Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

One of the things he mentioned was that when it came to decision-making he still tended to think and act like an engineer. Since every situation is unique, there is no perfect solution to any engineering, customer or competitor problem, and you shouldn’t agonize over trying to find one. in Entrepreneur, VC, decision making.

Silicon Valley 305

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Since I wasn’t an engineer, my contribution was around the team-building and fund raising. However, as hard as I emphasize this point to aspiring entrepreneurs every year I usually get a call or email from a past student asking me to introduce them to my favorite VC’s. I was an idiot.

Silicon Valley 200

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.) Their engineers hated us. 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

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. Would you mind sharing them?

Silicon Valley 129

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Yet startup companies have traditionally used this model to manage and pace not only engineering but also non-engineering activities. The flaw in this thinking is that “first customer ship&# is simply the date when engineering thinks they “finished” the 1.0 release of the product.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 243

VC Cafe

DECEMBER 1, 2015

So-called after the California Gold Rush where the purveyors of picks and shovels made a killing (whereas the outcome for prospectors was mixed), the picks and shovels of machine intelligence are hardware, data feeds, and (arguably) the algorithms themselves. It’s not uncharted territory?—?if Pick and Shovel’ plays. Exploiting emotion.

Artificial Inteligence 60

Artificial Inteligence Algorithm Software Review Startup 60

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

A month or two before the QuickTime public announcement in May, the SuperMac hardware engineers (who had a great relationship with the QuickTime team at Apple) started a “ skunk works ” project. So SuperMac engineering also developed video compression software, called Cinepak. The software was idiot proof.

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Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention. The real risk in markets like Web 2.0

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crowdSPRING Blog

JULY 30, 2017

But this is becoming less true today, as more and more entrepreneurs find their way across the U.S. Foundry Group’s founder Brad Feld noted : Entrepreneurs here use a ‘give before you get’ mentality. There are now many metro areas with growing infrastructure and increasingly skilled work forces that can support tech startups.

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United States Las Vegas San Francisco Denver 48

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you’re an entrepreneur, ESL is the most important company you’ve never heard of. The Army offered Fred Terman, the Dean of Engineering at Stanford, a $5M contract to build an electronics countermeasures lab. HP had an ethical culture, entrepreneurial spirit, and deep Stanford engineering department connections.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires. And our Director of Technical Marketing was superb at understanding customer needs and communicating them to engineering.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 268

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Since no benchmarks existed, we enlisted our engineering department in a serious software development effort and wrote our own. We listed the editors, writers, what they had previously had written, deadlines, what the competitive products were, how our benchmarks stacked up, what “upgrades” our boards needed from engineering to win, etc.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 126

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

For entrepreneurs good things come to those who ask. And I understood engineering since I interacted with them almost daily. And finally, I had a great working relationship with our engineers who designed the chips. Entreprenuers Know How to Ask Successful entrepreneurs have the ability to ask for things relentlessly.

Silicon Valley 120

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering. My office is in the Terman Engineering Building.

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ReadWriteStart

SEPTEMBER 30, 2011

During this week's roundtable, once again, we had an international group of entrepreneurs presenting from Buenos Aires, Argentina; Warsaw, Poland; Geneva, Switzerland; Sherbrooke, Canada; Oakland, California; and Austin, Texas. Last up, Ashesh Patel from Oakland, California, pitched StyleShop247.com StyleShop247.com.

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Poland Argentina Oakland Entrepreneur 126

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Some students who were getting their engineering graduate degrees wrote masters and PhD thesis that were classified. Four years later Ayer and another Granger engineer would leave Granger and found one of the preeminent electronic warfare and ELINT companies: Applied Technologies. The future of the valley was clear – microwaves.

Silicon Valley 152

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Look for some “ skunk works &# project where the product developers are actively seeking alternatives to their own engineering organization. In Apple’s case Burrell Smith was designing a computer in a skunk works unbeknownst to the rest of Apple’s engineering.

Silicon Valley 140

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 17, 2010

so I feel I have an unbiased appreciation for BOTH Californias. We have many seasoned entrepreneurs who have built successful companies here and made a lot of money for investors and themselves. The whole category of “sponsored search&# came from a successful LA company, Overture. (my You don’t. Get over it.

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Lightspeed Venture Partners

FEBRUARY 29, 2012

Research suggests that age may in fact be an advantage for entrepreneurs. Vivek Wadhwa of Singularity University in California studied more than 500 American high-tech and engineering companies with more than $1m in sales. This squares with my intuition more- what do you think?

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. The plan calls for selling in volume the day Engineering is finished building the product. While the product is being engineered, Marketing begins to create web sites, corporate presentations and sales materials.

Customer Development 227

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 227

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

I am also a pilot, and computer engineer, and love to read stories about sigint and black aircraft programs. Every potential startup founder should think about their level of comfort operating in chaos and uncertainty. It may not be for you. Also, it would be nice to do something that helps this country (but not solely for that reason).

Silicon Valley 182

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Combined with product costs, an engineering budget, and schedules, this results in a spreadsheet that faintly resembles the first financial plan in the company’s business plan. Engineering focuses on building the product; it designs the product, specifies the first release and hires a staff to build the product.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 268

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.) Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.) The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 259

Cracking the Code

JANUARY 28, 2008

Although Learning Management is old news, Talent Management represents a broader set of emerging functionality around internal employee management and development, and has come to define the broader category which is also known as Human Capital Management. California Avenue, Suite 110 Sunnyvale, CA 94086 T: 408-215-4627 ext.

Software Review 48

Software Review Technical Review Los Angeles Europe 48

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

We decided to work with our engineering department to create the Potreo benchmarks because we really wanted to see how our boards performed with the four applications customers told us that they used; Photoshop, Quark, Illustrator and PageMaker. I avoid these entrepreneurs like the plague.) A final note.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley RSS Startup California 126

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

Describe this model to entrepreneurs who have taken their companies all the way to a large profitable business, and you’ll get heads nodding in recognition. Even more surprising, while the Customer Development model may sound like a new idea for entrepreneurs, it shares many features with a U.S.

Customer Development 252

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 252

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Product Development – How do you engineer it? Business and Revenue Model – How do we organize to make money? Intellectual Property/Patents – Strategic or Tactical, timing? Regulatory Issues – What are they? Time to Market – How long? Waterfall, Agile, Lean? Manufacturing – How do you build it? Liquidity – How? M&A, IPO?

Vertical 124

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

Frederick Terman, Stanford’s Dean of Engineering, enlisted Stanford University as a major arms suppliers in this war. Stanford as a Center of Microwave and Electronics In 1946 after running the military’s secret 800 person Electronic Warfare Lab at Harvard, Fred Terman returned to Stanford as the dean of the engineering schoo l.

Silicon Valley 169

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Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

For example, in the semiconductor business engineers spend enormous time, money and effort on simulation , the process of actually building the chip in software and running tests to see how well it will perform – well before they ever get to first silicon.

Vertical 135

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 135

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If you think you are going to offend your customers or embarrass your engineering organization, get out of the marketing department. Then shout the messages out (virtually) at the top of your lungs. Visually, demo’s, wild colors, etc. IBM doesn’t have to shout to get noticed, but you do. Plus tips on overall trade show strategy.

Silicon Valley 199

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Austin Startup

MARCH 4, 2018

Winners in each of 10 categories will be honored at the Accelerator Award Ceremony at 7 pm Sunday, March 11, at the Hilton Austin, Salon AB. A finalist in the Health and Wearables Technology category, AirPop is pioneering the innovation of air wearables for personal and public health. How long has the AirPop team been together?

San Francisco 48

San Francisco Startup China India 48

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

And throughout my career as an entrepreneur I kept asking questions of my VC investors and friends; Where did entrepreneurship come from? They were all fun reads about plucky entrepreneurs who start from nothing and against all odds, build a successful company. Was it because entrepreneurs keep moving forward and rarely look back?

Silicon Valley 294

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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

JULY 20, 2009

Luckily while I was teaching classes at headquarters, Zilog’s field application engineers (the technical engineers working alongside our salesmen) would work side-by-side with our large customers as they designed their systems with our chips. The VP of Sales gave me a funny look and just moved on with the agenda. VP of Sales?

Silicon Valley 195

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 195

Steve Blank

MARCH 28, 2009

Think of a plane the length of a 767 airliner (but with 30 foot longer wings and 8 engines rather than 2) whose only mission was to FedEx 70,000 pounds of nuclear weapons to the Soviet Union. Now we have ditched the cold war triad in the 21st century since the Soviet Union became Russia again and discovered its own style of capitalism.)

Silicon Valley 219

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

As the engineers were busy rearchitecting the original Stanford MIPS chip into a commercial product, one of my jobs was to find out what features customers wanted. On the other hand, the Motorola 68000 microprocessor (used in the Sun and Apollo engineering workstations) and the IBM 360/370 mainframes were big-endian. What a great idea.

Customer Development 283

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 283

Ben's Blog

APRIL 7, 2021

Among the most important acts of the California legislature and courts was to provide for a strong right-to-work culture in the state, including that employers couldn’t enforce non-compete clauses and non-solicitation agreements, other than in limited circumstances. NASA in Houston; SLAC and Lawrence Livermore labs in California).

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