Steve Blank

AUGUST 21, 2013

What if we could increase productivity and stave the capital flight by helping Life Sciences startups build their companies more efficiently? —— When I wrote Four Steps to the Epiphany and the Startup Owners Manual , I believed that Life Sciences startups didn’t need Customer Discovery. – See more here.

SBIR 314

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 314

Steve Blank

JANUARY 17, 2023

Three types of organizations – Incubators, Accelerators and Venture Studios – have emerged to reduce the risk of early-stage startup failure by helping teams find product/market fit and raise initial capital. They do the most to de-risk the early stages of a startup. Reducing Startup Risk.

Technical Cofounder 346

Technical Cofounder Intellectual Property Technical Review Incubator 346

Steve Blank

MARCH 12, 2014

We realized that past K-12 Entrepreneurial classes taught students “the lemonade stand” version of how to start a company: 1) come up with an idea, 2) execute the idea, 3) do the accounting (revenue, costs, etc.). Our students first worked with two local startups who agreed to be their clients, on real-problems.

Lean 334

Lean Customer Development Startup Silicon Valley 334

Steve Blank

MARCH 17, 2020

With the Covid-19 virus a worldwide pandemic, if you’re leading any startup or small business, you have to be asking yourself, “What’s Plan B? If you’re running a startup or small business, your first priority (after your family) is keeping your employees and customers safe. “Winter is coming.”. And what’s in my lifeboat?”.

Burn Rate 436

Burn Rate Startup Valuation Sales Cycle 436

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers? And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” However the Customer Development Model and the Lean Startup work equally well for startups on the web.

Customer Development 219

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 219

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2021

At the front-end of these innovations are startups – organizations the Department of Defense hasn’t previously dealt with at scale. Mrinal and Jeff’s article below explains how startups can adapt and thrive while working with the Defense Department. And how the Department of Defense is learning to work with startups.

Artificial Inteligence 326

Artificial Inteligence Marketing Startup Silicon Valley 326

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2011

What makes startups succeed or fail? More than 90% of startups fail, due primarily to self-destruction rather than competition. For the less than 10% of startups that do succeed, most encounter several near death experiences along the way. Three months ago I wrote about my ex-student Max Marmer and the Startup Genome Project.

Software Review 292

Software Review Early Stage Technical Review Startup 292

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

Startups are the search to find order in chaos. At a board meeting last week I watched as the young startup CEO delivered bad news. A startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Investors bet on a startup CEO to find the repeatable and scalable business model. Steve Blank.

Business Model 332

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 332

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

As part of our Lean LaunchPad classes at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and for the National Science Foundation, students build a startup in 8 weeks using Business Model Design + Customer Development. How To Build a Web Startup – The Lean LaunchPad Edition. Use the Startup Tools Page as the resource for tool choices).

Lean 333

Lean Web Coder Business Model 333

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

Customer Development is a technique startups use to quickly iterate and test each part of their business model. Ash Maurya , the CEO of WiredReach, has extended my work by building a model of Customer Development for Web Startups. Go read both of his posts on Discovery and Validation for web startups.

Customer Development 266

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 266

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

. — Unremarked and unheralded, the balance of power between startup CEOs and their investors has radically changed: IPOs/M&A without a profit (or at times revenue) have become the norm. The startup process has become demystified – information is everywhere. Board Control. And while new markets were created (i.e.

Founder 245

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 245

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

Customer Development 224

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

Steve Blank

APRIL 1, 2020

So here’s a five-day playbook to help CEOs of cash-flow negative startups, or ones about to go negative, assess the new normal and respond with speed and urgency. Your revenue plans are no longer valid. For companies burning cash, such as startups, how much cash do you have? For startups: source of VC money?

South Korea 333

South Korea Salary Business Model China 333

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

While our revenue is looking good, we can be out of business in two years if we can’t keep up with our customer’s rapid shifts in platforms. The difference between being able to add them now versus a year or more in the future might be the difference between growing revenue and going out of business.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2014

Startups are not smaller versions of large companies, but interestingly we see that companies are not larger versions of startups. Two methods, Design Thinking and Customer Development (the core of the Lean Startup) provide the tactical day-to-day process of how to turn ideas into products. .

Customer Development 335

Customer Development Design Developer Customer 335

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2017

In his Harvard Business Review article summing up his tenure, Immelt recalls that the two things that influenced him most were Marc Andreessen’s 2011 Wall Street Journal article “ Why Software Is Eating the World, ” and Eric Ries’s book The Lean Startup. Are lean innovation and the Startup Way a failure in large companies?

Institutional Investors 233

Institutional Investors Dividend Stock Technical Review 233

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Once upon a time every great organization was a scrappy startup willing to take risks – new ideas, new methods, new customers, targets, and mission. For the contractors, anything new offers the real risk of losing a lucrative existing stream of revenue. Companies Run on Process. The result is process theater.

Government 315

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 315

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2010

You would think that would be enough to get wrong, but entrepreneurs and investors compound this problem by assuming that all startups grow and scale by executing the Revenue Plan. All discussion focused on “missing the revenue plan.”. Revenue Plan Needs to Match Market Type. They don’t. What went wrong?

Revenue 230

Revenue Balance Sheet Hockey Stick Burn Rate 230

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Success depends on finding startups that have identified acute customer pains in large markets where conditions are ripe for a new entrant. as a distribution channel have vastly reduced the amount of capital a startup needs at the early stage when the risk is greatest. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds. ——-.

Early Stage 286

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 286

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2014

The Lean LaunchPad class uses the three “ Lean Startup ” principles: Alexander Osterwalders “ business model canvas ” to frame hypotheses. CROs or Payers may ultimately be a resource, a partner or a revenue source, but until you get them signed up they’re first a customer. I-Corps @ NIH Lecture Order Details.

Intellectual Property 281

Intellectual Property Lean IP Open Source 281

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

There are two reasons to raise money: You have a killer idea that is only partially validated, that you think can get to $50M+ of revenue in 5 years with 80%+ gross margins (if margins are lower, you need a lot more revenue)and you need money to get to product-market fit, or. Not all startups need outside investment to grow.

Cofounder 429

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 429

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

In the last few years we’ve recognized that a startup is not a smaller version of a large company. We’re now learning that companies are not larger versions of startups. But paradoxically, in spite of all their seemingly endless resources, innovation inside of an existing company is much harder than inside a startup.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 16, 2014

How do you figure out what’s the right mix of skills for the co-founders of your startup? I was having breakfast with Radhika, an ex-grad student of mine who wanted to share her Customer Discovery progress for her consumer hardware startup. I told Radhika this is a perennial question for startups. ——-.

Cofounder 335

Cofounder Founder Intellectual Property Business Model 335

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 24, 2015

This 2-minute video explained “ why not all startups are the same ” and introduced the notion of “market type” and described the difference between new markets, existing markets and resegmented markets. The next video described what happens to startups who don’t understand they are in a new market.

Revenue 120

Revenue Burn Rate Marketing Video 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. This week they were testing their hypotheses about Revenue Models: what are customers really willing to pay for? Are you generating transactional or recurring revenues? Parts one through six are here , Syllabus is here. .

Revenue 213

Revenue West Virginia Oklahoma Oklahoma City 213

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2016

What’s become apparent in the last few technology hype cycles is that for startups and their investors there is a short multi-year window of opportunity (at the Peak of Inflated Expectations) to sell a startup at an inflated price. Shiny Object meets First Mover Advantage. I had all that in mind as we watched our teams present.

Artificial Inteligence 318

Artificial Inteligence Lean Exit Strategy Startup 318

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 10, 2009

That changed when I joined the board of a startup, and we sued Microsoft and Sony on the same day for patent infringement – and won $120 million. At one of my entrepreneurship classes at Stanford, Dan Dorosin , of Fenwick & West LLP guest lectures about startups and Intellectual Property. Outside the U.S. Public use in the U.S.

Intellectual Property 213

Intellectual Property IP Software Review Non-disclosure Agreement 213

Steve Blank

MARCH 16, 2016

There are many reasons to found a startup. There are many reasons to work at a startup. To most founders a startup is not a job, but a calling. But startups require money upfront for product development and later to scale. Traditional lenders (banks) think that startups are too risky for a traditional bank loan.

Liquidity Event 120

Liquidity Event Founder Liquidation Preference Venture Capital 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 25, 2014

Since 2005 startup accelerators have provided cohorts of startups with mentoring, pitch practice and product focus. What’s been missing for everyone is: a common language for investors to communicate objectives to startups. a language corporate innovation groups can use to communicate to business units and finance.

Incubator 310

Incubator Intellectual Property Startup Lean 310

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 9, 2018

If you’re a startup trying to disrupt an existing business you need to read The Fixer by Bradley Tusk and Regulatory Hacking by Evan Burfield. startups might run into an alphabet soup of federal regulatory agencies, for example; ATF , CFPB , DEA , EPA , FAA , FCC , FDA , FDIC , FERC , FTC , OCC , OSHA , SEC. In the U.S. An insurer?

Marketing 321

Marketing Startup Government SEC 321

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

The Japanese edition of The Startup Owner’s Manual hit the bookstores in Japan this week. Back in 1990’s, I was working for one of the leading sogo shohsa (trading company) in Japan, building data communications startups. The result: great success of my third startup, a load balancing technology for web servers back in the late 1990’s.

Japan 292

Japan Customer Development Developer Customer 292

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2020

The pandemic has upended the business models of most startups and existing companies. Revenue models and forecasts are no longer valid. While there’s agreement that companies need to adapt to changing markets, rapidly find new markets, new customers and new revenue models, the question is how ?

Customer 436

Customer Marketing Customer Development Lean 436

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2013

For what I had thought were a few simple ideas about taking what we’ve learned about startups and applying it to corporate innovation, the post has gotten an amazing reaction. Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan , Business Model versus Business Plan. His latest book is Simply Effective.

Business Model 332

Business Model Technical Review Business Plan Search 332

Steve Blank

MAY 19, 2015

Startups focus on speed since they are burning cash every day as they search for product/market fit. While technical debt is an understood problem, it turns out startups also accrue another kind of debt – one that can kill the company even quicker – organizational debt. And Tom wasn’t going to get it from his board.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Salary Early Stage Software Review 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 9, 2013

I used to be in startups where I was dealing with engineers designing our microprocessors or selling supercomputers to research scientists solving really interesting technical problems. Is it a small business that hits $4 million in revenue in four years and $8 million in ten years? And if not, are you Ok with something small?

Cofounder 325

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Liquidity Event Lean 325

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. Durant took his money from his carriage company and bought a struggling automobile startup called Buick. And a founder of Neuralink a brain-computer interface startup.

Michigan 268

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2016

If the Microsoft board was managing for quarter to quarter or even year to year revenue growth, Ballmer was as good as it gets as a CEO. Apple under Cook has doubled its revenues to $200 billion while doubling profit and tripling the amount of cash it has in the bank (now a quarter of trillion dollars). Lessons Learned.

Azure 120

Azure Business Model Cloud Artificial Inteligence 120