Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 6, 2008 Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile I thought Id share an interesting post from someone with a decidedly anti-agile point of view. Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, science and engineering at both Stanford and U.C. 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. Today the U.C.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

The eight teams spoke to over 945 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, warfighters, legal, security, customers, etc. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ) Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique.

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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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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.)

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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 Product Development Diagram 1. Where Are the Customers?

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 15, 2024

The speed, depth and breadth of these disruptive changes happen faster than the responsiveness and agility of our current acquisition systems and defense-industrial base. The services have no procurement budget for Replicator, and they’ll have to shift existing funds to unmanned and AI programs.

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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). Each team accepted into the program will receive $50,000.

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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. ———-.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, February 22, 2009 Please teach kids programming, Mr. President Of course, what I really mean is: let them teach themselves. See Paul Grahams Why Nerds are Unpopular to learn more) Take a look at this article on a programming Q&A site: How old are you, and how old were you when you started coding?

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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. But part of his life that that doesn’t even merit a Wikipedia entry is that Bill Perry used Silicon Valley to help end the cold war.

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The Next Web

JANUARY 24, 2014

We have three universities in the top 100 of the Shanghai ranking for engineering and technology. Think of Werner Vogels (CTO of Amazon), Guido van Rossem (founder of Python programming language and senior engineer at Dropbox) or the more senior Gerard Kleisterlee (chairman of Vodafone). So we have plenty of economic clustering.

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Netherlands Technical Review Stock Silicon Valley 143

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2023

This meant the class was team-based, Lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering) and experiential – where the students, rather than being presented with all of the essential information, must discover that information rapidly for themselves.

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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. Engineers as Salesmen I thought (and still do) that this sales guy walked on water.

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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 26, 2009

Its easy to take Silicon Valley for granted. Ive written a little bit about the origins of Silicon Valley because I think its important for us to understand how we got here in order to make sure we preserve what is best about our community. But theres no denying the level of support for entrepreneurs that we enjoy.

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San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2009

Stanford’s Dean of Engineering, Fred Terman, encouraged scientists and engineers to set up companies to build these microwave tubes for the military. Funded by military contracts, these 1950′s microwave tube startups would help build Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial culture and environment.

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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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Duct Tape Marketing

JUNE 20, 2023

This programming is guaranteed to inspire and recharge. And there's a bit of a sense that digital was a bit sort of the wild west in terms of, oh, it's all about agile and people improvise the method and you can't measure things as well. Do you really have a proper agile operating model? You won't be sorry. That's right.

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Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2022

Meanwhile China has been engaged in a Civil/Military Fusion program since 2015 to harness these disruptive commercial technologies for its national security needs. Reorganize DoD Research and Engineering to allocate its budget and resources equally between traditional sources of innovation and new commercial sources of innovation.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2011

I spent a few days in March in Ann Arbor Michigan as a guest of Professor Thomas Zurbuchen , Associate Dean for Entrepreneurial Programs, and Doug Neal , Director of Center for Entrepreneurship in the Engineering School at the University of Michigan. The Engineering School has 5,600 undergrads and 3,000 graduate students.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

Finding great engineers is hard; figuring out whos good is even harder. If done right, a programming interview serves two purposes simultaneously. The six key attributes spell ABCDEF: Agility. When talking about their past experience, candidates with agility will know why they did what they did in a given situation.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 7, 2019

The eight teams spoke to over 820 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, warfighters, legal, security, customers, etc. All the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, but all of their journeys were unique. Team: Panacea.

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Oakland Lean SBIR Afghanistan 277

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2013

Todd Branchflower was one of my Lean LaunchPad students entrepreneurial enough to convince the Air Force send him to Stanford to get his graduate engineering degree. Fast-forward three years and Todd is now Captain Todd Branchflower , teaching electrical engineering at the Air Force Academy. He promised that one day he would fix that.

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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." Agile software development. Agile allows companies to build higher quality software faster. This speeds up the Ideas-Code-Data feedback loop.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Its why, at my previous job, we were able to get a new engineer completely productive on their first day. We had a great on-boarding process, complete with a mentoring program and a syllabus of key ideas to be covered. Most engineers would ship code to production on their first day.

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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. but rest assured they would be. Conference streaming, sponsors, discounted tickets. Amazon PostRank

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Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2013

This school has a distinguished roster of graduates… Earl Bakken, the founder of Medtronic , was an Electrical Engineering grad, and Bob Gore of Gortex , and your current president are both alums of your Chemical Engineering program. They’d run around saying, “Hey look, I can program this chip to make this speaker go beep.”

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Minnesota Silicon Valley America Engineer 335

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

automatic links to generated images Rietveld - asynchronous code reviews on changesets Tech*if*er0*urs – blog on roadmap for learning rails Best free programming books Project Management Basecamp - web-based project management and collaboration tool. WebSequenceDiagrams - sketch sequence diagrams.

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Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

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. Hacking for Defense is a new course at Stanford’s Engineering School in the Spring of 2016. They don’t need an office in Silicon Valley to figure out what’s out there.

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Silicon Valley North Korea Agile Lean 120

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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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

After years of engineering effort, changing these assumptions was incredibly hard. This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development. As with many Silicon Valley failures, a flawless PR launch turned into a flawed customer acquisition strategy. Even a great architecture becomes inflexible. Great post!

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, December 7, 2008 The hackers lament One of the thrilling parts of working and writing in Silicon Valley is the incredible variety of people Ive had the chance to meet. And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time!

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2017

Hacking for Defense is a battle-tested problem-solving methodology that runs at Silicon Valley speed. Eight teams spoke to over 800 beneficiaries, requirements writers, program managers, warfighters, legal, security, customers, etc. of Management Science and Engineering. Their sponsors agreed. 21 st Century Frogman.

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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 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Silicon Valley, New York). The result – an instant technology cluster – with equity at a fraction of Silicon Valley prices. It might be possible to create Virtual Valley Ventures.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 27, 2013

Kent, a veteran programmer, a founder of the Agile method and the creator of Extreme Programming, came armed with anecdotes and lessons from his own experience, as well as a few questions for Eric. Nowadays Kent is programming again, this time at Facebook, which he describes: “It''s a laboratory.

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