeking a repeatable and profitable business model. Most R&D budgets in established companies are spent on sustaining innovations that support existing products and operating divisions and the attendant processes and procedures, rigorous measurement, and controls.

Incubator 402

Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Investors who provide hands-on help have little or no effect on the company’s operational performance. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. But the right mentors significantly influence a company’s performance and ability to raise money. Download the full Startup Genome report here.

Technical Cofounder 333

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

And some of their best and brightest have ended up in the organizations like the 2nd Bureau, Unit 61398 tasked euphemistically for “Computer Network Operations.”. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

And some of their best and brightest have ended up in the organizations like the 2nd Bureau, Unit 61398 tasked euphemistically for “Computer Network Operations.”. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

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 No one was actually quite that good, but some VCs had “golden guts” for these kinds of operating issues. Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

APRIL 8, 2022

Think of the Deputy Secretary of Defense as the Chief Operating Officer of a company – but in this case the company has 3 million employees (~1.4 We need a requirements, budgeting and acquisition process that operates at commercial speed (18 months or less) which is 10x faster than DoD procurement cycles.

Security 217

Security Silicon Valley China Private Equity 217

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

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. government backed venture firms and limited partnerships. A wave of innovation was about to meet a pile of risk capital.

Engineer 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

Steve Blank

JULY 8, 2010

Are you are born with innate entrepreneurial talent or can you can be taught to operate like an entrepreneur? Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Jason Calacanis , founder of Mahalo.com, and Mark Suster of GRP Partners, have all weighed in on the nature side – you’re born being an entrepreneur or you’re not. Taking Sides.

Venture Capital 227

Venture Capital Entrepreneur Customer Development Partner 227

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.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

Before moving to Bend last year, my career took me from engineering development roles at defense contractors in the 80’s to product management and executive marketing roles in companies like Qualcomm in the 90’s, to the world of venture capital at several firms including Bay Partners, Formative Ventures and Vulcan Ventures.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

In fact, it was only 7 years ago that Apple shipped its first iPhone and Google introduced its Android operating system. As the venture capital business has come roaring back in the last 5 years, startups are awash in available capital. Think about this; 7 years ago Nokia owned 50% of the handset market. Apple owned 0%.

Private Equity 325

Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 325

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

The OEM Business Convergent’s business was selling desktop computers (with our own operating system and office applications) to other computer manufacturers – most of them long gone: Burroughs, Prime, Monroe Data Systems, ADP, Mohawk, Gould, NCR, 4-Phase, AT&T.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

and reorganized into operating divisions (by product, territory, brand, etc.) This strategy-to-structure shift from functional organizations to operating divisions was led by DuPont and popularized by General Motors and quickly followed by Standard Oil and Sears. Operating divisions execute the known business model.

Business Model 333

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 333

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

For the first 75 years of the 20 th century, when capital for new ventures was scarce, the smartest engineering talent went to corporate R&D labs. But starting in the last quarter of that century and accelerating in this one, a new form of financing – risk capital (angel and venture capital) — emerged.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

In the past, when venture-funded startups told their investors they’d found a profitable business model, the first thing VC’s would do is to start looking for an “operating exec” – usually an MBA who would act as the designated “adult” and take over the transition from Search to Build. There was tons of advice and resources.

Startup 120

Startup Lean Venture Capital Advisory Board 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

Scheduling time to look over a surgeon’s shoulder in an operating room is tough. It will have a simulated procedure space that can be configured as an Operating Room, Emergency Room, Intensive Care Unit and other clinical/procedural settings. Getting time to brainstorm with payers or experts in clinical trials is hard.

San Diego 261

San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 261

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

Founders operate in a chaotic regime. Jon Feiber at MDV is going to try investing in startups emerging from Universities with great engineering schools outside of Silicon Valley that have entrepreneurship programs, but minimal venture capital infrastructure. Keep score of the strategy changes with the Business Model Canvas.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Customer Development Manifesto , Market Types « “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch Closure » 21 Responses Tweets that mention Times Square Strategy Session – Web Startups and Customer Development « Steve Blank -- Topsy.com , on November 16, 2009 at 7:20 am Said: [.]

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Yet in our case the product, the machine as delivered from engineering, was a blank, featureless computer with just an operating system and compilers. In most other companies a product-marketing department was responsible for the pricing, positioning and promotion of the product.

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

Here are a few thoughts about operating in uncertainty in a pandemic. Revise your sales revenue goals, product timelines and create a new business model and operating plan – and communicate them clearly to your investors and then to your employees. And what’s in my lifeboat?”.

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

Steve Blank

JUNE 17, 2011

billion dollars while admitting it will have operating losses through the end of fiscal 2012.) Filed under: Venture Capital. But they don’t support his justification of the bubble valuations we are seeing for companies filing for IPO’s (Pandora Media just priced its IPO at $2.6

Investment Bankers 310

Investment Bankers Stock Valuation Venture Capital 310

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2023

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. 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 1, 2020

Operating Numbers. This plan has three parts: Pivots to your new business model, changes to your operating plan, and what initiatives you save for the recovery. Days 3 and 4: Prepare new business model and operating plan. … Next, plot out the changes to your operating plan. Internal Assessment.

South Korea 333

South Korea Salary Business Model China 333

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

There was no repeatable methodology, startups and their VC’s still operated like startups were simply a smaller version of a large company. Filed under: Technology , Venture Capital. The Business Plan (Concept- Alpha-Beta - FCS ) became the playbook for startups. The world of building profitable startups ended in 1995.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Replacing the founder when the company needed to scale was almost standard operating procedure. To continually innovate, companies need to operate at startup speed and cycle time much longer their 20th century counterparts did. Sandberg had been the vice president of global online sales and operations. The founders.

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

It reminded me of “earlier days&# , when I was just starting out in running business operations for startups. Reply bjorn , on March 23, 2009 at 5:18 pm Said: these stories really livened up the whole concept of “customer discovery&# for me. i have your book, but stopped at the 4th chapter.

Silicon Valley 134

Silicon Valley Customer RSS Philippines 134

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

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.) Our company’s graphics boards were designed to speed up a key part of the Macintosh graphics operating system called QuickDraw.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2019

In addition to Stanford I also teach at Columbia, and at these research universities – Stanford, Columbia, Berkeley, and others – they all now have an internal incubator, they have maker spaces, they have their own venture funds, they connect to the community, they connect to venture capital. It’s a big idea.

Incubator 331

Incubator Lean Programming Government 331

Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2016

Part 1 talked about what I saw and learned – the layout of a carrier, how the air crew operates and how the carrier functions in context of the other ships around it (the strike group.) It’s hard because any large organization is led by people who succeeded as Horizon 1 and 2 managers and operators (not researchers).

Syria 120

Syria Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iran 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 19, 2011

has evolved an entrepreneurial ecosystem with two of the most unlikely partners – venture capital investors and technology entrepreneurs. Every Venture Capitalist I’ve heard talk about founder/board member problems treats them like they only happen in other funds. The venture capital industry is in denial.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Software Review Technical Review 235

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. The first reaction from my CEO was, “that’s why you’re running the department.” And yes, we could have built a top-down, command-and-control hierarchy.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

But the team believed adding video as an integral part of an operating system and user experience (where there had only been text and still images) would be transformative. At the time no one (including Apple) knew exactly what consumers were going to do with multimedia, it was still pre-Internet.

Video 164

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

All the radar operator would see was noise, rather than airplanes. Radar engineers had observed if you cut a strip of aluminum foil to 1/2 the wavelength of a radar transmitter and throw it in front of the radars antenna, the radar signal would reflect perfectly. making nothing but jammers to put on our bombers.

Silicon Valley 180

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 180

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

The Stanford records showed that his group received more funding than any other and I assumed it was for construction of these operational systems. I made the leap too far to credit VIllard with the projects. steve Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 171

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 171