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. Convergent Technologies was one of those OEM suppliers. Their engineers hated us.

Technology 141

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 141

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 231

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Modern entrepreneurship began at the turn of the 21 st century with the observation that startups aren’t smaller versions of large companies – large companies at their core execute known business models, while startups search for scalable business models. all markets can be described by what job the user wants to get done.

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Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 424

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 227

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. Who would have known?

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 290

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 23, 2013

” , Mitch’s volume focuses on how shifts in mobile and social technologies, data, content, marketing and jobs makes it necessary for us to transform the way we run our businesses and do our work. With the catchy subtitle “Reboot Your Business. Reboot Your Life. Your Future Depends On It.”

Technical Review 164

Technical Review North America Social Media Media 164

Where to Play

AUGUST 18, 2020

We usually tend to think of innovation in terms of advanced technologies. Most of their business growth was vertical by focusing on food, tentage, and decoration for marrying couples and their families. A good indicator for this fact is the growing number of Chai-Startups in India. Step 3: Agile Focus Dartboard.

Pakistan 62

Pakistan Sales Cycle Marketing Technical Review 62

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development.

Customer Development 243

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 243

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Useful blogs and links for startups Click Here ————– 2.

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Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. The goal of their startup in this stage becomes “getting funded.”

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 266

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 14, 2019

Drones, augmented reality, wearable tech, modular construction, cloud and mobile technology: the construction site of tomorrow is certainly going to look different. Startups armed with powerful tech are changing what is possible in and around the modern construction site. by Ramzi Jreidini , CEO of Handiss. What we’re working with.

Global 189

Global Vertical Agile Engineer 189

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. would look in each of the verticals. For example, How does sales differ from one market to another?

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

After these slides, these VC’s recognized that this company had dramatically reduced risk and built a startup that was agile, resilient and customer-centric. The presentation didn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development.

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Venture Capital Silicon Valley RSS Hockey Stick 228

Where to Play

MARCH 14, 2018

The post Success story: how startup Augury determined its market opportunities appeared first on Where to Play. The tale of an Industrial IoT startup discovering a new strategic business tool. Augury is bringing predictive maintenance technology to new markets. At times, it seemed like the possibilities were endless.

Artificial Inteligence 91

Artificial Inteligence Marketing Vertical Startup 91

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. We’re no longer a small struggling startup. You can stop working like a startup and start working like a big company.”

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Silicon Valley RSS Lean Agile 222

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 13, 2010

These posts and videos are about design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! PR for Startups – [link]. Understanding Salespeople at Startups – [link]. Build a technology company without a tech cofounder – [link]. PR for Startups – [link].

Social Media 95

Social Media Small Business Design Media 95

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 13, 2010

These posts and videos are about design, startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! PR for Startups – [link]. Understanding Salespeople at Startups – [link]. Build a technology company without a tech cofounder – [link]. PR for Startups – [link].

Social Media 95

Social Media Small Business Design Media 95

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

And while others in our new startup came from companies like Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) that had sold computers to automate scientific instrumentation and process control, the computers we were building at Ardent were targeted to different customers and markets. The problem was I didn’t have a clue.

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Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 158

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

In other words, they are facing conditions of extreme uncertainty, just like startups. The other revels in the world as we all know it will be someday: limitless distribution enabled by new technologies, the importance of collaborative filters, and on-demand availability of all content for end-users.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

View from Seed

APRIL 8, 2020

Stevens has held roles across verticals such as head of sales, marketing, product, and professional services at five startups over twenty years. He helps early-stage startups with sales, marketing, and general “go to market” topics. Demonstrate the things that big companies love about buying from startups.

B2B 156

B2B Angel Investor Vertical Early Stage 156

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 194

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 194

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

If these sound like reasonable answers to you, and you are in a startup/small company, update your resume. Most startups put together a corporate mission statement because the CEO remembered seeing one at their last job, or the investors said they needed one. What I was actually hearing was a failure of management.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 267

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 25, 2019

The Forrest Four-Cast: February 25, 2019 Fifty diverse startups will aim to impress a panel of judges and a live audience with their skills, creativity and innovation at SXSW Pitch Presented by Cyndx. What do you like most about the startup experience? Pilosa is a discrete technology that makes queries on large data extremely fast.

Open Source 48

Open Source Startup Caching Database 48

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

We agreed that all her founding CEOs seemed to have the same set of personality traits – tenacious, passionate, relentless, resilient, agile, and comfortable operating in chaos. It’s why all of you operated so well in the unpredictable environment that all startups face.”

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Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 307

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Everyone should have a chance to walk the floor looking for deals, technology, distribution, customers, etc. Everyone should be articulate and agile in describing and demoing the products.) For bigger booths a good rule of thumb is to have two to four staffers for every 100 square feet of exhibit space. Messages, themes, demo’s.

Silicon Valley 132

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 132

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

And in the tradition of great startups, on the way out Perry took 6 of his best managers with him. In building ESL Perry made a conscious choice to emulate Hewlett Packard (then considered the “gold standard” of a great technology company.)

Silicon Valley 185

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 185

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Many thanks, you’ve changed my startup a hundred times already. Maybe the core of what you talk about in getting companies to success lies in the answer to these 2 questions. Oh, I absolutely love your “I was having coffee with person the other day&# stories. Keep ‘em coming.

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

But what I remind them is that great grades and successful founders/technology entrepreneurs have at best a zero correlation (and anecdotal evidence suggests that the correlation may actually be negative.) I love Google. I think its one of the smartest companies out there. And it hires very smart people from the best schools.

Silicon Valley 332

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 332

Cracking the Code

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

Comparing the list to the top 300 leading SaaS companies in the US, some interesting trends emerge: Europe is showing strength in data/ analytics and security, driven by the booming ecosystem in Israel but is less represented in developer/infrastructure and vertical applications. and Intacct for $0.85B.

Europe 83

Europe Cloud API 83

ConversionXL

JANUARY 14, 2020

That makes it more of a ranking enabler than a ranking factor —even more so since machine-learning technologies like BERT help Google understand intent better. Unless you’re a small, agile startup, shipping new features isn’t as simple as it sounds. If you’ve never heard the term scrum or agile before, you’re behind.

SEO 159

SEO Framework SCRUM Search 159

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

If you are a founder of a startup ethics begin with you. Posted on April 2, 2009 by steveblank A comment left on the previous post made me realize that it was time to discuss a subject I was going to save for latter – ethics. And in a big company most of it is illegal and can have enormous consequences. A final note. Do the right thing.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Startup California 125

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. 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.

Customer Development 225

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 225

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

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. This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model.

Customer Development 251

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 251

crowdSPRING Blog

MAY 15, 2015

We just love sharing articles about fonts, logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, economics and other interesting stuff! Small Business and Startups: 8 Steps To a Successful Redesign | @crowdSPRING Blog – crowdspring.co/1KuCfWj. How To Avoid Agility.

Small Business 48

Small Business Design Social Media Startup 48

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2009

Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley « Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA Rocket Science 2: Drinking the Kool-Aid » 2 Responses Ben , on July 1, 2009 at 2:31 pm Said: Great post Steve. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 139

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 139

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

The original Hewlett Packard which made test and measurement products was spun-out and renamed Agilent. Agilent is a $5.8 After failing dismally at making disposable digital cameras in 2003 Pure Digital Technologies reinvented their company in 2007 to make the Flip line of camcorders.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 6, 2009

Funded by military contracts these 1950′s startups would help build Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial culture and environment. Air Force also needed improvements in frequency agility to protect its cold war bombers. Frequency agility can be best described by what happened over Germany in WWII.

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Silicon Valley RSS Germany California 153