Steve Blank

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Leaving Government for the Private Sector – Part 2

Steve Blank

The larger the company, the more they’ll separate out business development and sales, with business development focused primarily on lead generation and sales focused on sealing the actual sale of the product or service. Sales roles : The sales cycle is similar to the recruitment cycle of a source.

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The Virus Survival Strategy For Your Startup

Steve Blank

And how much are variable expenses (salaries, consultants, commission, travel, AWS/Azure charges, supplies, etc.?). 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?

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Why GE’s Jeff Immelt Lost His Job – Disruption and Activist Investors

Steve Blank

Or they may even put the entire company up for sale. Often the short-term cuts directly affect employee salaries, jobs, and long-term investment in R&D. And as Trian’s presentation suggests, they’ll get GE to take on more debt to buy back stock. There is an upside to an activist investor taking a run at a company.

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Lead and Disrupt

Steve Blank

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? In the end, exploitation pays your salary while exploration pays your pension. Why are some companies able to reinvent themselves while others, once market leaders, are disrupted? Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter?

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Ardent 1: Supercomputers Get Personal

Steve Blank

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend.

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How To Keep Your Company Alive – Observe, Orient, Decide and Act

Steve Blank

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.” Before layoffs, cut all salaries by 20%. Cut CXO salaries by at least 30%. Internal Assessment. Operating Numbers.

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Startup Stock Options – Why A Good Deal Has Gone Bad

Steve Blank

Stock options for all employees of startups served several purposes: Because startups didn’t have much cash and couldn’t compete with large companies in salary offers, stock options dangled in front of a potential employee were like offering a lottery ticket in exchange for a lower salary. Today that’s less true.