Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

He set up Blackbox.vc, a seed accelerator for technology startups (and one of the tour stops for entrepreneurs from around the world.) Max and his partners interviewed and analyzed over 650 early-stage Internet startups. I think these guys have gone a long way to turn hypotheses about early-stage Internet startups into facts.

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Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 333

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

corporation – starting a new technology division bringing disruptive technology to market at General Electric. One of GE’s new divisions – GE’s Energy Storage – has been given the charter to bring an entirely new battery technology to market. He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley. So why this post?

Silicon Valley 222

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 222

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. You find early stage employees expecting to work normal hours, to get paid a regular salary, and not asking or expecting equity. Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team for the fabulous logistics!)

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Finland Naming Russia Government 324

The Next Web

JUNE 8, 2014

The keys are maintaining capital efficiency, launching early versions to the SMB market and constantly applying customer development methods. However, we argue that in the long run, B2B companies can be more capital efficient than B2C companies, achieving maximum traction at minimal investment.

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B2C B2B IP Technical Review 132

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 31, 2011

After 50 years of technology entrepreneurship it's still an art. Max and his partners had interviewed and analyzed over 650 early-stage Internet startups. In May they released the first Startup Genome Report -- an in-depth analysis on what makes early-stage Internet startups successful.

Software Review 134

Software Review Early Stage Startup Technical Review 134

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. Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. What are Early Stage VC’s Really Asking?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

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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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

For technology vendors and models, see Venture capitalists eating our own dog food: Using technology and analytics to make better investments. . Real Ventures , an early-stage, Canadian-based fund, runs a two-day Founder Camp every six months. Customer Development.

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Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

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

David Teten

MARCH 28, 2012

They fund highly uncertain projects that usually operate within a very fast moving environment and within consistently shifting technological paradigms. We have interviewed over 50 entrepreneurs and some leading VCs around the US about their experiences and pain points while building their companies.

Portfolio 144

Portfolio Private Equity Venture Capital Early Stage 144

Steve Blank

MARCH 8, 2011

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. The first class was an introduction to the concepts of business model design and customer development. The Adventure Begins.

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Lean Business Model Customer Development Guinea 298

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Yet for every founder there are 10-20 other employees who take the near-equivalent risks in joining an early-stage company. If you’re not a founder (by choice, timing or temperament,) you may be an early employee or a later stage startup employee. This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile.

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Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

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. Fast forward to today. We can adapt these startup tools for use inside the corporation.

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Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

VCs tout themselves as frontier technology investors, but most are using the same infrastructure tools they have used for the past 20+ years: Excel and recent college grads searching Google. According to Knowledge.VC , under 5% of US VCs have a full-time team member focused on technology. . But we’re doing it slowly.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

HOF Capital has stitched together our workflow across Google Suite , Slack , Airtable , Asana , Copper , and some other tools (leveraging Zapier for basic 3rd party integration, in addition to custom development for certain other integrations). If you have thoughts on additional topics I should cover, please contact me. .

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2018

HOF Capital has stitched together our workflow across Google Suite , Slack , Airtable , Asana , Copper , and some other tools (leveraging Zapier for basic 3rd party integration, in addition to custom development for certain other integrations). If you have thoughts on additional topics I should cover, please contact me. .

Technical Review 60

Technical Review Private Equity Management Cap Table 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# My advice was to start a policy of making reversible decisions before anyone left his office or before a meeting ended.

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

They had no model of who their own customers were and what it would take to make those customers bang down their doors to buy their products. Nothing I couldn’t fix. I took the job.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 146

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Our firm has a portfolio of companies across a broad range of markets and the way we look at it is pretty simple – the deals fall into two types: those with customer/market risk and those with invention risk.” Markets with Customer/Market Risk are those where the unknown is whether customers will adopt the product.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

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. Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 179

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Ardent would be my third technology company as a VP of Marketing (Convergent Technologies and MIPS Computers were the other two.) It was my ex boss from Convergent Technologies, “Steve we’ve all just resigned from Convergent and we’re starting a new company.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Prior to founding Andela , he co-founded 2U , an education technology startup that went public in 2014. — An experienced team made all the difference to 2U finding success, Jeremy said: We had a phenomenal early group of people that were brought together to try to address the problem. (And download any of the past shows here.).

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

government is the leading payer for most of health care, and under ObamaCare the government’s role in reimbursing for medical technology will increase. Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Science and Industrial Policy , Teaching.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Prior to founding Andela , he co-founded 2U , an education technology startup that went public in 2014. — An experienced team made all the difference to 2U finding success, Jeremy said: We had a phenomenal early group of people that were brought together to try to address the problem. (And download any of the past shows here.).

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

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. Dino and I kept in touch as he moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Startups in Bend.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

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. Not sure why.

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Valuation Revenue Pre-Money Valuation Early Stage 198

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. Here’s how.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

The landscape for how to turn life science and health care technologies into viable companies has changed more in the last 3 years than in the last 30. ———– The National Institutes of Health recognizes that Life Science/Health Care commercialization has two components: the science/technology, and the business model.

San Diego 261

San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 261

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

What startup stage do they typically invest in? Do they “get&# Customer Development ? What Startup Stage Do they Invest In? Certain VC’s like the new class of Super-Angels and small VC funds specialize in the early stage of a startup where you are searching for a business model. Lean Startups ?

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Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

Everyone should have a chance to walk the floor looking for deals, technology, distribution, customers, etc. Partnership Opportunities At any show you are attending there has to be tons of opportunity for business to business relationships you hadn’t thought about. Go to trade shows like it matters.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

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. Playing with new technologies. What is customer development?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Reinventing the board meeting may offer angel-funded startups – which because of geography or size of investment typically don’t have formal boards or directors – to attract experienced advice and investment outside of technology clusters (i.e. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old.

Silicon Valley 290

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 290

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

Reinventing the board meeting may offer angel-funded startups – which because of geography or size of investment typically don’t have formal boards or directors – to attract experienced advice and investment outside of technology clusters (i.e. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old.

Silicon Valley 258

Silicon Valley Business Model Venture Capital Balance Sheet 258

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.

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Lean Business Model Agile United States 256

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010

It’s the kind of thing you can repeat in an elevator, simple to understand , universally applicable , and, most importantly, doesn’t burden your tech team with a lot of custom development. Tags: First Round Capital Venture Capital & Technology nextNY.

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Early Stage Developer Technical Review Widget 120

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

This product development diagram had become part of the DNA of Silicon Valley. And even more importantly, was there any way to reduce risk in early stage ventures? familiar with Customer Development you should be. It’s very different than the traditional product development model.

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Product Development Developer Silicon Valley Product 143