Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

A first order filter is whether the founders are aiming for a scalable startup. Staring at us in the board meeting were three term-sheets from brand name VC’s and an unexpected buy-out offer from Google. The question was: what did the founders want to do? One founder quit and joined Google.) Go For Broke. In the U.S.

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Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 299

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Joining me in SiriusXM’s studio in New York were: Nina Tandon , CEO and co-founder of EpiBone , the world’s first company growing bones for skeletal reconstruction.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Michigan Detroit 120

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. This is the magic of sales: by learning about each customer in-depth, they can convince each of them that this product would solve serious problems. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.)

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

We make a point of keeping our records updated in the major data-trackers tracking the VC industry, e.g., CB Insights , Crunchbase , Dow Jones , Mattermark , Palico , Preqin , Pitchbook , and ThomsonReuters , since they are a source of data to LPs and to potential co-investors interested in us. . Pitchbot.vc 3) Originate investments.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. He also co-founded three companies: a broadcasting network, Air America Media, a solar energy company, Atenergy and a branding agency, Brand Maestro.

Small Business Administration 120

Small Business Administration SBIR United States Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

He started the Stanford Honors Co-op in 1954 which allowed companies in the valley to send their engineers to Stanford graduate engineering programs. And 30 years later I was teaching in a building named after him and never knew a thing about him. Leo Beranek led the EAL and went on to co-found BBN. Play spooky music here.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 203

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

The key to successful integration of customer feedback is to make each kind of collection part of the regular company discipline of building and releasing products. They had their own private forum, and a company founder (aka me) personally ran the group in its early days.

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Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Should you co-found your company with a software development shop? intrapreneurs, e.g., the employee of GE who is tasked with launching a new business. intrapreneurs, e.g., the employee of GE who is tasked with launching a new business. The question is: how should they be compensated when cofounding a company?

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Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Hearpreneur

JULY 30, 2016

The short answer was no and whilst many of the businesses present had a large technology component to their company, with custom developed software etc they could not present themselves as a tech company. All lending companies need to stop being so safe, so repeatable, so traditional and dare one say it male-oriented.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Entrepreneur CTO Hire 48

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

And Silicon Valley’s pay-it-forward culture is a huge help to startup founders. Gary Marcus , one of the country’s best-known cognitive psychologists, is a professor of psychology and neural science at NYU and founder of Geometric Intelligence. The stuff founders are made of. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Silicon Valley New York 120

grasshopperherder.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2011

Names redacted.) Unless your name is Mesmero the Magnificent, it’s probably not going to work on me. If you’re waiting for a technical co-founder to put up a landing page with signup form, you’re lazy. I just need a co-founder to web enable it!" Do you have a website up?

Cofounder 47

Cofounder NDA Founder Sweat Equity 47

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2016

It follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Nigel and Vaugn Caldon , co-founders of BallStar social network for basketball players. Kerry Frank co-founded Comply365 in 2007 with her husband.

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Entrepreneur North America Cofounder Silicon Valley 120

www.instigatorblog.com

MARCH 2, 2010

The Board probably existed beforehand, but was made up only of the founders. Pick Advisers Carefully Something I’ve noticed with Advisory Boards is that they’re often stockpiled with “big names&# – celebrities in their respective industries. But I suspect that’s often done for name brand and recognition.

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Advisory Board Startup Cofounder Equity 40

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

Things Change In 1956 Hewlett Packard (HP) was a 17-year old company with $20 million in test equipment sales with 900 employees. The remaining company kept the Hewlett Packard name and focussed on computers. At HP the founders were still at the company and still running the business. I’ll show you the memo in a second.

Silicon Valley 186

Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 186

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Listen to this episode if you want to hear about a founder who has a product and users and paying customers … and is trying to figure out how to take his company to the next level and grow faster. How many employees would a medium-sized business have in your definition? Jason: What do you mean by a medium-sized business?

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

But we were cutting corners in the development methodology as well as in the code, in the name of increased speed. A new employee is more likely to make a mistake than an experienced one, but everyone makes mistakes. a is name, b is address, and c is tax percentage.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

“If you can fix a problem for someone and do it better, quicker, and/or cheaper than your competitor, you’re off to a good start.” – Gabriel Kuperman, founder and CEO of CuePin. We created UpKeep to fill this void—a cloud-based solution that was affordable for any size business.” – Ryan Chan, founder of UpKeep.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Whether youre a US citizen or an immigrant, entrepreneur or investor, founder or employee, theres something you can do. If you are an immigrant founder who has helped build a company that has created jobs in the US, we need you to tell your story. This is especially true if you live outside the echo chamber of Silicon Valley.

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San Francisco DC Startup Lean 118

SoCal CTO

SEPTEMBER 8, 2010

He blogs to 10,000 web entrepreneurs at Software by Rob and co-hosts the podcast Startups for the Rest of Us. Before I get into the details for founders, let me talk about options-hungry employees. I'm very sensitive to it though because I know it can be devastating to a startup, especially a single founder startup.

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Startup CTO Hire Cofounder Venture Capital 191

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Pay attention to whether people are comfortable “naming names&# in the meeting. For example, I often cite a real example of a problem that has as its root cause a new employee who was not properly trained. If new employees are causing problems, that will be a routine topic. There’s no easy fix to this problem.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

All the good domain names were taken, all the good ideas were being implemented. If Id bought just a handful of the "best of the rest" domain names that were available at the time (for a whopping $70 each), I probably could have just retired right then. I was much more focused on other transient success stories of the day.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Non-Technical Co-Founders Co-Founders Technical Co-founders Finding Co-Founders Startups & "How Important Are Ideas?" " Web Development Startups Solo Founders I am a creative guy with a startup idea.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

I believe this is one reason why the myth of the dictatorial startup founder has such enduring appeal. In fact, we know so much that we already know what they will care enough about (namely, the product’s quality – as opposed to, say, missing features). Yet startups rely on collective learning in order to find their way.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

Whats is the best way to find a co-founder for your startup? However, one of my co-founders doesn’t seem to be as motivated as the rest of us. As founders invest massive amounts of time into their start-up, how critical is it for them to come out of their “hermit caves” and network?

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Do some Customer Development instead. Founders push for it. Who doesnt want to see their name in print? In some ways, founders are even worse. My experience is that many founders actually have a deep anxiety that maybe they are not succeeding. Help you raise money. But dont be too sure.

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San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. In later posts I’m going to get into more detail on specific topics like hiring, raising money, what types of ideas have the potential to get big, finding your founders, and the like.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 21, 2013

And while you may believe it’ll never happen to you, this is also the path that leads to moral ambiguity, cheating, and trampling others in the name of success. Cofounder) JoAnn and I have realized that there are many ways to say ‘thank you’ to clients, and not all of them are verbal. Yes, this list may seem overwhelming at first.

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Customer Cofounder Developer Email 190

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

For startups that are tempted to mimic this behavior, I suggest reading the great account of the early Apple in Founders at Work.) There are some good anecdotes about Chief Engineers in the Toyota Product Development Book. The videos are Steve explaining the company's path forward to Next employees.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

It then proceeds to list a whole host of cool new features the Warhammer team has added since I last logged in. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

grasshopperherder.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

« Thanks but No Thanks – Things to Avoid When Recruiting Co-founders Why is Cyber Squatter a Bad Word? Some have been as co-founder, most have been as a consultant with the possibility of becoming an paid employee, “as soon as we close our funding round.” All names redacted.).

Sweat Equity 41

Sweat Equity Equity Cofounder Non-Compete 41

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

By only releasing vanity metrics , companies co-opt the press into helping them mislead others. Or take a recent TechCrunch article about a startup I wont name: “X billion messages sent since June 2009.&# Hopefully, they have internal reports that show the true correlation between their features and customer results.

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San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

Since then, PHP (as part of the LAMP stack ) has really been the dominant development platform, at least in the free software and startup worlds. Some of them are probably still cursing my name, because - lets face it - PHP can be pretty painful. The IMVU downloadable client, just to name one example, is written primarily in python.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Team Configuration 500 Startups Guerilla Marketing Organizations Entrepreneurship Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs Startups Startup Incubators and Seed Programs Seedcamp Y Combinator TechStars Lean Startups What is the perfect startup team? Lakshman Prasad • Nov 16, 2010.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Home Books for Startups Guide Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Tools Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Email Subscription Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Categories Air Force (12) Ardent (10) Audubon (1) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (39) Business Model versus Business Plan (..)

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

.” Hackernews list of “Tools of the Trade” for startups - includes over 150 SaaS tools used by startups, and over 150 comments with interesting insights from founders. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. Add a class name to buttons, forms, quotes, etc. Founder Equity Issues. Codeacademy.

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Software Review Technical Review Startup 53