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).

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Incubator Acquisition Business Model 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers? And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” However the Customer Development Model and the Lean Startup work equally well for startups on the web.

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Customer Development Web Developer Customer 227

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 30, 2011

Blackbox , founded by entrepreneurs Bjoern Lasse Herrmann and Max Marmer, in June released its first Startup Genome Report — a 67-page in depth analysis on what makes Silicon Valley startups successful based on profiling over 650 startups. 93% of startups that scale prematurely never break the $100k revenue per month threshold.

Silicon Valley 189

Silicon Valley Software Review Startup Cofounder 189

Steve Blank

MARCH 12, 2014

. — Teaching students to think like entrepreneurs not accountants. We realized that past K-12 Entrepreneurial classes taught students “the lemonade stand” version of how to start a company: 1) come up with an idea, 2) execute the idea, 3) do the accounting (revenue, costs, etc.).

Lean 334

Lean Customer Development Startup Silicon Valley 334

Steve Blank

AUGUST 25, 2015

He’s working to get his agency to adopt Lean and the Horizon 1, 2, and 3 innovation language (Horizon 1 executes current business models, Horizon 2 extends current business models and Horizon 3 searches for new business models ) and was now building a Lean innovation pipeline created out of my I-Corps/Lean LaunchPad classes.

Lean 120

Lean Entrepreneur Business Model Silicon Valley 120

ReadWriteStart

MAY 5, 2011

At the final roundtable, we worked with just two entrepreneurs and then spent the rest of the time on Q&A, which in itself was interesting. We can derive GeoInvenio's business model and pricing model based on that. You can select the business you like best through a poll on the 1M/1M Facebook page.

Costa Rica 115

Costa Rica Incubator Silicon Valley India 115

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.

Customer Development 266

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 266

ReadWriteStart

MAY 19, 2011

During today's roundtable, we opened the session with a discussion of the existential crisis in media and how talented bloggers and journalists are facing a tough time sustaining themselves due to lack of business models. What I like about the dynamics of 1M/1M today is that we're starting to see entrepreneurs make definitive progress.

India 115

India Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Affiliate 115

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

By then, I had become a venture capitalist at Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance and found myself talking to a lot of entrepreneurs who were proclaiming their great technology yet were struggling with little revenue, and claiming they were “crossing the chasm”. We kept talking, with Steve asking “How long are you staying in Silicon Valley?”

Japan 301

Japan Customer Development Developer Customer 301

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?

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

A version of this article appeared in the Harvard Business Review. The entrepreneur who founded and grew the largest startup in the world to $10 billion in revenue and got fired is someone you have probably never heard of. Who was the entrepreneur who founded what would become General Motors 16 years earlier, in 1904?

Michigan 291

Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 291

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. I don’t recommend anyone become an entrepreneur. Starting a business is too risky. The tools and temperament needed to get from startup idea to startup success were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 145

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. While there was an occasional bad apple, the public markets rewarded companies with revenue growth and sustainable profits.

Silicon Valley 233

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 233

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

But to do it, you need to actually have a sustainable business model. I don’t recommend anyone become an entrepreneur. Starting a business is too risky. The tools and temperament needed to get from startup idea to startup success were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

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

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.)

Customer 214

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 214

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

At today's roundtable, we had entrepreneurs presenting from Brazil, Israel and India. In fact, I was pleased to even see an entrepreneur from Kolkata, India, the city in which I was born and raised. As I keep reiterating, 99% of the businesses that go out for financing get rejected. Estate Lister. ServiceSutra.

Brazil 115

Brazil India Entrepreneur 115

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 16, 2011

The company already has paying customers and a validated business model. In fact, they generated $100k in revenues over the last year, since they first pitched at one of our roundtables. Abhijit foresees primarily a technology licensing business model whereby device vendors would be paying royalty per handset or tablet.

India 123

India Bootstrapping Non-Compete Entrepreneur 123

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. We’re hitting record revenue months, weeks, and margins. That includes us.

Early Stage 146

Early Stage Los Angeles Silicon Valley Cofounder 146

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Startups don’t fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model. Look at the Product Development model and you might wonder, “Where are the customers?” Where exactly did the assumptions in our startup business plan come from?” before you ship.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 243

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.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 26, 2020

There are two reasons to raise money: You have a killer idea that is only partially validated, that you think can get to $50M+ of revenue in 5 years with 80%+ gross margins (if margins are lower, you need a lot more revenue)and you need money to get to product-market fit, or. Team, Product, Traction, Business Model and Market.

Cofounder 431

Cofounder Seed Stage Valuation Metrics 431

David Teten

MARCH 18, 2021

Thirty-four VC firms in OpenVC call themselves “early-stage” Yet, 30% of those don’t actually invest in pre-revenue startups. 2) Business model-defined funds. B2B vs B2C) within the business model preference. . 4) Entrepreneur-defined funds. The phrase is quite ambiguous.

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Cofounder Venture Capital Deal Flow 78

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 11, 2011

One theme seems to come up over and again, especially from geographies outside Silicon Valley: lack of a reliable pipeline of deals. In many of these cases, the funds or the accelerators want to put in $100,000 to $500,000 in select ventures but are having a hard time finding mature entrepreneurs to support.

Silicon Valley 105

Silicon Valley Columbus Ohio Incubator 105

Steve Blank

JUNE 10, 2010

Who is an entrepreneur really? It turns out that there are four distinct types of entrepreneurial organizations; s mall businesses , scalable startups , large companies and social entrepreneurs. Yet entrepreneurs in one class think that the others aren’t the “real” entrepreneurs. Scalable Startup Entrepreneurship.

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Silicon Valley Entrepreneur United States New York City 330

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 24, 2011

This week's One Million by One Million roundtable was our 75th session, and we worked today with three entrepreneurs from the Midwest region of the United States. As an entrepreneur CEO, she ran three companies: DAIS, Intarka, and Uuma. Our co-host for the program was TiE Midwest, based in Chicago.

Illinois 114

Illinois Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Chicago 114

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 3, 2011

It is particularly satisfying for me to work with these entrepreneurs because I have long believed that India needs to diversify out of pure labor arbitrage. But in the end, I believe, we have arrived at a better place as an industry where Indian entrepreneurs are thinking beyond outsourcing. IRTEX: Indian Road Transportation Exchange.

Entrepreneur 118

Entrepreneur India Technical Review Los Angeles 118

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 1, 2011

1M/1M will be working with Microsoft in helping entrepreneurs prepare for these grants. As for business model, Jigar wants to sell services like refilling cards. Next week, the 1M/1M roundtable will focus on entrepreneurs in East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. You can register for the next roundtable here.

India 119

India Guerilla Entrepreneur New Zealand 119

ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

There is also need for researchers at various institutes to collaborate around this data and models, all problems that point towards a cloud-based solution. An entrepreneur should pick this one up ASAP. How do you account for the charge backs to the business units or functional areas?

Cloud 117

Cloud Fractional CTO Entrepreneur Bandwidth 117

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

Reid Hoffman

OCTOBER 21, 2019

We argued extensively in our book, Blitzscaling , that these strategies and tactics describe why Silicon Valley Bay Area – which has a population of less than 4 million – generates such a massively disproportionate number of global technology companies. This is where the WeWork business model becomes problematic.

Silicon Valley 53

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review United Kingdom 53

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

During the last three years he’s worked with over 100 companies, many of which established Innovation Outposts in Silicon Valley. He’s now helping companies get the most out of their relationships with Silicon Valley. By the 1950’s Shumpeter observed that in-house R&D had replaced the inventor-entrepreneur.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Venture Capital United States Technical Review 120

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 25, 2015

Some were Silicon Valley early stage companies, such as Apple, Quantum, and Masstor Systems. while none of the non-Silicon Valley regional firms were long-term successful as regional firms. However, none were based in the Silicon Valley and are probably unfamiliar names to today’s practitioners.

Venture Capital 70

Venture Capital SBIC Technical Review Silicon Valley 70

Hippoland

JULY 6, 2018

From that perspective, things have been mostly rosy in the Silicon Valley for startups! except for 2008-2009, which is another story) But, I think we’re in trouble, Silicon Valley. This is probably just after the series A in my opinion – where you’re doing perhaps $300k-$1m per month in revenue.

Silicon Valley 48

Silicon Valley San Francisco Portugal Ireland 48

Hippoland

JULY 6, 2018

From that perspective, things have been mostly rosy in the Silicon Valley for startups! except for 2008-2009, which is another story) But, I think we’re in trouble, Silicon Valley. This is probably just after the series A in my opinion – where you’re doing perhaps $300k-$1m per month in revenue.

Silicon Valley 48

Silicon Valley San Francisco Portugal Ireland 48

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

. × At Greylock , my partners and I are driven by one guiding mission: always help entrepreneurs. It doesn’t matter whether an entrepreneur is in our portfolio, whether we’re considering an investment, or whether we’re casually meeting for the first time. Entrepreneurs often ask me for help with their pitch decks.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Revenue Viral Networking 111

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 14, 2011

a group of entrepreneurs from TiE Chennai gathered at the Indian Institute of Technology-Madras (IIT-M) Research Park campus, and we spent the next four hours discussing strategy and tactics of early-stage entrepreneurship. As an entrepreneur CEO, she ran three companies: DAIS, Intarka, and Uuma. At 11 a.m.,

India 126

India Technical Review Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 126