Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Over my career as a serial entrepreneur I observed that since the late 1990s, no early-stage Silicon Valley investor had used business plans to screen investments. Traction and evidence from customers were what investors were looking for – even in “slow” sectors like healthcare and energy. Seeing Is Believing.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

The first time a few brave corporate innovators tried to overlay the Lean tools and techniques that work in early-stage startups in an existing corporation, the result was chaos, confusion, frustration and ultimately, failure. Inside of companies these are the mavericks you want to fire for not getting with program.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 4, 2013

I’ve been a big supporter of Startup Weekend , locally and nationally, since the very beginning and I’m continuing to do so by both sponsoring and mentoring in the NEXT Boulder program. As the City Coordinator of the NEXT program, check out what he has to say about why he thinks the program is valuable.

Startup 130

Startup Vesting Cofounder Lean 130

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

Engineering thought this could dramatically change the way electronic systems were built, but the head of sales tried to kill the Integrated Circuit program, loudly and vociferously. I see this same pattern in early stage startups. Early sales look fine, but often plateau. Over My Dead Body. The Land of the Living Dead.

Silicon Valley 243

Silicon Valley Technical Review Spain Engineer 243

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. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

They were one of the first companies to sell an external disk drive for the original Mac; they had the first “color paint programs” for the Mac; and when the Mac was just black and white they had the first color graphics boards and large screen color monitors for the Mac. Nothing I couldn’t fix. I took the job.

Silicon Valley 165

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 165

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. . You might look at it and say, “In some ways, that team is overkill for an early-stage company.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 145

Steve Blank

JANUARY 24, 2014

Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds. Local Early-Stage Risk Capital. Early stage venture funds are more important than your mother. Organize risk-capital in the form of angel funds or venture funds, particularly at the early stage where the largest capital gap exists.

Engineer 313

Engineer Silicon Valley Oregon San Francisco 313

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. . You might look at it and say, “In some ways, that team is overkill for an early-stage company.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up. Some startups in this field are actually beginning with Customer Development while others struggle with the classic execution versus search problem. But while these are all great programs, they are likely to fail to deliver on their promise.

Startup 300

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 300

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. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds.

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Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 317

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. And every year, it looks as if one or two entrepreneurs from the program decide to stay. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I Love Business Plan Competitions I had a breakfast with a friend who has founded a few companies in Thailand and started the New Ventures Program at one of their universities. MootCorp in particular has an impressive track record of putting early stage tech companies on the right path towards funding.

Business Plan 156

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 156

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. These three tools allow startups to focus on the parts of an early stage venture that matter the most: the product, product/market fit, customer acquisition, revenue and cost model, channels and partners.

Oakland 329

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 329

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Given the hardware I had worked on at ESL, learning microprocessors wasn’t that hard but figuring out how to teach hardware design and assembly language programming was a bit more challenging. If you wanted your own applications, you had to write them yourself. You created it and own it.

Silicon Valley 200

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 200

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

It also made me understand what kind of support sales people needed from marketing and what marketing programs were wasted motion. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. Victor Hugo.

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Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 289

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. What is customer development? for Harvard Business Revie.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? But all things are never equal.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

Accelerators take teams with fairly focused ideas and offer a formal 3-4 month program of tutoring/mentoring with seed funding in exchange for equity. Many of them aren’t yet clear on who their customer actually is – and as a result – what value they should be focused on creating. Incubators are designed for teams with an idea.

San Diego 265

San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 265

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? This is the usual reason given for a marketing launch, but for most early stage startups, its a failure. Do some Customer Development instead.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Steve Blank

MARCH 7, 2012

We trying to teach students a methodology that combines customer development, agile development, business models and pivots. Our goal is to teach them the art, science and strategy of entrepreneurship that will forever change how they view early stage ventures. And do it in 8 weeks. Team EngineKites.

Lean 261

Lean Business Model Agile United States 261

Steve Blank

MARCH 26, 2012

So much so that the NSF decided to scale the Innovation Corps program. And to help teach these many teams, the NSF will recruit other universities that have engineering entrepreneurship programs to become part of the Innovation Corps network. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Technology.

America 244

America Rhode Island Southern California Illinois 244

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

I thought a good place to start was with the origins of the idea that "software design" should be considered a discipline in its own right, on par with computer science, software engineering, and computer programming. Firmness: A program should not have any bugs that inhibit its function. We owe a lot to this seminal document.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

The people who are the lifeblood of an early-stage startup are earlyvangelists. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? For example, my experience with teenagers is that they are very reluctant to call or email asking for support, even when they have a severe problem.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

A discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The event will include a talk from Eric on The Lean Startup over dinner, followed by moderated table discussion and then final Q&A with Eric.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

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. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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Lean Programming San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

Many founders dont like to hear that visionary customers are as smart, maybe even more so, than they are. Startups need to spend time with these customers. In fact, early stage companies shouldnt be able to get time from anyone else - who else would be crazy enough to try an truly innovative new product?

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

Unfortunately, they are disinterested in doing the hard work to help early stage entrepreneurs and companies. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Learning is better than optimization (the local ma.

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San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 15, 2011

Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. The process they use to guide that search is "Customer Development" ; and to track their progress startups now have a scorecard to document their week-by-week changes – the business model canvas.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Startup Early Stage Business Model 118

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. A tech entrepreneur and inventor, Brandon McNaughton was entrepreneur in residence for Detroit Innovate , an early-stage venture fund.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Michigan Detroit 120

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

After quitting my job and starting Sorced , I spent a few months validating my business concept by creating the product mockups and doing customer development. This was actually a great piece of advice, because ideas change and evolve in the early stages of the startup, it’s about the other person not the idea as much.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

In other words, we want to use the spreadsheet to quantify our progress using the most important unit: validated learning about customers. One way to conceive of our goal in an early-stage venture is to incrementally “fill in the blanks&# for the business model that we think will one day power our startup.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 4, 2013

And that’s not to mention the advice for very early-stage companies on topics like getting your first users, or choosing metrics. This includes developing and pitching a concept, customer development, idea validation, and creation of an MVP under guidance from an experienced mentor.

Lean 167

Lean San Francisco Conversion Startup 167

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 185

Silicon Valley Iraq RSS Vietnam 185

Steve Blank

AUGUST 8, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Cofounder 149

Cofounder New York City Entrepreneur New York 149

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explore the habits that make them successful, and the highs, lows and pivots that pushed them forward. I’ve seen so many of my colleagues are hiring entrepreneurship directors, creating new programs.

Artificial Inteligence 120

Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Silicon Valley New York 120