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. You might as well bring your lucky rabbits foot to the VC meeting. Just as a refresher.

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2013

The best analogy to describe the relationship of science and technology and the Chinese startup scene is to understand its parallels with the United States during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. viewed science and technology as a strategic asset. viewed science and technology as a strategic asset.

China 320

China Taiwan Silicon Valley Guam 320

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. Good stuff too.

Silicon Valley 253

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 253

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 162

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 162

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2013

The best analogy to describe the relationship of science and technology and the Chinese startup scene is to understand its parallels with the United States during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. viewed science and technology as a strategic asset. viewed science and technology as a strategic asset.

China 212

China Taiwan Silicon Valley Guam 212

Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

We four instructors would grumble and complain to one another about our lack of leadership. Entrepreneurs are fearless, persistent and uninhibited about asking – whether it’s asking to assemble a team, get financing, sell customers, etc. Now all I needed to do was to learn what a marketeer was supposed to do.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review California 120

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

Mass TLC Unconference: Large annual conference put on by the MA Technology Leadership Council. Lean Startup Circle Boston – Meetup dedicated to the lean startup and customer development methodology. Startup Leadership Program – International mentorship program with over 100 startups participating.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

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 125

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

They were trying to keep up with providing the core services necessary to run the current business and at the same time deal with a flood of well-meaning but uncoordinated ideas about new features, technologies and innovations coming at them from all directions. Ironically, by standing still, they were falling behind.

Incubator 317

Incubator Curation Engineer Government 317

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

corporation, and by extension Sloan laid the foundation for America’s economic leadership in the 20th century. Sloan kept the corporate staff small and focused on policymaking, corporate finance and planning. The Modern Corporation Sloan is rightly credited with formalizing the idea of the modern U.S. One guy really did all of this.

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 179

Steve Blank

JANUARY 17, 2016

Clips from their interviews are below: Wayne Sutton is a partner and co-founder of BUILDUP VC , a Bay Area non-profit that connects, mentors, and educates underrepresented technology entrepreneurs. Not just a problem in terms of access to technology. (It’s Their first product aims to make meetings more productive.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley North Carolina Cofounder Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

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. 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.” Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 267

Silicon Valley Thailand RSS Venture Capital 267

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

It means they have to deal with finances and customers and investors and other things that aren’t what they love to do, which is building software. Your technical partner must be someone who shares your vision and enthusiasm for your idea, BUT he/she does not necessarily need to be a developer. Finance (1).

Technical Cofounder 42

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Engineering Fractional CTO 42

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

Founding a company is a sheer act of will and tenacity in the face of immense skepticism from everyone – investors, customers, friends, etc. You literally have to take your vision of the opportunity and against all rational odds assemble financing, and a team to help you execute. And that’s just to get started.

Founder 310

Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 310

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing. Every generation of new technology seems to find a willing audience in naïve journalists and eager readers. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. The story had universal appeal, and we spun the tale and keep the buzz going.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Among those: plentiful financing and nerds , a culture that celebrates both failure and success, and an ethos of openness and sharing. Learn about the key players and the series of events that contributed to this dramatic and important piece of the emergence of this world renowned technology mecca.

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Steve Blank

MAY 4, 2009

At some point in my career as I began to formulate thoughts about mission and intent , I started to think about the broader role of marketing in a growing technology company. While this may seem obvious to anyone not in sales and marketing, trust me, in a technology company this is a conceptual breakthrough.

Silicon Valley 132

Silicon Valley RSS Non-Compete California 132

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Stanford and MIT were building on the technology breakthroughs of World War II and graduating a generation of engineers into a consumer and cold war economy that seemed limitless. These technology startups had no risk capital – just customers/purchase orders from government/military/intelligence agencies.

Silicon Valley 178

Silicon Valley Securities and Exchange Commission Venture Capital RSS 178

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

These IPOs meant that technology companies didn’t have to get acquired to raise money or get their founders and investors liquid. The venture firm was funded by Laurance Rockefeller and Lazard Freres, but after some dispute lost to the sands of time, Rockefeller pulled his financing, and the firm was dissolved after the first fund.

Silicon Valley 129

Silicon Valley SBIC San Francisco RSS 129

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

recently did a lecture at a Babson MBA summer class on Entrepreneurial Leadership. In other words, the future of financing is continuous funding, not discrete. 0160; If I need $250,000 to get to 100 customers, or $1 million to get to X, and I can raise both amounts from either Angels or VCs, where do we turn? Not so bad.

Software Review 217

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Technical Review 217

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Managewith.us - Collaborative Task Manager Mavenlink - manage project communications, documents, schedules, budgets, payments Industrial Logic – Agile eLearning Misc Office Help Google Apps – cloud mail server, calendar, docs, etc. This video should be the gold standard in explaining contract terms.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110