Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

The mantra of “ first mover advantage ,” the idea that winners are the ones who are the first entrants in their market, became the conventional wisdom of investors in Silicon Valley.“ First Movers” didn’t understand customer problems or the product features that solved those problems (what we now call product-market fit).

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Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

business models. But for the last decade “innovation” in Chinese software meant something different than it did in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Management 101.

China 327

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 327

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2015

BMNT , a new Silicon Valley company, is combining the Lean Methods it learned in combat with the technology expertise and speed of startups. One OSRD project – the Manhattan Project – the development of the atomic bomb – was so secret and important that it was spun off as a separate program. In peacetime the U.S.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Kuwait 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

The Energy Storage division is acting like a startup, and Prescott Logan its General Manager, has lived up to the charter. He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley. They’ve tested their hypotheses with literally hundreds of customer interviews on every continent in the world. Corporate elephants can dance.

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 237

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

business models. But for the last decade “innovation” in Chinese software meant something different than it did in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Management 101.

China 219

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 219

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

Although the class was run completely online, and even though they were suffering from Zoom fatigue, the 10 teams of 42 students collectively interviewed 1,142 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, industry partners, etc. Team Fleetwise – Vehicle Fleet Management. All the presentations are worth a watch.

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Lean Security Asia SBIR 413

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# Too often, CEOs and small business managers suffer from analysis paralysis. That’s why startups are agile.

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Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 307

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Some really great stuff in 2010 that aims to help startups around product, technology, business models, etc.

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Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

The Founder’s New Insight Smart founders are never satisfied with simply executing their current business model, they are constantly observing, orienting and deciding whether their current business model can be made better. It’s a natural part of learning about your customers and business model.)

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 216

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. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 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.

Lean 295

Lean Chile Ukraine Spain 295

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 2, 2010

I gave a talk last night to the Silicon Valley Product Management Association. It’s a San Francisco Bay Area forum for networking, jobs and education for over 500 Product Management professionals. startups search for a business model, large companies execute an existing one.

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Silicon Valley Management San Francisco Product 265

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Lean Planning is a set of tools for discovering a business model that works, building an action plan to test your assumptions, creating financial models and a plan for a viable business, and tracking your performance so you can adjust your plan on the fly, quickly and easily. Do startups have a manual?

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Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Our “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” story played great in Silicon Valley, they ate it up in Hollywood, and the business press tripped over themselves to talk to us. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing.

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Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

This week, the startup tribe from Harvard Business School is making their annual trek to Silicon Valley. It’s a common refrain around Silicon Valley to disparage the role of MBA’s in entrepreneurship. General management is supposed to be orderly, “strategic” and mostly calm. That's a waste of time.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

The class teaches the three basic skills all entrepreneurs need to know: business model design. customer development. Some general customer development slides click here. Visitors Guide to Silicon Valley. So for the rest of us I put together this Visitors Guide to Silicon Valley.

Open Source 335

Open Source Silicon Valley Lean Customer Development 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

It may just be that the message of building companies that have predictable revenue and profit models hasn’t percolated through the VC business model. Unfortunately, regardless of a VC’s age, their business models are suffering and IPOs seem to be a thing of the past for at least a while longer. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Steve Blank

JUNE 21, 2017

I was in Boston and was interviewed by The Growth Show about my current thinking about innovation in companies and government agencies.The interviewer was great and managed to get me to summarize several years of learning in one podcast. 6:22 What’s Customer Development. It’s worth a listen. 10:01 Lean in Corporations.

Silicon Valley 252

Silicon Valley Lean Government Boston 252

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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 253

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Job creation in Bend is everyone’s business.

Silicon Valley 317

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 317

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

The key things I want students to take from the class are: Understand that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a profitable business model. Learn how to put together a business model , not a business plan. TA’s make managing 60 students working on cases and team projects manageable.

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Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 235

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

Second, doing customer discovery via video actually increased the number of interviews the students were able to do each week. The eight teams spoke to over 945 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, warfighters, legal, security, customers, etc. He runs H4X Labs.

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Oakland Asia Lean Video 313

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. Alex, vice provost for Innovation & Economic Development at Weber State University in Utah and completing his first year of teaching entrepreneurship.

Silicon Valley 311

Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 311

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 allow venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. Silicon Valley, New York).

Silicon Valley 289

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 289

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

For our students, that can mean anyone from a Syrian refugee trying to make contact with his family back home, to a supply chain manager for a major apparel brand who wants to make sure his contract factory in Bangladesh doesn’t use forced labor. What we’re driving at is evidence-based, entrepreneurial solutions to big diplomatic challenges.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

For our students, that can mean anyone from a Syrian refugee trying to make contact with his family back home, to a supply chain manager for a major apparel brand who wants to make sure his contract factory in Bangladesh doesn’t use forced labor. What we’re driving at is evidence-based, entrepreneurial solutions to big diplomatic challenges.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

It’s our hood alignment station,” the plant manager said proudly. These damn models weren’t designed right so we’re fixing them on the line.” One day, I was at the Ford Wixom auto assembly plant training my replacement and I was at met at the door by an irate plant manager. the manager followed us still yelling.

Founder 310

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 310

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. Prior to founding Carely , Michael Eidsaune earned his MBA in finance and spent several years in investment management, eventually earning his level 1 CFA certification. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 145

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Luckily (or maybe because we were in Silicon Valley where there was a domain expert for everything) there was a very smart consultant in the retail computer space, Seymour Merrin, who preached about the importance of packaging. He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject.

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

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

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. Starting a business is too risky. Prior to founding Carely , Michael Eidsaune earned his MBA in finance and spent several years in investment management, eventually earning his level 1 CFA certification. Our revenue model was wrong.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

So let’s be very specific: let’s assume your dream job is product manager at Google, working on the Analytics product. The Ultimate Combination of Startup Business Development Methods - ArcticStartup , November 16, 2010 I've been a huge fan of Steven Blank's Customer Development methodology for a long time.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. Silicon Valley, New York). Yet boards of large companies exist to monitor efficient strategy and execution of a known business model.

Silicon Valley 297

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 297

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

In cohort one, 25 teams chosen from a field of 100+, worked fulltime for eight weeks to take their ideas from a “cocktail napkin” business idea to a viable, scalable business model. Second, technology education is more skill-based, graduating lots of smart coders and IT managers, but not a lot of true development visionaries.

Colombia 325

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 325

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. Silicon Valley, New York). Yet boards of large companies exist to monitor efficient strategy and execution of a known business model.

Silicon Valley 270

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 270

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

In cohort one, 25 teams chosen from a field of 100+, worked fulltime for eight weeks to take their ideas from a “cocktail napkin” business idea to a viable, scalable business model. Second, technology education is more skill-based, graduating lots of smart coders and IT managers, but not a lot of true development visionaries.

Colombia 289

Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 289