View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

Was this a lost decade for venture capital? Or simply put, a small % of VC funds take home a large % of venture return. The chart below illustrates this, with the black vertical line representing the average VC return. But what do we see from some of the more recent (but mature) vintages? Source: Cambridge Associates.

Valuation 319

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 319

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

Was this a lost decade for venture capital? Or simply put, a small % of VC funds take home a large % of venture return. The chart below illustrates this, with the black vertical line representing the average VC return. But what do we see from some of the more recent (but mature) vintages? Source: Cambridge Associates.

Valuation 295

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 295

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Reply steveblank , on June 29, 2009 at 1:07 am Said: Charlie, Nivi at Venture Hacks has great advice at [link] – look at the “Equity&# section. The rest is worth reading as well. But make sure it fits who you are. If you have, I’d be very interested in your take on it. steve Am I a Founder? carry on reading.

Cofounder 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Unfortunately most startups learn this by going through the “Fire the first Sales VP&# drill: You start your company with a list of potential customers reading like a “who’s who&# of whatever vertical market you’re in (or the Fortune 1000 list.) Its Woz-inspired creativity set the tone for the rest of the project.&#

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

Brendan McManus said: “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [link] #startup #advice [.] The rest is just fluff. Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch « Steve Blank (tags: presentations presuation vc startup) [.] Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch [.]

Venture Capital 209

Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 209

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

The rest of the organization (product development, marketing, support) has been burning cash, all according to plan, expecting Sales to make its numbers. Why is it only alarming now? Because the company based its headcount and expenses on the expectation that the Sales organization will bring in revenue according to plan.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

View from Seed

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

Was this a lost decade for venture capital? Or simply put, a small % of VC funds take home a large % of venture return. The chart below illustrates this, with the black vertical line representing the average VC return. But what do we see from some of the more recent (but mature) vintages? Source: Cambridge Associates.

Valuation 156

Valuation Pre-Money Valuation Distribution Early Stage 156

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

MAY 11, 2009

They had this great architecture, and Apple had figured out to get movies into their own computers for a demo, but for the rest of us there was no physical device that allowed an average consumer to plug a video camera or VCR into and get video into a Mac. But the rest of the management team really skeptical. Little did we know.

Video 164

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

You can imagine the rest of the conversation; my sounding reluctant to let our own tests outside our building, the magazines begging us to let them have them, and finally a deal gets struck where we let the benchmarks out to the test labs of these magazines under their own name “The Potrero Benchmark Suite” without attribution to us.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Instead of focusing on “technical specs&# like the rest of the category, we are redefining to Information Delivery as the category with time/cost to Actionable Info as the metric, which is something we can compete on very well. Reply Dave Goulden , on March 26, 2009 at 11:04 pm Said: I love the redefinition of the market.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 141

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

And the rest is history. Mike may have “fathered&# FM-CW OTH ardar at Stanford and SRI, but the rest of OTH radar technology had its beginnings at NRL, Raytheon, Sylvania, and ITT. Gorbachev, now the Soviet Premier, had to grapple with the spiraling cost of military systems that weren’t amortized by consumer purchases.

Silicon Valley 171

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 171

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

Steve my name is Donald xx, and I’m the head of external affairs of the CIA’s venture capital firm and we’d like you to keynote our conference.” So I gave my “ The Secret History of Silicon Valley ” talk as the keynote to the CIA’s venture capital conference. It gave me a sense of purpose for the rest of the war.

Silicon Valley 247

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Venture Capital 247

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) so at least some parts are being run by people who know what they are doing.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

Reply Mark Essel , on November 25, 2009 at 7:02 am Said: Diggin’ the presentation so far, looking forward to catching the rest of this later in the day. This is a must watch, and you might as well check out the slides and relevant links. [.]

Customer Development 212

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 212

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

But, as any startup can tell you, this opens up a tremendous set of opportunities for the rest of us. We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. The old models are broken, and we do not yet have new models to replace them. For established media empires, this is a scary fact.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Government Regulations I turned to the class and said, “The rest of you can keep building your company and shipping your product because you don’t need to worry about government regulations. So the first heuristic is: do not assume the startup rules are the same for all vertical markets. Do you have domain expertise in your market?

Vertical 149

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 149

The Next Web

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Jenny Lee, a partner at venture capital firm GGV Capital which has a presence in both the US and China, also observes that in the US, the willingness to pay for an app is pretty high — especially for a utility tool, which is what CooTek’s TouchPal X Keyboard essentially is. But on the other hand they have more time.

China 122

China Developer Intellectual Property Mobile 122

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

Our president picked up on the momentum and asked me what I needed from the rest of the exec team to fix this debacle. It was so out of character, people were shocked. Some stammered out, “can you say that again?&#

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Austin Startup

AUGUST 7, 2017

Texas is the most promising technology investment opportunity in the United States and Capital Factory is going to turbocharge it. By connecting Austin, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and the rest of the state into a Texas S tartup Megatropolis we can unlock billions of dollars in capital and unleash thousands of diverse entrepreneurs.

Texas 97

Texas San Antonio Houston Dallas 97

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

Look for locations near entrances, food concessions, rest rooms, seminar rooms, or close to major exhibitors. Be sure to look at a floor plan before you choose your site. Foot traffic is heaviest in certain areas of a typical trade show floor. Try to avoid dead-end aisles, loading docks, obstructing columns, or other low-traffic regions.

Silicon Valley 178

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 178

Steve Blank

MARCH 28, 2009

The signals displayed by the ALR-20 were used to control the jammers of the rest of electronic countermeasures systems – putting out enormous number of kilowatts using brute force noise jamming and later on some much more sophisticated jamming techniques. And because of his training, an EWO could identify and prioritize the threats.

Silicon Valley 195

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Michigan 195

abovethecrowd.com

APRIL 17, 2013

eBay recently launched an aggressive campaign attacking Amazon’s rate table on a vertical-by-vertical basis ( those percentages can be found here ). The rest is history. Apple Internet iphone IPO marketplaces social networking Uncategorized Venture Capital Web/Tech Commission Marketplace online marketplaces pricing'

Europe 101

Europe Social Network Technical Review IPO 101

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Martin , on October 5, 2009 at 9:11 am Said: I am curious to hear the rest of what Steve will have to say about Durant and Sloan. Falling shy of creating AND building a great company, I have to give points to those who did either one, and on that score Durant and Sloan remain high in my pantheon. Gary Hoover Reply Michael F.

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 13, 2011

The venture capital industry is so heavily skewed to Northern California, which the remains spilled over Boston, New York & Southern California. So it was wonderful to hear from a leading venture capital firm based in Washington DC. A contemporary analog to this type of vertical integration is Comcast/NBC-U.

Cofounder 277

Cofounder Merger Founder Venture Capital 277

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I finally understood how valuable these contests can be for students in cities or countries without a venture capital or entrepreneurial infrastructure. And the rest of the advice on this blog is irrelevant. to compete. And even if they did – customers don’t ask to see your business plan.

Business Plan 140

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

The rest of the progress report sounded just like this. Me: How are we doing on the Nastran port? Jim: Wonderful, they said they’ll get back to me next month. Me: How about Dyna 3D ? Jim: It’s going great, we’re on their list. After hearing the same report for the nth week, I called a halt to the meeting.

Silicon Valley 324

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 324

Hunter Walker

JULY 18, 2022

Instead I’ll suggest there are two specific questions that really matter, the answers to which will have the biggest impact on the next 1–5 years of startups and venture capital. The two questions that will have the greatest impact on startups and venture over the next few years, and potentially the rest of this decade.

Valuation 116

Valuation Cap Table Startup Later Stage 116

Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

For example, if you’re an early-stage SaaS provider that is shifting from a horizontal solution to a vertical focus, your mission, culture, and competencies can stay the same and the pivot transition will probably go smoothly. Then, that board member(s) can persuade the rest of the board that this is the right thing to happen.

Startup 36

Startup Silicon Valley Business Model Mobile 36

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

It wasn’t a lack of competence or skill in her job; it was just that as far as she was concerned, her job had no connection to the rest of marketing, our customers or our ultimate success as a company. “We We need your decision now because we are about to spend $50,000 on new collateral.”

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 185

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

It’s been thirty years, but every once an awhile I still wonder what happened to the rest of their lives. By the time I came back to the United States, he was gone from the company.

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

A great vacation with my wife wasn’t going to make up for being AWOL from home the rest of the year. Some of these problems began with the 19th century Romanticist notion of artists as mad geniuses, in elevated isolation from the rest of us. People need to be left alone sometimes because they need other people.

Entrepreneur 276

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 276

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

I don’t know for sure, but I would bet these managers were sucking down well over half the total compensation in the department while doing no useful work and actually reducing the amount of work the rest of us could get done. I know of far larger organizations that have a far lower level of managerial overhead.

Silicon Valley 205

Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 205

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Therefore I’m not sure what to make of the rest of their conclusions. That may be the case for the 549 founders they interviewed, but only 4.5% of total entrepreneurs born in China and India is not even close to what entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley looks like. steve Michael F.

Founder 297

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 297

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2009

Our receptionists’ desk was built on the wing of a WWII P-51 fighter plane, and the rest of the office décor matched. Since we were the hip, new, edgy, “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” video game company (more about “ big hat, no cattle ” startups in subsequent posts,) our office obviously had to match the image.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley San Francisco RSS Vertical 128

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2009

At the end of a run I used to lay out and relax on the rocks to rest – at least I did, until the guards asked if I knew that there were more poisonous things per square foot here than anywhere in the world.) Yet if turned my head the other way, I’d stare out at a landscape that was untouched by humans. It shunned publicity.

Silicon Valley 270

Silicon Valley RSS California Washington 270

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

A+ in one or two courses every semester and mediocre in the rest. But the standard deviations are very wide because sometimes the student doesn’t bother to perform on the exams or papers because they’ve satisfied their own curiosity and have moved on to something else (another course, &c.). This was basically my m.o.

Silicon Valley 327

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 327