Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2016

The cross-disciplinary class brings students from widely divergent backgrounds together in teams of three to five, each aiming to tackle a gnarly international problem vexing Foggy Bottom in just 10 weeks by applying Lean LaunchPad methodology. The time difference between Washington and California often doesn’t help.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2012

Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or Customer Development there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. I want to tell you a story about how a team pivoted and succeeded by synchronizing product and customer development. How dare you,” the fab manager said. “We

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San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 259

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 1, 2018

(Almost) everything you need to know (but are afraid to ask) before you wistfully ask a product manager to coffee so they will help you find a job. TL;DR Product management is a unique and poorly understood discipline, especially as it applies to software and other tech-related companies.

Management 85

Management Product Technical Review Software Review 85

Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

And there are more to come: your first job, getting married, buying a house, having a child, becoming a manager, starting a company, retirement – and eventually commencement speaker. When I retired after 21 years working in 8 startups, I was invited to be a guest lecturer at the business school at the University of California Berkeley.

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Lean Technical Review Vietnam Engineer 223

Mike Michalowicz

FEBRUARY 28, 2018

His practice, Complete Family Vision Care Optometry, is in San Diego, California. Dr. Aaron Neufeld, OD is an Owner/Optometrist at Los Altos Optometric Group in Los Altos, California. Optometrists should work towards a CEO model where they spend more time working on business development and management.

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San Diego Technical Review California Retention 111

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. I was in California at that point, where there were a handful of women, which to me was already really inspirational. How do you develop power within a venture capital firm? I've been in venture now twice. You also teach.

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Founder Lean Venture Capital Cofounder 68

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

The first step was to recruit a new management team. The assets were a series of products already developed and on the market or in the development pipeline. Now with a new infusion of $8 million dollars of venture capital, SuperMac had been resurrected from the dead and was attempting to restart.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 161

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I think it’s something our business people realize, as they are actively reaching out to the web development community and attending meetups and conferences in things they don’t have any knowledge of, but give them a taste of what our job is like every day.

Engineer 218

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 218

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2017

Guest Post by Misti Yang, Writer for Lean Startup Co. This is the mantra of Lean teams described by Eric Ries in his upcoming book, The Startup Way. Drawing on the advice of experts and recent research, here are seven insights on how to best build a Lean team. A hallmark of Lean teams is cross-functionality. Start small.

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Lean San Francisco Employee California 140

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

This year, with the kids grown, their choice was to fly up from Southern California and spend the holidays at our ranch. So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. I hope we managed to teach our children compassion and charity for others.

Silicon Valley 149

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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. In a startup it doesn’t matter if you’re 100% right 100% of the time.

Silicon Valley 305

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

Silicon Valley 129

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Forget the Hypertext idea and come on back to California. I would learn a ton from Gordon for over a decade, not only about practical heuristics for managing complex engineering projects (i.e. Reply Karma in the Lean Startup Era , on January 28, 2010 at 5:26 pm Said: [.] The response from across the country?

North Carolina 129

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Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

A partner allows me the flexibility to miss a session or two (my job as a California Coastal Commissioner meets three days every month up and down the coast of California.) TA’s make managing 60 students working on cases and team projects manageable. Finally our TA’s managed the mentors we had supporting the students.

Business Model 235

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 235

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

PS1- I run a small software startup in Brazil and just found out about Customer Development and your blog (I’ve been reading and listening to everything I can get my hands on online, like Venturehacks and Ries’ blog). What I thought would be a simple port is actually a major project I don’t have time to manage.

Silicon Valley 331

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Steve Blank

APRIL 21, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment with a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Last week we challenged the team that unless they developed hardware which could tell the difference between a weed and a plant, their business model would be just another set of PowerPoint slides. All that we expected.

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Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I lived through the time when working in my first job in Ann Arbor Michigan we had to get out a map to find out that San Jose was not only in Puerto Rico but there was a city with that same name in California. The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle. In the 1950’s and ‘60’s U.S.

Restful 238

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 238

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

If you don’t have facts or domain expertise to add, and your business card has the word(s) “marketing&# or “business development,&# realize you have brought no value to the table steve Michael Langford , on October 8, 2009 at 1:54 pm Said: The correct response is: Yes, I’m 24, but I learned manners by the time I was 9.

Silicon Valley 282

Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development California 282

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 142

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development | Tagged: Entrepreneurs « Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) Unintended Lessons » 6 Responses Twitter Trackbacks for Let’s Fire Our Customers « Steve Blank [steveblank.com] on Topsy.com , on September 24, 2009 at 7:19 am Said: [.]

Customer 214

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. The most extreme case (and my personal favorite) was by Armstrong who managed to create a full single conversion superheterodyne receiver all using a single vacuum tube! Who would have known? Armstrong was a god!

Silicon Valley 294

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Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Just as I was getting settled into Zilog, the manager of the training department got fired. (I I was beginning to think that my hiring managers were related to red-shirted guys on Star Trek.) At the end of two days I realized, This was the first full weekend I had taken off since I had moved to California 3 years ago.

Silicon Valley 195

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 195

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

I packed up my life in Michigan and spent five days driving to California to start work. I was met by a very apologetic manager who said, “We’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the last week. The manager of the training department who hired you wasn’t authorized to do so – and he’s been fired.

Agile 263

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 263

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Ardent 3: Supercomputer Porn « Steve Blank steveblank.com/2009/10/12/ardent-3-supercomputer-porn – view page – cached + Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) + Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40? Ardent 3: Supercomputer Porn « Steve Blank (tags: customer-development product-management startup) [.]

Silicon Valley 163

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Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

We hired an interior designer and a great facilities person to manage the process. If the management team is thinking they’ve made it, the new building is just symptomatic of a company heading for a crash. Stay hungry, stay lean. I don’t want to be hungry and lean (nor do I want to be full and fat).

Silicon Valley 226

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Hearpreneur

JUNE 4, 2021

In the early 2000s, digital design and development freelancers were sort after – I was fresh out of University (having completed a degree in Media Arts) and was hungry for work. As the agency work poured in, I also tried to manage everything on the home front. But I also leaned that is actually ok.

Entrepreneur 134

Entrepreneur B2B Database Technical Review 134

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Was my response to stop development of the games? However the VC’s are managing a portfolio while you, the entrepreneur are managing one company – yours. Customer Development There was nothing wrong about Rocket Science having a vision radically different than the conventional wisdom. Make sure they are.

Silicon Valley 221

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 221

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

They communicated this to product management who looked at all of the internal requirements we had generated (e.g. and product management worked with me to decide what to build & when. The first application they ever launched was in the property management space. Back then it seemed foreign. But they went one step further.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2020

They created a program called Onward California in partnership with the State of California and with the support of governor Newsom. Their model in California was so successful they eventually created a new organization, Onward US, dedicated to putting American workers displaced by COVID-19 back to work.

Fresno 60

Fresno Community Technology California 60

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 28, 2020

With the theme “Build Back Better” Jerry Engel , Pete Newell , Steve Weinstein and I co-hosted nearly 500 Lean Educators from 63 countries and 235 universities online for a three-hour session to share what we’ve learned about educators on how we can help our communities rebound, adjust, and recover. — Background. Breakout Sessions.

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Lean Community San Jose Africa 422

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 25, 2021

Carbon Health is now running some of the largest vaccination sites in California, most famously at Dodger Stadium, in partnership with the City of Los Angeles. That's one of the very, very early companies that I was talking to Lean Startup about. So, that's how I came to Silicon Valley in the first place. ER : I remember Speed Date.

Silicon Valley 60

Silicon Valley Turkey Los Angeles California 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Since no benchmarks existed, we enlisted our engineering department in a serious software development effort and wrote our own. Then we were going to buy our competitors’ boards (think “secret shopper”) and compare them to ours. Getting B-52s through the Soviet Air Defense System Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential?

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 126

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

The quintessential California couple, they stood out in our crowd as the engineer (in his late 20′s, respected by his peers and the customer) had hair down to his shoulders, sharply contrasting with the military crewcuts of the customers and most of the other contractors. I think it is because in the end, customers count.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 206

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? So let’s be very specific: let’s assume your dream job is product manager at Google, working on the Analytics product.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

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. So he had adopted Steve’s Lean LaunchPad class and was using The Startup Owner’s Manual as his core text. Serendipity.

Silicon Valley 310

Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 310

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

When I asked our trade show manager she looked at me like I was the house idiot and said, “Steve, don’t you know that my job is to set up our trade show booth?” But my favorite was when the public relations manager said, “we’re here to write press releases and answer the phone in case the press calls.” This is a big idea.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 268

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Venture Capitalists on your board developed the expertise to get your firm public as soon as possible using whatever it took including hype, spin, expand, and grab market share because the sooner you got your billion dollar market cap, the sooner the VC firm could sell their shares and distribute their profits.

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Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 233