Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

The trick is we use the same Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum — and the same class structure – experiential, hands-on– driven this time by a mission -model not a business model. Hacking for Defense has its origins in the Lean LaunchPad class I first taught at Stanford in 2011. He runs H4X Labs.

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Lean Security Asia SBIR 385

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.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I’ve seen the Valley grow from Sunnyvale to Santa Clara to today where it stretches from San Jose to South of Market in San Francisco. I’ve watched the Valley go from Microwave Valley – to Defense Valley – to Silicon Valley to Internet Valley. So how did this happen? Where is it going?

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Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Steve Blank

AUGUST 25, 2015

I’ve spent this year working with corporations and government agencies that are adopting and adapting Lean Methodologies. Several pockets of innovation in his agency have begun to look to startups and have tried to adopt lean methods. —– What Have We Lost? Yet today at dinner his frustration just spilled out.

Lean 120

Lean Entrepreneur Business Model Silicon Valley 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2015

Evangelos and I are working on what we hope will become a book about the new model for corporate entrepreneurship. Read part one on the Evolution of Corporate R&D , part two on Innovation Outposts in Silicon Valley , and part three The 6 Decisions to Make Before Setting up an Innovation Outpost. Silicon Valley, Boston).

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Silicon Valley Incubator Acquisition Business Model 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

To celebrate the debut of the Japan edition of “The Startup Owner’s Manual” and to express great thanks to Steve and his co-author Bob Dorf, I would like to reflect back what first drew me to this book and offer Steve’s worldwide readers a look at the progress of Customer Development and the Lean LaunchPad class in Japan.

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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. The OODA Loop was the Lean Startup philosophy before lean. In 2010 Colonel Peter Newell took over the REF and turned its focus into what we would call a Lean Startup.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Afghanistan Iraq Kuwait 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 12, 2020

And the trick is we use the same Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum — and kept the same class structure – experiential, hands-on, driven this time by a mission -model not a business model. Hacking for Defense has its origins in the Lean LaunchPad class I first taught at Stanford in 2011. He runs H4X Labs.

Oakland 301

Oakland Asia Lean Video 301

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.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Entrepreneurs put together their funding presentation by extracting the key ideas from their business plan, putting them on PowerPoint/Keynote and pitching the company – until they get funded or exhausted.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Technology | Tagged: Customer Development , Early Stage Startup , Entrepreneurs , Startups , Steve Blank « SuperMac War Story 6: Building The Killer Team – Mission, Intent and Values Story Behind “The Secret History” Part IV: Library Hours at an Undisclosed Location » 17 Responses Michael F.

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Up and Running

MAY 28, 2015

We recently had Tim Berry, Palo Alto Software founder and business planning expert, present our Bplans audience with his latest advice on lean business planning. Start your lean business plan today: Download our Free Lean Plan Template one-page-pitch-download.pdf. That’s a lean business plan.

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Lean Business Plan Video Software Review 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

And how thinking of a solution to this commonly used model’s failures led to a new model – the Customer Development Model – that offers a new way to approach startup activities outside the building. Startups don’t fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). These topics were the focus of interviews with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern). Tiffani Bell.

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Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. I remember presenting our ideas for Marketing Automation to one VP of Marketing in a large Silicon Valley company. It’s just a story about what happened to me.

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Entrepreneur-in-Residence After SuperMac I had been approached by one of our venture investors to be an entrepreneur in residence (EIR), a Silicon Valley phrase which says one thing but means another. I offered to introduce him to the firm whose Entrepreneur-in-Residence offer I had just accepted.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

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. It’s this latter criteria that I think tends to get overlooked in most writing about entrepreneurs.

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Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 21, 2015

Passion and fearlessness — two key ingredients the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on Sirius XM Channel 111, leveraged to build their companies. While at The Washington Post, she broke stories on the Microsoft antitrust case from Washington before establishing the paper’s Silicon Valley office.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder Washington New York City 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 27, 2012

One of the great things about being a retired entrepreneur is that I get to give back to the community that helped me. I assembled this collection of free and almost free tools, class syllabi, presentations, books, lectures, videos in the hope that it can make your path as an entrepreneur or educator easier. Free: Startup Tools.

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Open Source Silicon Valley Lean Customer Development 335

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

The popular view of a real entrepreneur is someone with a big vision, and a stubborn determination to charge straight ahead through any obstacle and make it happen. His new book on this subject, “ The Lean Startup ,” lays out how today's entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses.

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Lean Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Architecture 255

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 1: Bend, Oregon Ecosystem and Entrepreneurs.

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Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. But at times it’s why entrepreneurs can sink their own companies. More on this in later posts.)

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Up and Running

MAY 3, 2012

Entrepreneurship continues to be a sexy topic for governments, with every country worth its salt trying to create its own tech hub, mimicking Silicon Valley. After all, entrepreneurs can do many good things, not least to create wealth and employment, pay taxes and help the balance of trade through exports.

Entrepreneur 82

Entrepreneur Technical Review Silicon Valley Lean 82

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

You know you have achieved product/market fit when you start getting orders (or users, eyeballs or whatever your criteria for success was in your business model.) At best it is a way to inform an entrepreneurs instinct and reduce risk. Is our solution compelling enough that they want to buy it or use it today? It’s an art.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 278

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

And I remind them that they should be bringing some type of domain expertise (technical or business) to the table. Other Roles in a Startup Generic advice given to entrepreneurs assumes that everyone is going to be the founder/co-founder. By now the company may have found and settled on a repeatable business model.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. There’s lots of lore, emotion, and misconceptions of what VC’s do or don’t do for entrepreneurs. In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter.

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Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

The Startup Magazine

JUNE 1, 2023

By Daniel Sokolovksy, Co-Founder and CEO, WARP and Troy Lester, Co-Founder and CRO, WARP The dissolution of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) was more than just a bank collapse, it was a reality check for both startups and the VCs that fund them. And they probably never will be unless business model viability is reassessed across the board.

Early Stage 112

Early Stage Los Angeles Silicon Valley Cofounder 112

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. Class Logistics. As described in the previous post , this is a hands-on class.

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Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

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. Believing Your Own BS is Toxic Lots of noise and smoke before a product ships seems to be a toxic byproduct of enthusiastic entrepreneurs.

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Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Up and Running

DECEMBER 5, 2016

Lean Planning is a concept that we introduced back in 2012 as an evolution in business planning. The traditional business plan just wasn’t fitting the needs of modern, fast-moving companies and it was time to bring more of a scientific approach to business planning. But, where did Lean Planning come from?

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Lean Silicon Valley Business Model Forecast 60

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. Find out Memorex’s position in Silicon Valley.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

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. The tools and techniques available to small businesses on Main Street are the same ones that were being used for the last 75 years. Serendipity.

Silicon Valley 305

Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 305

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. 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. Here’s why.

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Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 11, 2019

Ann will be speaking at this year’s Lean Startup Conference in October about all of this and more. Well known founders within Silicon Valley demanded this kind of change across the board, and if they wanted to see it internally, they also had to see it within the organizations that touched their group.

Founder 68

Founder Lean Venture Capital Cofounder 68

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2013

My co-author and business Partner Bob Dorf spends much of his time traveling the world teaching countries and companies how to run the Lean LaunchPad program. SENA and the Colombian Ministry of IT: targeting 15,000 young entrepreneurs. The hands-on Lean LaunchPad program offers the most intense support of all.

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Colombia Lean Silicon Valley Coder 321

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 30, 2012

Start With a Business Model, Not a Business Plan | WSJ – [link]. An Entrepreneur’s Guide To Patents: How To Determine Whether They Are Right For Your Company | TechCrunch – [link]. The problem with a Lean Startup: the Minimum Viable Product | Paul Kortman – [link]. – [link].

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Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

For those of you who don’t know, business plan competitions are held by universities who get their students to enter and compete to see who has the best business idea. In exchange, these VCs/companies get early looks at new deal flow and offer aspiring entrepreneurs feedback and advice on their business plan.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 140