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 223

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 1, 2019

In two of these three phases – the first and third – volumes of helpful information and numerous organizations are readily available to help guide and support founders of startups. These are the consultants and books that offer founders the tools and insights needed to “cross the chasm” ( as Geoffrey Moore put it ) and begin to scale.

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Cleveland Framework Marketing Early Stage 150

www.startuplessonslearned.com

MAY 4, 2012

Founders Dilemmas: Equity Splits. The following is an excerpt from HBS Professor Noam Wasserman’s new book, The Founders Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup. Noam is one of a rare breed of business academics: he studies entrepreneurship using a rigorous empirical approach. by Eric Ries.

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JANUARY 9, 2014

No clear vision or purpose This should be the starting point for any startup founder, but it’s often overlooked. in business we can create much deeper connections with our audience and give our startups a better chance of success. By focusing on the ‘why?’ I set up a regular design meetup for startups, UX Café , for this reason.

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The Next Web

DECEMBER 4, 2013

Initially, your staff (even if that’s just you and a co-founder) will be your greatest asset in locating and connecting with your audience. As a startup, you’re working with limited resources and a lean business model. Starting out, you can’t hit every network and outlet full-force. Prioritize social networks.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

The role of a founding CEO in a startup searching for a business model is radically different than a CEO building and growing a company. So if you’re the founder of a startup, you may want to consider who you take money from. Is Your VC Founder Friendly? How many of their founders are still with their company?

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Austin Startup

MAY 11, 2017

We make a majority of our investments in those sectors and prioritize proven business models. 645 Ventures: A New Era of Venture Capital Investing Arena Growth Partners We help great leaders build great businesses. A New Kind of Venture Firm AutoChrome Autochrome is an inception and seed stage venture capital fund.

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Private Equity Venture Capital Technical Review Seed Stage 48

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

However the Customer Development Model and the Lean Startup work equally well for startups on the web. Union Square Ventures The next morning I got to spend time with Brad Burnham , partner at Union Square Ventures talking about their investment strategy and insights about web-based businesses. End of theory.&#

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. Analytics spark more questions and discussion than almost any other aspect of the Lean Startup method. Alistair and Ben, co-authors of the book Lean Analytics, will help you sort it out in our next webcast, Lean Analytics for Non-tech Companies.

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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. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

Our Lean Launchpad® for Life Sciences is one of them. ———– The National Institutes of Health recognizes that Life Science/Health Care commercialization has two components: the science/technology, and the business model. Lean Methods are one such tool. Lean LaunchPad Life Sciences (NIH) Teaching'

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San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 262

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? What matters is proving the viability of the company’s business model, what investors call “traction.&#

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Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

Eric Ries of The Lean Startup has called Andrew Chen’s blog “one of the best entrepreneurship blogs of all time.” This is the home of Jason Cohen, software startup founder, bootstrapper, investor, and mentor. His blog is full of personal stories, gentle advice, and guidance that will be useful to any startup founder.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Silicon Valley Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

a language corporate innovation groups can use to communicate to business units and finance. Teams can prove their competence and validate their ideas by showing investors evidence that there’s a repeatable and scalable business model. data that investors, accelerators and incubators can use to inform selection. But the ‘ah-hah!’

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Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 308

Mucker Lab

OCTOBER 12, 2016

Following the inevitable ups and downs of the VC investment cycle, and what founders can do when it all turns cold. Financially, they have to reserve capital to support large portfolio companies that account for big portions of the portfolio and thus make less early stage investment. The road ahead for entrepreneurs.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

We’re going to test this hypothesis by teaching a Lean LaunchPad class for Life Sciences and Healthcare (therapeutics, diagnostics, devices and digital health) this October at UCSF with a team of veteran venture capitalists. Business Model Issues. Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up.

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Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 296

Occam's Razor

APRIL 8, 2013

This thought was in my mind as I was reading Lean Analytics a new book by my friend Alistair Croll and his collaborator Benjamin Yoskovitz. In this post, we’ll look at each of the four steps in the Lean Analytics Cycle in more detail. Another way to find the metric you want to change is to look at your business model.

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Metrics Analytics Lean Churn Rate 156

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

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. Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. Founders operate in a chaotic regime.

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Up and Running

MAY 3, 2012

From a young person’s perspective, with tight labour markets, decreasing barriers to entry, low capital-intensive business models and immediate free access to a global market, the appeal is also compelling. Eric Ries , author of The Lean Start-up , puts it best: ‘ The grim reality is that most start-ups fail.

Entrepreneur 82

Entrepreneur Technical Review Silicon Valley Lean 82

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

One way to conceive of our goal in an early-stage venture is to incrementally “fill in the blanks&# for the business model that we think will one day power our startup. For example, say that your business model calls for a 4% conversion rate – as ours did initially at IMVU. Expo SF (May.

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Altgate

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

The presentation was on outsourcing generally, not just software engineering and the audience was very early stage companies (some yet to be founded). But did you know that founder Markus Frind has just 3 employees for his $10MM+ revenue business? In the early days no one can tell your story better than you.

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Software Review Offshore Startup Boston 65

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

If you’ve tried to slog your way through my book on Customer Development you know that I’m insistent that the founders need to be the ones getting outside the building (physically or virtually) to validate all the initial hypotheses of the business model and product.

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

SoCal CTO

OCTOBER 8, 2009

This is a great presentation and one that I'm going to point out to startup / early stage company CEOs. Normally, when I am talking to the founder of any startup trying to figure out what they need to do, one of the things I always try to do is understand their business at its core. Great stuff.

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Metrics Startup Retention Acquisition 225

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 4, 2013

I recommend you read Fred Wilson’s recent blog post about the need for a well articulated business strategy before pushing a particular business model. He then brought her to board meetings so nobody could accuse him of not having a business model. LEAN STARTUP MOVEMENT. Business Model.

Technical Review 401

Technical Review Startup Business Model Non-Compete 401

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2019

He’ll be speaking at this year’s Lean Startup Conference , and also has a new book (for which I very happily wrote a short foreword) coming out next month: Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It. I’ve seen many founders not fully grasp how the venture capital business works and what incentives investors have.

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Lean Venture Capital Conversion IPO 108

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 15, 2011

Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. The process they use to guide that search is "Customer Development" ; and to track their progress startups now have a scorecard to document their week-by-week changes – the business model canvas.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Startup Early Stage Business Model 118

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Errol Arkilic , former program director for the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (NSF I-Corps), now founder of M34 Capital. The Lean LaunchPad class. But nothing else like [The Lean LaunchPad class] was being taught. .

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Government Channel Southern California Lean 120

Ben's Blog

MAY 15, 2020

In normal times, every company operates against some hypothetical growth model—a data-driven framework that describes how your product grows and how you acquire new users. In normal times, every company operates against some hypothetical growth model—a data-driven framework that describes how your product grows and how you acquire new users.

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Founder Conversion Technical Review Cash Position 36

The Equity Kicker

FEBRUARY 24, 2014

He’s been COO of some amazing businesses, including HouseTrip and LiveBookings, and will now help our founders succeed just as he helped the founders of those companies. I am truly excited about being instrumental in defining that model. At Forward Partners we look to invest in early stage tech businesses.

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Partner Early Stage Business Model HTML 91

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. A Day in the Life of A Founder For those of you who’ve never started a company, let me assure you that it never happens like the pleasant articles you read in business magazines or in case studies.

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genylabs.typepad.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Before you agree to take equity in lieu of cash, you need to understand that any individual early stage start-up company equity is most likely going to be worthless. what rights and preferences the founders and the other investors have. what rights and preferences the founders and the other investors have. Categories.

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Equity Technical Review San Jose Stock 40

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 1, 2012

This is a choice that every startup founder must make , so I’d like to dig in deeper. To clarify the discussion, let’s use a simpler model: Companies A and B both sell products with recurring monthly revenue, and both brought in $10,000 in revenue last month. maximizing reach) versus selling more expensive units (i.e.

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Customer Revenue Acquisition Cofounder 320

www.inc.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Last spring, Dave Graham , founder of software consulting firm Arizona Bay, learned that a major client, Jumpstart Automotive Media, had been acquired for more than $80 million. Over the past year or so, work-for-equity arrangements have become an integral part of Arizona Bays business model. Quality Manager Job Description.

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The Equity Kicker

JULY 8, 2019

As the number of startups has exploded over the last 30-40 years best practices have been developed that can be shared from one early stage company to the next. This trend accelerated through the emergence of VC and operator blogging in the early 2000s. . Business model. And what’s holding it back?

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Portfolio LP Venture Capital Partner 84

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. What are Early Stage VC’s Really Asking? Can it scale?”

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. Reply An Interview with Mark Fletcher, Founder of Bloglines and ONEList — TechDrawl , on July 10, 2009 at 3:56 pm Said: [.] There is no certainty about a startup on day-one.

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Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 219

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Step 1: Start with a lean plan. Instead of sitting down to write a 40-page business plan, start with a one-page pitch. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods.

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