Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2010

A business plan is the execution document that large companies write when planning product-line extensions where customer, market and product features are known. One of my favorites: “ Judging will include such factors as: Market opportunity, reward to risk, strategy, implementation plan, financing plan, etc.”)

Business Plan 312

Business Plan Business Model Customer Development Deal Flow 312

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The motivations are the same – profit – driven by entrepreneurs and venture finance. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' It usually doesn’t end well.

China 323

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 323

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. Is there a profitable business model? Can it scale?” Just as a refresher.

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. As a result, the standard product development model is not only useless, it is dangerous.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The motivations are the same – profit – driven by entrepreneurs and venture finance. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital' It usually doesn’t end well.

China 215

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 215

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 13, 2011

Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur, educator, thought leader and creator of the rigorous "Customer Development" methodology detailed in his book, "The Four Steps to the Epiphany." 9-to-5 Venture Capital. Yet Tekes does that and is trying to act like a government-run Venture Capital firm.

Finland 158

Finland Venture Capital Government Russia 158

Up and Running

MAY 18, 2016

Why David Rose recommends it: “While you weren’t looking, the old school business plan was superseded by something that is critically important, intended for you instead of other people, developed by you instead of other people, and constantly reviewed and updated.”. Lean Customer Development: Building Products Your Customers Will Buy.

Startup 80

Startup Venture Capital Angel Investor Lean 80

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2013

China has embraced state capitalism in a way Wall Street can only dream about. Startups, Venture Capital and the Communist Party: how did this happen in China? But before startups could happen, China’s basic science, technology and finance infrastructure and ecosystem needed to be built. Like the U.S.

China 315

China Taiwan Silicon Valley Guam 315

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

a language corporate innovation groups can use to communicate to business units and finance. While it doesn’t eliminate great investor judgment, pattern recognition skills and mentoring, we’ve developed an Investment Readiness Level tool that fills in these missing pieces. Investment Readiness Level is Prescriptive.

Sacramento 306

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 306

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious.

Silicon Valley 225

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 225

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

Recently, the financing of innovation in medical devices has collapsed even further with most Class III devices simply unfundable. Venture Capital Issues. Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up. The amount of capital being invested in new device companies is at an 11 year low.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2013

China has embraced state capitalism in a way Wall Street can only dream about. Startups, Venture Capital and the Communist Party: how did this happen in China? But before startups could happen, China’s basic science, technology and finance infrastructure and ecosystem needed to be built. Like the U.S.

China 207

China Taiwan Silicon Valley Guam 207

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

The previous post described the evolution of the Chinese Venture Capital system. China Venture Capital. If it’s driven by profit then the ecosystem needs both entrepreneurs as well as Venture Finance. China has the biggest Venture Capital industry outside the U.S. Entrepreneurship in Beijing.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 267

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

Second, the leaders of these companies tended to be those who excelled at finance, supply chain or production. For the first 75 years of the 20 th century, when capital for new ventures was scarce, the smartest engineering talent went to corporate R&D labs. Filed under: Corporate Innovation , Customer Development.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Market Risk vs. 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. In these markets it’s all about invention risk.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

If you take funding from a venture capital firm or angel investor and want to build a large, enduring company (rather than sell it to the highest bidder), this isn’t the decade to do it. The collapse of the IPO market and dysfunctional math in the venture capital community has stacked the odds against you. Here’s why.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Lets take venture capital and grow this thing into a real business.”. They used Customer and Agile development to search for a scalable and repeatable business model to become a large company. Typically the size of their opportunity and company doesn’t lend itself to attracting venture capital.

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

While this signaled that investments in technology companies could be very lucrative, both Shockley and Fairchild could only be funded through corporate partners – there was no venture capital industry. government backed venture firms and limited partnerships. A wave of innovation was about to meet a pile of risk capital.

Engineer 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 14, 2013

“The results of programs like 500 Startups, Techstars, and Y-Combinator are well known, but due to the culture here in Europe there’s still a lot of unknowns in terms of the track record for follow on funding and results of accelerator programs based in Europe,” says Don Ritzen, co-founder and CEO of Rockstart Accelerator.

Silicon Valley 231

Silicon Valley Europe Venture Capital Incubator 231

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

The previous post described the evolution of the Chinese Venture Capital system. China Venture Capital. If it’s driven by profit then the ecosystem needs both entrepreneurs as well as Venture Finance. China has the biggest Venture Capital industry outside the U.S. Entrepreneurship in Beijing.

Silicon Valley 159

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 159

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

Entrepreneurs are fearless, persistent and uninhibited about asking – whether it’s asking to assemble a team, get financing, sell customers, etc. It is a skill you need to either have or develop. I’ve built my company using the Customer Development Model from Day One. If not, don’t wait.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

Do they “get&# Customer Development ? They understand that now’s not the time to hire a senior VP of Sales to start to scale the sales force or to look for a finance department to create income statements that say zero each month. Do They Get Customer Development? Have they heard about Customer Development ?

Founder 231

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. Jonathan Swift.

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 6, 2014

This is a quote from Leander Kahney’s recently published book on Apple design chief Jony Ive: “In the world according to Steve Jobs, the ANPP would rapidly evolve into a well-defined process for bringing new products to market by laying out in extreme detail every stage of product development.

Product 84

Product Venture Capital Lean Finance 84

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Reinventing the board meeting may offer venture-backed startups a more efficient, productive way to direct and measure their search for a profitable business model. Jonathan Swift.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

understand who their core and tertiary customers are, and the sales and marketing process required for initial clinical sales and downstream commercialization. identify financing vehicles before you need them. This user/customer-centered approach is a huge step in the right direction in the life science/health care commercialization.

San Diego 261

San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 261

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.) Therefore we developed a class to teach students how to think about all the parts of building a business, not just the product. to optimize this search. What’s Different About the Class?

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

www.kernelmag.com

MARCH 8, 2012

The Scene Developers Nailing that elusive technical co-founder. Is there a junior or senior developer from a previous gig who will respect you for a previous role and be ready to build their own baby with you? Nic Brisbourne on venture capital. Rob Carter on finance. Development by Message and Adrian McShane.

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Coder 43

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. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

Vertical 122

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 122

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

Examples are Hollywood for movies, Milan for fashion, New York for finance and today, Silicon Valley for technology entrepreneurship. In recent years Business Incubators have developed into diverse models. Venture Guiding Fund. Part 3, the next post describes the rise of Chinese venture capital. Lessons Learned.

Programming 278

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 278

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

Steve my name is Donald xx, and I’m the head of external affairs of the CIA’s venture capital firm and we’d like you to keynote our conference.” And you’d like me to do my talk on Customer Development and startups?” “No, we’re the other CIA.” We witness similar behavior in corporate finance.

Silicon Valley 247

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Venture Capital 247

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

Examples are Hollywood for movies, Milan for fashion, New York for finance and today, Silicon Valley for technology entrepreneurship. In recent years Business Incubators have developed into diverse models. Venture Guiding Fund. Part 3, the next post describes the rise of Chinese venture capital. Lessons Learned.

Programming 170

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 170

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

Before co-founding Biota Technology , he was an investor and entrepreneur-in-residence at Seed Capital , a investing in science-based innovation. Switching from venture capital to startup founder required a different mindset, Ajay said: All day in a VC firm, you’re saying ‘no’.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 28, 2016

Before co-founding Biota Technology , he was an investor and entrepreneur-in-residence at Seed Capital , a investing in science-based innovation. Switching from venture capital to startup founder required a different mindset, Ajay said: All day in a VC firm, you’re saying ‘no’.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Cofounder Seed Capital Texas 120

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan kept the corporate staff small and focused on policymaking, corporate finance and planning. Durant Versus Sloan – Part 1 « Steve Blank steveblank.com/2009/10/01/durant-versus-sloan-part-1 – view page – cached + Customer Development Manifesto: The Path of Warriors and Winners (part 5) + Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40?

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 156

www.instigatorblog.com

MARCH 2, 2010

The Importance of Advisory Boards for Startup CEOs Tweet When a startup receives financing it will need to setup a Board of Directors. What many first-time CEOs might not realize is that they may need to setup an Advisory Board as a condition of receiving financing. Mark Macleod spells it out beautifully in his post on Advisory Boards.

Advisory Board 40

Advisory Board Startup Cofounder Equity 40