Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

In January, we introduced a new graduate course at Stanford called the " target="_blank">Lean LaunchPad. It was designed to bring together many of the new approaches to building a successful startup – customer development, agile development, business model generation and pivots. Lets see if we can keep them.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Starting in the 1950’s, Stanford’s engineering department became “outward facing” and developed a culture of spinouts and active faculty support and participation in the first wave of Silicon Valley startups. At the same time Berkeley was also developing Cold War weapons systems. That has changed in the last few years.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, July 30, 2009 Techstars brings The Lean Startup to Boulder Im very excited to announce a pair of events that will kick off a very busy fall speaking tour. A discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

And he recognized it was making his startup feel and act like a big ponderous company. Most decisions in a startup must be made in the face of uncertainty. 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.

Silicon Valley 302

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 302

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, August 26, 2009 Building a new startup hub Last week, I had a unique opportunity to spend some time in Boulder at the behest of TechStars. It was a great experience to see a relatively new startup hub in action - and thriving. Their model looks like a key ingredient in the startup brew there.

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San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, June 9, 2009 The Lean Startup Tokyo edition I had a blast speaking at Startonomics Tokyo , which was organized to foster ties between the startup cultures in Japan and Silicon Valley. ericnakagawa : Show of hands how many in startup here? I am now decompressing with a guinness.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Startups in Bend.

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Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 314

Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

Today, the first half of the Stanford Engineering Lean LaunchPad Class gave their final presentations. It’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since we taught the first 10 teams in the Stanford Lean LaunchPad class. We’ll teach over 175 NSF Innovation Corps teams in the Lean LaunchPad course in 2012. A kite-boarding startup?

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Lean Business Model Agile United States 258

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

It took me 8 startups and 21 years to get it right, (and one can argue success was due to the Internet bubble rather then any brilliance.) No internet, no blogs, no books on startups, no entrepreneurship departments in universities, etc. It took lots of trial and error, learning by experience and resilience through multiple failures.

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Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 185

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

What if we could increase productivity and stave the capital flight by helping Life Sciences startups build their companies more efficiently? One would think that designing a medical device would be a simple engineering problem, and startups would be emerging right and left. Life Sciences II – Medical Devices. Regulatory Issues.

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Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 296

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.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 223

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Filed under: SuperMac | Tagged: Early Stage Startup , Steve Blank « There’s a Pattern Here SuperMac War Story 2: Facts Exist Outside the Building, Opinions Reside Within – So Get the Hell Outside the Building » Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.

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Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 150

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.

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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.”

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Last May, I shared the news that long-time Lean Startup advocates Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits were working on a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur featuring illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. LitMotors approach to using Lean Startup to create a new vehicle category.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Don’t startups exist for the same reason?

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. It was a long way from Ellis Island.)

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Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 126

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. In contrast, customer acquisition, brand, reputation, etc.

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 147

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. Analytics spark more questions and discussion than almost any other aspect of the Lean Startup method. Alistair and Ben, co-authors of the book Lean Analytics, will help you sort it out in our next webcast, Lean Analytics for Non-tech Companies.

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Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. What’s been missing for everyone is: a common language for investors to communicate objectives to startups. Here’s John’s story.

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Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 308

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup.

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Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Following is his advice to early stage entrepreneurs for creating structure in their company. So, I’ll explain my reasoning through the story of ASC, a fictitious company that has a combination of characteristics I’ve seen across a number of early stage companies. In startup time, that feels like forever.

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Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, June 5, 2009 It’s a startup, not a spreadsheet Some people, when they start to realize the power of using data to inform their decisions, become obsessed with optimization. Unfortunately, most decisions that confront startups lack a definitive right answer. But this is wrong, too.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. We were on the University of North Carolina campus to meet with Fred Brooks and Henry Fuchs. We were sitting in our cheap hotel room when the phone rang.

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North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 126

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 17, 2012

This post was co-written by Eric Ries and Sarah Milstein, co-hosts of The Lean Startup Conference. Ever since Eric announced Patrick and Brant's new book The Lean Entrepreneur (with illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK ), we've been excited to be part of the book launch. What aspect of Lean Startup methods most inspires you?

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Lean Entrepreneur Early Stage Metrics 141

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

A lot of my time is spent helping early-stage companies get to proof points so that they can raise capital. They might have some seed money and are thinking or raising a Series A based on success of an early release (MVP). Bill Payne is an expert on how early-stage investors should look at valuation.

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Valuation Revenue Pre-Money Valuation Early Stage 198

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

Our Lean Launchpad® for Life Sciences is one of them. The Lean Launchpad® for Life Sciences (the I-Corps @ NIH ) uses the Lean Startup Model to discover and validate the business model. The Lean Launchpad® for Life Sciences (the I-Corps @ NIH ) uses the Lean Startup Model to discover and validate the business model.

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San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 262

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. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? what Market Type is your startup?

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Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Most of the people building our product werent themselves target customers. So there was simply no substitute for seeing actual customers with the product, live. Today, when I talk to startup founders, the most common answer I get to the question "do you talk to your customers?" Dont confuse passion with volume.

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San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

When it becomes possible to build products "live" with customers, the cycle time changes and design becomes a much more dynamic process. We still struggle to create Firm software that is defect-free, and it still requires customer insight (and maybe some customer development) to discover what will Delight.

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Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

For the rest of us, there is an alternative: to create credibility by building a lean startup. At IMVU, we were terrified by how early we shipped (and charged for) our first product. The core of the article is my first attempt to articulate the key metrics (in graph form) that I believe demonstrate customer value.

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San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Occam's Razor

APRIL 8, 2013

This thought was in my mind as I was reading Lean Analytics a new book by my friend Alistair Croll and his collaborator Benjamin Yoskovitz. In this post, we’ll look at each of the four steps in the Lean Analytics Cycle in more detail. That’s because they require you to have a deep understanding of your customers. But they are.

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Metrics Analytics Lean Churn Rate 156

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. It’s time to ask why startup board governance has failed to keep pace with innovation. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. It’s time for a change. Here’s how.

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Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 284

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. Startup 2 Entrepreneur -“I’m competing against Company x and we are going to offer a lower-cost, web-based version. Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

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Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 188

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Write it down and keep it in a tradeshow handbook for those who will follow. Go to trade shows like it matters. Now In Print!

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 129

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 12, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, June 12, 2009 Lean Startup Workshop scholarship program I havent had much time to write lately, and so havent been able to share much about the Lean Startup Workshop series I have been producing with OReilly in their Master Class division. Thank you all. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

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