Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers.

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 20, 2022

One of the things I learned from my years in Silicon Valley is that you must always focus on three steps ahead, as well as on what exists today. Now that all customer shopping and e-commerce via the Internet is worldwide, the old adage of business location, location, location, no longer should constrain your plans.

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Silicon Valley Artificial Inteligence Global Agile 367

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

corporation – starting a new technology division bringing disruptive technology to market at General Electric. One of GE’s new divisions – GE’s Energy Storage – has been given the charter to bring an entirely new battery technology to market. He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 237

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

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. An example of a reversible decision could be adding a product feature, a new algorithm in the code, targeting a specific set of customers, etc.

Silicon Valley 307

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 307

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Starting in the 1950’s, Stanford’s engineering department became “outward facing” and developed a culture of spinouts and active faculty support and participation in the first wave of Silicon Valley startups. Given its inward focus, Berkeley has always been the neglected sibling in Silicon Valley entrepreneurship.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 9, 2022

The new paradigm, driven by disruptive technologies, cloud-served supercomputing, and the new generation of young adults with global empathy, is partnering and giving something now for a competitive advantage in the future. Maintain the agility to quickly pivot or quit. Social media relationships fuel the scaling fire.

Partner 328

Partner Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Cloud 328

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

I’ve spent the last week in Santiago, a guest of Professor Cristóbal García at the Catholic University of Chile as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program. Entrepreneurship and innovation in what I call “Chilecon Valley” is being talked about continually here. Teaching in Chile. Valaparaiso houses.

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Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 240

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

Second, this class – which is built on the idea of interviewing customers/beneficiaries and stakeholders in person – now had to do all their customer discovery via a computer screen. How on earth would customer interviews work via video? At first this seemed to be a fatal stake through the heart of the class.

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Oakland Asia Lean Video 313

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

Two years out of the Air Force, serendipity (which would be my lifelong form of career planning) found me in Silicon Valley working for my first company: ESL. If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. By 1961 its customers now included our intelligence agencies.

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Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 194

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Agile – you may find the real opportunities for your company was somewhere else. Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile. Get customers first. How quickly will you recover? But it won’t be happening daily.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 11, 2020

Every entrepreneur starts by accepting the reality that you have a rare mindset of joy of discovery, with an intense curiosity about how certain things or people work, or why a new technology hasn’t yet been accepted. One of the most successful incubators is Y Combinator in Silicon Valley.

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 14, 2020

The new paradigm, driven by disruptive technologies, cloud-served supercomputing, and the new generation of young adults with global empathy, is partnering and giving something now for a competitive advantage in the future. Maintain the agility to quickly pivot or quit. Social media relationships fuel the scaling fire.

Partner 310

Partner Intellectual Property Silicon Valley Startup 310

Up and Running

OCTOBER 4, 2017

If their solution can potentially meet customer needs, startups should create a minimal viable product (MVP) that captures their idea and brings it to market as quickly as possible. Start focusing more on your customers, gather their feedback, and change your product or service in response to consumer needs. Choose the right location.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. 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.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

customer development. agile engineering. Some general customer development slides click here. Startupplays.com, publisher of online entrepreneurs processes guides, drew from my Udacity course and The Startup Owner’s Manual to create a free step-by-step guide to understanding your customers and creating your value proposition.

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Open Source Silicon Valley Lean Customer Development 335

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

A team from their Enterprise Innovation Office has joined us at NYU as observers at our 5-day Lean LaunchPad class, while another team is in Silicon Valley with the Hacking for Defense team learning how to turn their hard problems into partnerships with commercial companies that lead to deployed solutions. The Innovation Insurgency.

Lean 182

Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 182

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2016

A team from their Enterprise Innovation Office has joined us at NYU as observers at our 5-day Lean LaunchPad class, while another team is in Silicon Valley with the Hacking for Defense team learning how to turn their hard problems into partnerships with commercial companies that lead to deployed solutions. The Innovation Insurgency.

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Lean Silicon Valley Government Acquisition 182

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. How did Silicon Valley start?

Silicon Valley 297

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 297

Steve Blank

JANUARY 26, 2016

Introducing Hacking for Defense – Connecting Silicon Valley Innovation Culture and Mindset to the Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. Up until the dawn of the 21 st century, they defined military technology superiority. Its Not Just the Technology. Yet in the last decade the U.S. North Korea.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley North Korea Agile Lean 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) That’s 10x what many websites convert.

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 21, 2020

We just held our seventh session of our new national security class Technology, Innovation and Modern War. Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I designed the class to examine the new military systems, operational concepts and doctrines that will emerge from 21st century technologies – Space, Cyber, AI & Machine Learning and Autonomy.

Artificial Inteligence 283

Artificial Inteligence Technology Agile Architecture 283

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

In my last post I described my approach to one of the three classes I teach at Stanford in the engineering school: Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship. One part of Silicon Valley culture that doesn’t get enough credit is the generosity of entrepreneurs and VC’s who are willing to share their time with students.

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Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 235

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners. Strong pre-show promotion will let your customers and prospects know about your exhibit.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 136

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. A few successful ones do all these things.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 253

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley , was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. Why It’s “Silicon” Valley. It might be its most important.

Engineer 311

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 311

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Silicon Valley, New York). The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

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Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 297

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Silicon Valley, New York). The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old. There are none so blind as those who will not see.

Silicon Valley 270

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 270

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

In the next few posts that follow, I’ll describe how thinking of a solution to this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – that offers a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities. The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Boyd emphasized the importance of agility in combat: "the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than ones opponent." As Ive written previously , lean startups are built upon three main trends: Technology commoditization. Agile software development.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 2, 2008 Paul Graham on fundraising I have found no better primer on the current realities of starting a new technology company in a startup hub like Silicon Valley than Paul Grahams essays. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

The signals are loud and clear : seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. Carpe Diem. We’re now in the second Internet bubble. Rules For the New Bubble: 2011 -2014.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Reinventing the board meeting may offer angel-funded startups that don’t have formal boards or directors (because of geography or size of investment) to attract experienced advice and investment outside of technology clusters (i.e.

Silicon Valley 289

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 289

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, November 11, 2008 Where did Silicon Valley come from? I think the absolute best reading on this subject is a book called Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee Saxenian. And what were they doing beforehand?

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Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Steve Blank

AUGUST 1, 2016

Based on those results we believe that we can do the same with Diplomacy so working with the State Department’s innovation cell in Silicon Valley we will prototype the Hacking for Diplomacy course at Stanford this fall. (see the final Hacking for Defense class presentations here ). Result: Hell yes. 15 more schools are in the pipeline.

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Silicon Valley Southern California San Diego Lean 130

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. VC’s invested in things that ran on electrons: hardware, software and silicon. Quickly iterate the product in front of customers. Here’s why.

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Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 263

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

Silicon Valley was born in an era of applied experimentation driven by scientists and engineers. This approach would shape Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial ethos: In startups, failure was treated as experience (until you ran out of money). Yet this system isn’t perfect. – seems like another planet.

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