Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. There was now a public market for companies with no revenue, no profit and big claims.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

The entrepreneur who founded and grew the largest startup in the world to $10 billion in revenue and got fired is someone you have probably never heard of. He also believed that to succeed the company needed to be vertically integrated and bought up 29 parts manufacturers and suppliers. The next year, 1910, trouble hit.

Michigan 275

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 275

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 3, 2011

In How To Defend Your Dream Against All Odds , Alex and I explore the company's journey to $200 Million in revenue, while their VCs wrote them off. Zoho is already over $100 million in revenue and is seeing tremendous traction. In that case, the verticals of choice could be manufacturing, wholesale and retail.

North Carolina 116

North Carolina San Diego Entrepreneur Balance Sheet 116

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

When a startup finds a repeatable sales process and steadily increasing revenue, its investors wants to harvest the rewards and build a culture of “execution.” 4) You don’t see any revenue gain past three years. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. on July 9, 2010 at 12:50 pm Said: [.]

Customer 201

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 201

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I have been working on getting a startup to revenue for a while, and while this is my 4th iteration and I have not yet succeeded, I’ve been learning new things every time. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 126

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

when to build out our offices in Silicon Valley, New York & Los Angeles. So our board meetings consisted of discussion about. how much energy to put into channel partners vs. direct sales. how to build an initial sales organization. how to market our products and company. how to evolve our management team.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Was the sales revenue model based on actually testing the hypotheses outside the building? Greg Boutin Founder, Growthroute Ventures, [link] Reply TO REVENUE » Talking on Techie-Biz Divide at Communitech Guelph on Sept. Look at the early Silicon Valley companies – Homebrew Club =>PCs. Order Here.

Customer Development 241

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 241

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And it was going to mention the two words that SuperMac marketing needed to live and breathe: revenue and profit. If marketing can’t deliver the 40,000 leads what else can we do for sales to still achieve our revenue and profitability?”) They understood the mission intent was our corporate revenue and profit goals. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 1, 2023

By Daniel Sokolovksy, Co-Founder and CEO, WARP and Troy Lester, Co-Founder and CRO, WARP The dissolution of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was more than just a bank collapse, it was a reality check for both startups and the VCs that fund them. We’re hitting record revenue months, weeks, and margins. That includes us.

Early Stage 109

Early Stage Los Angeles Silicon Valley Cofounder 109

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. would look in each of the verticals. Business and Revenue Model – How do we organize to make money? Marketing – How do you create end user demand?

Vertical 123

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 123

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.) Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 133

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 23, 2011

I asked Harshil to focus his entire product and go-to-market strategy on the college-bound age 18 market and develop his assessment module, vertical search engine for colleges and trust network to address the needs of that market and that market alone. Age 18 is worried about college and that in itself is a sizable market.

Spain 115

Spain Entrepreneur India San Francisco 115

Transformify

APRIL 21, 2017

We really wanted to build a network of top tier talent, similar to the caliber of talent that’s working in-house at top Silicon Valley tech companies. And we’ll be expanding into more business verticals soon. The most talented people consistently lose out to competing bids that get increasingly lower.

Technical Review 40

Technical Review Silicon Valley Software Review Cofounder 40

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

But if you want to build a scalable startup you need to be asking how you can you get enough customers/users/payers to build a business that can grow revenues past several $100M/year. Creating a vertically oriented regional ecosystem is a pretty amazing accomplishment for any country or industry. With 317 million people the U.S.

Global 335

Global Australia Silicon Valley China 335

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 27, 2011

However, the mistake Said has made is to go "spray and pray" and build numerous different verticals without really fleshing out the business strategy for any of them. She is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and strategy consultant. PTA Portals.

Entrepreneur 116

Entrepreneur San Francisco Technical Review New Jersey 116

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Luckily (or maybe because we were in Silicon Valley where there was a domain expert for everything) there was a very smart consultant in the retail computer space, Seymour Merrin, who preached about the importance of packaging. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Worry about the sales results.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Growthink Blog

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

revenues from internet video services spanning user-generated content to television shows and movies will exceed $7 billion this year. In 1999, Lee joined the Silicon Valley new media content contingent as an Internet-company CEO, and has since founded two innovative Los Angeles media companies. How about Internet Video?

Los Angeles 85

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Technical Review Distribution 85

Gust

OCTOBER 16, 2012

This summer I conducted our third annual survey of the pre-money valuation of pre-revenue companies recently funded by angel groups in North America. For the first time, we asked for data from specific business sectors, as follows: All pre-revenue deals. Pre-revenue life Science, biotech and medical device deals. Median: 2.75.

Angel Groups 169

Angel Groups Valuation Pre-Money Valuation North Dakota 169

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

John already has a couple of customers, and needs about 50 customers to get to $1M in annual revenue. In fact, in the discussion on JuJu brands is yet another validation of the verticalization and niche-ization of the Internet. So, effectively, at the cost of one full-time sales rep, they can access coverage in four different regions.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

Gust

OCTOBER 12, 2011

To provide some reference points, I surveyed thirteen angels groups in North American to determine their recent experience in negotiating the pre-money valuation of pre-revenue companies. See the 2010 data reported here: Current Pre-money Valuations of Pre-revenue Companies. Pre-money Valuation of Pre-revenue Companies.

Angel Groups 125

Angel Groups Valuation Pre-Money Valuation St. Louis 125

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

Once the product begins to ship, startup sales execs use orders and revenue as its marker of progress in understanding customers. Well, because the revenue plan we promised the investors shows us generating customer revenue from the day of first customer ship.” Doesn’t it depend on vertical market.? Order Here.

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

Corner Cases and Consensus are For Large Companies Carefully considering each and every possible outcome before you proceed with a decision is something large companies with large revenues, shareholders and employees need to do. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 182

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 182

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Yet we used the product development model not only to manage product development, but as a road map for finding customers and to time our marketing launch and sales revenue plan. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 263

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 20, 2020

He was also born here and went to UT Austin before heading out to Silicon Valley for a stint. Bob invented Ethernet, founded 3Com (revenues of $5.7B), was the Editor of InfoWorld magazine, and was a venture capitalist at Polaris in Boston.

Austin 110

Austin Texas Cofounder Los Angeles 110

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Sales people cost money, and when they’re not bringing in revenue, their wandering in the woods is time consuming, cash-draining and demoralizing. Scalable: The goal is not to get one customer but many – and to get those customers so each additional customer adds incremental revenue and profit. Lets see why. Something else?

Lean 250

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

ReadWriteStart

MAY 6, 2011

An incubatee with Indian Angel Network, Anirudh Motwani from New Delhi, India, discussed IndiaCollegeSearch , a vertical search engine to address the problem of finding detailed information about various colleges and institutions in India. IndiaCollegeSearch.

India 115

India Vertical Entrepreneur Connecticut 115

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Most publishers are still caught up in an outdated “vision vs. metrics&# argument, which is already obsolete here in Silicon Valley. What is the right revenue model? Consider this question: what percentage of all books that are purchased does the buyer actually finish reading cover-to-cover? Thanks again for a great post.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2009

I was asked to explain why a marketing program that cost $150,000 bucks literally generated nothing in revenue for the company. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. They hit each other with baseball bats until one of them dropped.) This first Zen moment happened at a SuperMac exec staff meeting. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

As you stated, the VCs only want to hear about product development and, I would add, revenue models. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Would you agree that your model, customer development, requires a lot more listening than talking? Thanks for demystifying this process! Order Here. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 128

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan put in place GM’s management accounting system (borrowed from DuPont) that for the first time allowed the company to: 1) produce an annual operating forecast that compared each division’s forecast (revenue, costs, capital requirements and return on investment) with the company’s financial goals. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 161

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

Most startups following the Product Development Model never achieve their revenue plan and burn through a ton of cash not knowing what hit them. After twelve months Handspring’s revenue was $170 million. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter?

Customer Development 203

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 203

Hippoland

JULY 24, 2016

Your startup’s valuation is not based on a proforma of your revenue. This is really key to understand, because so many founders wonder, “Why was that company over there who has 0 revenue able to raise their round at a $10m cap convertible note? Supply - amount of your round and Demand - investor demand. This just doesn’t happen.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage Valuation Vertical Demand 48

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 10, 2011

Edward Varghese from New Delhi, India, pitched i-Globify , an outsourcing service catering to the niche travel vertical, focusing on building Web 3.0 I liked his approach to building an outsourcing solution: focusing on a niche and building in-depth skills and credibility within that vertical.

India 116

India Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Vertical 116

ReadWriteStart

MAY 12, 2011

Today, he has over a thousand, and he has chosen to focus on the realtor vertical. Sramana Mitra is the founder of the One Million by One Million (1M/1M) initiative, an educational, business development and incubation program that aims to help one million entrepreneurs globally to reach $1 million in revenue and beyond.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Entrepreneur Silicon Valley India 125

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 20, 2011

Kelly's business has already done about $150,000 in revenue in 2010, which tells me that she has successfully validated at least some of her assumptions. He has run some experiments within the entrepreneurship training vertical, and has seen success when he has brought on known thought leaders.

Entrepreneur 114

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Vertical Massachusetts 114

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 16, 2016

Every year, companies lose 20 to 30 percent in revenue due to inefficiencies. Business processes span industries, both vertical and horizontal, and can include any type of business operation. Based in Silicon Valley, Progressly helps companies document, collaborate and analyze business processes — all in one central place.

Silicon Valley 100

Silicon Valley Cofounder Software Review Technical Review 100

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

A Progress Graph on the right visually shows how far you’ve come (in whatever units of goodness you’re tracking – revenue, units, users, etc.) Good if you have your own money, better if the cash comes from investors, but best if it’s revenues from customers. Get back up and running. Order Here. Now In Print!

Customer Development 264

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264