Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Dot.com Bubble ( 1995-2000): “ Anything goes” as public markets clamor for ideas, vague promises of future growth, and IPOs happen absent regard for history or profitability. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. The goals were “first mover advantage,” “grab market share” and “get big fast.”

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Berkeley Pizza: from pizza in the farmer's market to a sit-down restaurant. One example is in their marketing, which in today's environment requires providing value. This doesn't mean pointing to the product and describing the product's value, but rather the marketing provides value itself.

Lean 167

Lean Entrepreneur Agile San Francisco 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

Because of the extreme unknowns inherent in startup situations, we are all blind – to the realities of what customers what, market dynamics, and competitive threats. I suddenly lose my ability to judge if our marketing programs are being effective. I wonder if their internal marketing folks are as datablind as I feel.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

One, which is described in great detail in the Mythical Man-Month (in finding that link, I discovered that today is coincidentally the exact 11th anniversary of my first purchasing that book: Jan 19, 1998), is that as you add people to a team or project, there is an increase in communications overhead that makes everyone slightly less productive.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 1, 2010

But nine months after the first call was made in 1998, Iridium was in Chapter 11 bankruptcy. And they rolled all of this up into a set of financial forecasts with a “size of market” forecast from brand name management consulting firms that said they’d have 42 million customers by 2002. It was a technical tour de force.

Business Plan 335

Business Plan Customer Business Model Customer Development 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2012

In each case, the new technology produced a new market far larger than the impact it had on the existing market. 1998 – the MPAA got congress to pass the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), making it illegal for you to make a digital copy of a DVD that you actually purchased. No one was ever going to buy music again.

Silicon Valley 336

Silicon Valley Distribution Washington Channel 336