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.

Cofounder 223

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 223

Austin Startup

MARCH 3, 2020

LexSet’s primary office is in the Brooklyn Navy Yard at the NewLab , an amazing startup ecosystem that provides lots of opportunities for pilots and collaborations. What has the startup experience taught you about life? If you are an entrepreneur, check out the SXSW 2020 Startups Track , which runs March 13–17.

Technical Review 63

Technical Review Los Angeles Cofounder Silicon Valley 63

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.

Customer 201

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 201

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Startups and Sales If you read this post you can come away with the impression that every startup with a direct salesforce needs a consultative sales team. what Market Type is your startup? Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

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. Is marketing different if you’re in the cleantech business versus medical devices?

Vertical 123

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 123

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.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2011

So Happy New Year to my 100,000-plus monthly readers throughout the world, and to many more who read my posts via some of the most important media in the startup/tech/entrepreneurship world, in more languages and places than I can keep track of. Now I’ve had days with 20 viewers per minute. Now Hear This.

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley California Vertical Customer Development 201

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

An existing market is one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.” Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

Silicon Valley 188

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 188

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

There is no certainty about a startup on day-one. You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. At each startup I couldn’t wait to do this. Faith-based Entrepreneurship At first, entrepreneurship is a Faith-based initiative.

Silicon Valley 219

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 219

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 3, 2020

What has the startup experience taught you about life? It’s in the heart of Silicon Valley, but against the traffic in the morning. If you are an entrepreneur, check out the SXSW 2020 Startups Track , which runs March 13–17. Don’t be stressed?—?tomorrow tomorrow is another day.

San Jose 75

San Jose Cofounder API Silicon Valley 75

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

I’ve been a traditional equity VC for 8 years, and I’m now researching new business models in venture capital. We provide revenue-based funding and business acceleration support to service-based small businesses located outside of major capital markets such as Silicon Valley and New York City.”. “We

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 19, 2009

Filed under: Ardent , Family/Career , Technology « Times Square Strategy Session – Web Startups and Customer Development Customer Development: Past, Present, Future » 17 Responses Mark Essel , on November 19, 2009 at 6:55 am Said: Haha, closure is well worth the effort when an entertaining tale can be shared!

Silicon Valley 191

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 191

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.

Customer Development 246

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 246

Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

The myth about pivots is that they are an exception: something undesirable that happens because a startup went seriously awry, and which you should strive to avoid. Actually, startups, like all businesses, work because of a cycle of invention and reinvention. Business model evolution is the rule, not the exception.

Startup 36

Startup Silicon Valley Business Model Mobile 36

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.”

Customer Development 264

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

For the first 25 years HP’s business model was static. Of course HP did ship new products and innovate, but their center of innovation was sustaining innovation , around the core of their existing business. Elephant Graveyard Reinvention of large companies, while making for great case studies are rare.

Silicon Valley 169

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 169

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

The best entrepreneurship textbooks and blogs assume that advice to startups is generalizable. But as I learned from my students this “one-size-fits-all” approach does not work for all startups. Different market opportunities present radically different startup risks and costs.

Vertical 151

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 151

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. Peter described the first company in which “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” and we were enthralled.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 3, 2017

This will not be a personal essay about that move, which is motivated by family and opportunity, but it does give me reason to address the decision process about where to locate your startup. It has a diverse community of creative and technical types and an extremely vibrant startup scene.

Atlanta 48

Atlanta Albuquerque Incubator Austin 48

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

It’s why all of you operated so well in the unpredictable environment that all startups face.” What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. I couldn’t figure out if I was more perturbed about how casual the comment was or how insightful it was.

Founder 302

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 302

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. Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing. The story had universal appeal, and we spun the tale and keep the buzz going.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Almost every university, region and car wash now has a business plan competition; the rules, who can participate, how large the prizes and who are the judges vary by school. Over scrambled eggs and diet coke, I listened to this seasoned startup veteran describe the excitement of his students who came to the U.S. to compete.

Business Plan 143

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 143

pandodaily.com

JULY 18, 2012

And the startup ecosystem is dependent on those wild Barry-Bonds-juiced-up-on-a-million-steriods-style home runs to keep functioning. Ultimately, we each had a lot of domain experience in different content verticals and wanted to build the ultimate places we could work every day putting that experience to work. 25 comments.

Entrepreneur 45

Entrepreneur San Francisco Silicon Valley Technical Review 45

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. In a startup the role of Customer Development is to: test the founders hypothesis about the customer problem test if the product concept and minimum feature set solve that problem This is a big idea and worth repeating.

Customer Development 280

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 280

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 11, 2011

This week, I've had several meetings with venture funds, incubators, corporate accelerators and other significant players in the startup eco-system. One theme seems to come up over and again, especially from geographies outside Silicon Valley: lack of a reliable pipeline of deals.

Silicon Valley 105

Silicon Valley Columbus Ohio Incubator 105

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

25 Best Startup Failure Post-Mortems of All Time. Update – As a followup, we analyzed all of these startup failure post-mortems to identify the top 20 reasons for startup failure. Also worth a read after you review these startup failure post-mortems. Post-Mortem Title : How My Startup Failed.

Software Review 79

Software Review Startup Technical Review Vesting 79

Mucker Lab

MAY 1, 2013

Instead of funding or founding enterprise software companies – these new startups are increasingly hybrids. From the outside, they are vertically integrated challengers to decades if not hundred-years old incumbents. Ironically, they are most likely not the Ivy League or Stanford grads that Silicon Valley VC’s love to back.

Software 107

Software Silicon Valley Los Angeles Columbus 107

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 22, 2009

Getting Out of the Building Wasn’t Entertainment – Discovery and Validation Now that I was the master of the “facts” about customer needs in these specialized vertical markets , and with my team of vertical marketers , I thought I had achieved absolution and redemption. But there was one fatal flaw.

Silicon Valley 178

Silicon Valley RSS Vertical California 178

Steve Blank

JULY 23, 2009

At these startups both the problem and solution were unknown. Startups were not just smaller versions of a large company, they were about invention, innovation and iteration - of business model, product, customers and on and on. Startups were doing discovery of the problem and solution in real-time.

Silicon Valley 121

Silicon Valley RSS California Chad 121

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

I first met Evangelos Simoudis when he ran IBM’s Business Intelligence Solutions Division and then as CEO of his first startup Customer Analytics. During the last three years he’s worked with over 100 companies, many of which established Innovation Outposts in Silicon Valley. See here for background on horizons.).

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Venture Capital United States Technical Review 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2020

Nand changed the culture of the JAIC, bringing in Silicon Valley tools for product development, product management and for the first time a culture that focused on UI/UX, MVPs and continuous integration and deployment. This is where I brought in the thinking of how we build businesses here in Silicon Valley.

Artificial Inteligence 396

Artificial Inteligence Fractional CTO Technology CTO 396

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Researchers divided the portfolio companies into six stages and startups are still operating a loss in each of the first four. That means the vast majority of privately held companies are still very dependent on venture money to stay in business. Especially since even Youtube is still struggling to try find a viable business model.

Venture Capital 62

Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

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

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110