Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Product Development – Getting Funded as The Goal In a traditional product development model, entrepreneurs come up with an idea or concept, write a business plan and try to get funding to bring that idea to fruition.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. There’s lots of lore, emotion, and misconceptions of what VC’s do or don’t do for entrepreneurs. In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

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. While that’s not true, it is a fact that entrepreneurs only have one word for “startup.”

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 203

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 126

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.&# Reply One difference between VCs and Entrepreneurs « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog , on April 20, 2009 at 7:06 am Said: [.]

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Pattern Recognition One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm against a continual collection of customer and market data. But at times it’s why entrepreneurs can sink their own companies. More on this in later posts.)

Customer 201

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 201

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

How startup ideas are conceived and nurtured was the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. 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.

Cofounder 276

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 276

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 3, 2016

How startup ideas are conceived and nurtured was the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. 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.

Cofounder 276

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur EC2 276

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Reply Fred H Schlegel , on October 20, 2009 at 1:20 pm Said: I believe the MBA was originally developed with the idea of helping functional experts move more smoothly into upper management ranks. Unfortunately it became a gatekeeper degree of a sorts allowing all sorts of folks to sidestep real business experience.

Engineer 205

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 205

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

The first step was to recruit a new management team. They sold to a set of customers I knew nothing about. Now with a new infusion of $8 million dollars of venture capital, SuperMac had been resurrected from the dead and was attempting to restart. Why they were looking to me to run marketing wasn’t clear.

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Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 150

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

Our small training department had been without a manager for months and finding a replacement didn’t seem to be high on the VP of Sales list. We four instructors would grumble and complain to one another about our lack of leadership. For entrepreneurs good things come to those who ask. All I had to do was ask.

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Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

When I asked our trade show manager she looked at me like I was the house idiot and said, “Steve, don’t you know that my job is to set up our trade show booth?” But my favorite was when the public relations manager said, “we’re here to write press releases and answer the phone in case the press calls.” This is a big idea.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. I hope we managed to teach our children compassion and charity for others. Reply steveblank , on November 26, 2009 at 10:29 am Said: Just the stories of the entrepreneurs are bigger than life.

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Silicon Valley Turkey United States RSS 140

Steve Blank

AUGUST 23, 2016

Why founders need to be their own boss and how they capitalize on business opportunities were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Matt Armstead , a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Lumos Innovation , which helps Ohio-area founders launch their startup ideas. Matt Armstead.

Cofounder 135

Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur San Francisco 135

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. The Embrace infant warmer was developed - by getting out of the country -- and how Rob Emrich learned and scaled his non-profit, Road of Life.

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Lean Entrepreneur Agile San Francisco 167

Steve Blank

AUGUST 23, 2016

Why founders need to be their own boss and how they capitalize on business opportunities were the focus of the guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. Matt Armstead , a serial entrepreneur and co-founder of Lumos Innovation , which helps Ohio-area founders launch their startup ideas. Matt Armstead.

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Cofounder Silicon Valley Entrepreneur San Francisco 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 26, 2010

Entrepreneurs see things before others do. The best entrepreneurs pivot on each hallucination until they get it right – then we call them practitioners of the Lean Startup.). (The The best entrepreneurs pivot on each hallucination until they get it right – then we call them practitioners of the Lean Startup.). Thanks Eric.

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San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean Startup 144

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 1: Bend, Oregon Ecosystem and Entrepreneurs.

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Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 314

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you’re an entrepreneur, ESL is the most important company you’ve never heard of. If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. In 1964, Bill Perry, the head of the lab, frustrated with GTE’s management, quit (GTE, a phone company had bought Sylvania in 1959.)

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Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 176

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" I always assumed I wouldnt manage anybody. Being a manager didnt sound fun - deep down, who really wants to be held accountable for other peoples actions? So I wound up learning the discipline of managing other people.

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CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

Mass TLC Unconference: Large annual conference put on by the MA Technology Leadership Council. Babson Entrepreneur Resource Center. Lean Startup Circle Boston – Meetup dedicated to the lean startup and customer development methodology. Greentown Labs – Entrepreneur community and accelerator focused on Cleantech.

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Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I would learn a ton from Gordon for over a decade, not only about practical heuristics for managing complex engineering projects (i.e. Later he would leave for a few years to start the Computing Directorate at the National Science Foundation , help spec what became the Internet and then come back and run Ardent’s engineering.)

North Carolina 126

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 126

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

When the panicked manager of the magazine test lab would call under a last minute deadline, we would apologize profusely as we sent the cables over – with beer, pizza, and our product manager to help them through any testing “issues”. Getting B-52s through the Soviet Air Defense System Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential?

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 10, 2015

At Palo Alto Software, I am surrounded by entrepreneurs. Our LivePlan customers are entrepreneurs, our founder and staff have run and sold companies, the Bplans readers are aspiring entrepreneurs (or actual entrepreneurs), and as I sell my own handmade jewelry, I like to think I have a very small claim to the title.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

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. But I managed a few "good learning experiences" before throwing myself full-bore into IMVU. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

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San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

JANUARY 17, 2016

These topics were the focus of interviews with the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern.) Look at the history of America and what has been the role models or the examples of a way out for a lot of underrepresented entrepreneurs minorities?

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Silicon Valley North Carolina Cofounder Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

He had teamed up with a former product manager at P&G to deliver seminars on just this subject. It was a management problem. We had been outsourcing an important part of our demand creation strategy – packaging – to an outside agency without having the expertise to judge or manage the results.

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Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

All we had to do was tell customers they could get video into their computer – and not promise anything else. But the rest of the management team really skeptical. When we saw our salespeople actually trying to steal the early boards to take home and show their kids, we knew we had a winner. Little did we know.

Video 168

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 168

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. I vividly remember the sales guy saying, “It’s only some kid in field service. I cover this in the Four Steps to the Epiphany.)

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 133

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

And that most of the post on trade shows was describing how to prepare and manage a physical presence in a trade show booth. Write it down and keep it in a tradeshow handbook for those who will follow. Go to trade shows like it matters. You are correct all channels, web or otherwise, need to generate awareness and leads.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 129

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

Previously she was Co-Founder and CEO of SNAZZ, a cloud-based event management platform. Entrepreneurs today expect more than just capital from their investors. Teten: The new generation of entrepreneurs is asking more from their investors than just money. Mari has been a serial intrapreneur for a large part of her career.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Sloan Foundation , the Sloan School of Management at MIT , the Sloan program at Stanford , and the Sloan/Kettering Memorial Cancer Center in New York. corporation, and by extension Sloan laid the foundation for America’s economic leadership in the 20th century. The guy who replaced him invented the idea of the modern corporation.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 161

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

I learned a lot at Convergent, going from product marketing manager in a small startup to VP of Marketing of the Unix Division as it became a public company. Lies Entrepreneurs Tell Themselves Part of my problem was that my reality distortion field encompassed my relationships.

Entrepreneur 282

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 282

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. Do you know the archetype of their customers? Me – “Have you used Company x’s product?

Silicon Valley 188

Silicon Valley Startup RSS Customer Development 188

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

Here in Tampa, our biggest challenge is convincing the regions technology "leadership" that grassroots economic development is a good thing. That fostering and encourage entrepreneurs to bring companies and products to market is a great source of innovation, job creation, etc. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

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San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries. None of mine did.)

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 263