Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

By the late 1930′s when HP started, a small group (measured in hundreds) of engineers who made radio tubes were building the valleys’ ecosystem for electronics manufacturing, product engineering and technology management. And these microwave engineers were working at startups – not large companies.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Marketing is Heard From Engineering was discussing how sophisticated the graphics portion of our computer should be, debating cost and time-to-market tradeoffs of arcane details such as double-buffering, 24 versus 32-bits of color, alpha channels, etc. The conversation that day would become one of my professional watermarks.

Silicon Valley 271

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.) Reply Sean Murphy , on November 2, 2009 at 11:55 am Said: This is a common misunderstanding and one that bootstrappers trip over.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Yet startup companies have traditionally used this model to manage and pace not only engineering but also non-engineering activities. The flaw in this thinking is that “first customer ship&# is simply the date when engineering thinks they “finished” the 1.0 release of the product. Thank you for writing them.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

As the engineers were busy rearchitecting the original Stanford MIPS chip into a commercial product, one of my jobs was to find out what features customers wanted. On the other hand, the Motorola 68000 microprocessor (used in the Sun and Apollo engineering workstations) and the IBM 360/370 mainframes were big-endian. What a great idea.

Customer Development 278

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

A month or two before the QuickTime public announcement in May, the SuperMac hardware engineers (who had a great relationship with the QuickTime team at Apple) started a “ skunk works ” project. So SuperMac engineering also developed video compression software, called Cinepak. The software was idiot proof.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

One of the things he mentioned was that when it came to decision-making he still tended to think and act like an engineer. Since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any engineering, customer or competitor problem, and you shouldn’t agonize over trying to find one. The same is true in your company.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

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. Our vision was that just as the PC was revolutionizing the business market, we were going to do the same for scientists and engineers.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 15, 2014

I first met Nick Halstead in 2009 when he was running a company called Tweetmeme (the predecessor to DataSift) who had invented the Retweet button and actually helped Twitter develop its early API. I remain as childishly giddy at Nick’s vision as I did in our conference hangout we had in 2009.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.) Their engineers hated us. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 138

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

The Army offered Fred Terman, the Dean of Engineering at Stanford, a $5M contract to build an electronics countermeasures lab. HP had an ethical culture, entrepreneurial spirit, and deep Stanford engineering department connections. The “customers’” contracts funded the company. Seven years later in 1971 ESL went public.

Silicon Valley 171

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

When I learned that Cray users would be giving papers at the Society of Petroleum Engineering conference in Denver the next day, I got on a plane to listen and learn. The magazines got passed around to all the engineers until they were dog-eared and worn. But I was breathing heavy and it felt like I was looking at supercomputer porn.

Silicon Valley 147

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Todd Branchflower took my Lean LaunchPad class having been entrepreneurial enough to convince the Air Force send him to Stanford to get his graduate engineering degree. True to his word, fast-forward three years and Todd is now Captain Todd Branchflower , teaching computer engineering at the Air Force Academy.

Lean 262

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Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Luckily while I was teaching classes at headquarters, Zilog’s field application engineers (the technical engineers working alongside our salesmen) would work side-by-side with our large customers as they designed their systems with our chips. Thanks Reply objectiveassociates , on July 20, 2009 at 9:47 am Said: Good post.

Silicon Valley 175

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Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Since there was very little documentation my time was split between the design engineers who built the system and the test and deployment team getting the system ready to go overseas. After I was done teaching each the day, I continued to write the operations manuals and work with the test engineers. (I Are You Single? Sign me up.

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YoungUpstarts

APRIL 5, 2017

With the 2009 economic crash, entrepreneurs and startups flooded the market (for better or worse!). Bankruptcy is relatively common, especially post-2009, but recovering from it can require professional help. It’s never business as usual. Even though over 90 percent of startups fail, there are more startups than ever before.

SEO 101

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Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

Signs of Success One of the things you do right in a startup, is you move from one cheap and cramped building to another as you grow, with desks, cubicles and engineers piled cheek to jowl. Engineers were packed in cubicles or desks right on top of each other? Now every engineer can have their own office.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 1, 2009 The Steve Jobs method Image via CrunchBase Its been a long time since I did a post that was primarily a link to another blog with commentary, but I came across something today that I really want to share. August 1, 2009 7:39 AM Ravi Mohan said. August 1, 2009 8:11 AM Michael said.

San Francisco 166

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires. And our Director of Technical Marketing was superb at understanding customer needs and communicating them to engineering.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering. . My office is in the Terman Engineering Building.

Silicon Valley 180

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Since I wasn’t an engineer, my contribution was around the team-building and fund raising. Reply Raj , on August 14, 2009 at 2:45 am Said: Steve, This post has probably triggered a paradigm shift in the way that I’ve been approaching my startup. I was an idiot. Maybe they just want to work with a start-up.

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VC Cafe

JULY 21, 2020

GV (formerly Google Ventures) – Started in 2009, GV is Alphabet’s venture capital fund, focused primarily on early stage in diverse fields: from life sciences and healthcare to robotics and entereprise tech. Notable portfolio companies include Uber, Slack, Jet.com, FlatIron Health, Kobalt Music Group and many others.

Technical Review 131

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 9, 2010

Perhaps the most interesting feature of real-time search engines is that the results are updated each minute. There are many instances in which a real-time search can yield better results when compared with traditional search engines. Other engines have launched offering additional functionality.

Search 207

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, July 2, 2009 How to conduct a Five Whys root cause analysis In the lean startup workshops , we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the technique of Five Whys. We started with a simple wiki page with a few bullet points of things that new engineers had tripped over recently.

San Francisco 164

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 15, 2009 Why Continuous Deployment? One is used by engineers to refer to the process of getting code fully integrated into production. In such a system, the primary goal of each engineer is to stay busy, using as close to 100% of his or her time for coding as possible. Why does it work?

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, February 20, 2009 Work in small batches Software should be designed, written, and deployed in small batches. Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. February 21, 2009 12:10 AM Harold Fowler said.

San Francisco 161

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering. But since I spent a long time in a hybrid CTO/VP Engineering role, I still have this nagging question. I want to add one last idea, even though I recognize it is controversial, bordering on the boundary between the CTO and VP Engineering. Heres my take.

CTO 168

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

Reply jordancooper , on November 12, 2009 at 8:08 am Said: Steve, sorry to do this in your comment forum, but I don’t see an email or contact. Reply Rishi , on November 12, 2009 at 6:35 pm Said: Thanks for sharing those slides. page I know you are speaking in NYC tonight, and that it’s sold out.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 21, 2018

According to the 2017 Kauffman Startup Activity Index , the share of new entrepreneurs who started businesses to pursue opportunity rather than from necessity reached 86 percent, more than 12 percentage points higher than in 2009 at the height of the Great Recession. Large corporations have lost their ability to innovate.

Entrepreneur 166

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. January 2, 2009 8:54 AM mancjew said. January 2, 2009 8:57 AM Abbas said. Abbas February 22, 2009 3:33 PM cwillu said. I will come back for more.

San Francisco 155

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 22, 2009 Pivot, dont jump to a new vision In a lean startup , instead of being organized around traditional functional departments, we use a cross-functional problem team and solution team. As the CTO/VP Engineering, I was the worst offender. June 22, 2009 12:26 PM Anonymoussaid.

San Francisco 167

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, July 29, 2009 Embrace technical debt Financial debt plays an important and positive role in our economy under normal conditions. The human tendency to moralize about debt affects engineers, too. Remember Hamlet? Kevin, really appreciate the thoughtful comments.

Technical Review 168

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View from Seed

APRIL 20, 2022

Comparisons have been made to the two most recent significant pull-backs of the dot com crash in 2000-2001 and Great Recession of 2008-2009. . A vast supply of previously untapped labor joined the global workforce, allowing businesses to employ factory workers in China, software engineers in Ukraine, and call center reps in the Philippines.

Ukraine 156

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process. April 27, 2009 8:59 AM Anonymoussaid. July 15, 2009 11:18 PM markmontgomery said. Otherwise it's a great idea.

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Feld Thoughts

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

It’s a short article that basically states that Silicon Valley received a similar percentage of utility patents granted in the US in 2009 that it did in 2008 and 2007. in 2009, according to IFI Patent Intelligence, a unit of Wolters Kluwer Health that analyzes patent data from the U.S.

Silicon Valley 125

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 3, 2009 Minimum Viable Product: a guide One of the most important lean startup techniques is called the minimum viable product. August 3, 2009 10:52 AM Chris Hopf said. August 3, 2009 11:49 AM Jason Brownlee said. August 3, 2009 8:08 PM William Mitchell said. Great post.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 12, 2009 Why PHP won When I first learned to program on the web, Perl + CGI was the dominant platform. At IMVU, when wed hire a new engineer, we could get them to ship code to production on their first day, even if they had never programmed in PHP before. January 16, 2009 2:54 AM DROCKsaid.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166