Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

In the last few years we’ve recognized that a startup is not a smaller version of a large company. We’re now learning that companies are not larger versions of startups. But paradoxically, in spite of all their seemingly endless resources, innovation inside of an existing company is much harder than inside a startup.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Useful blogs and links for startups Click Here ————– 2.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Here’s the punchline: if you run your company as if you have closed a VC equity financing round even though you actually closed a convertible debt round, you’ll be in much better shape when it comes time to raise your Series A financing. One of them used to be a lead developer at [insert hot consumer tech company here].

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Startups that are searching for a business model need to keep score differently than large companies that are executing a known business model. Yet most entrepreneurs and their VC’s make startups use financial models and spreadsheets that actually hinder their success. How do we finance the company, etc. Startup Metrics.

Balance Sheet 298

Balance Sheet Startup Burn Rate Metrics 298

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.”

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). Venture Capital Cafe > Startup Resources (Updated Mar 2013). VC & Startup Resources. Seed Startups. VC Cafe covers early stage Israeli and European tech & mobile startups. Hundreds of startups featured since 2005, will yours be next? About VC Cafe.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

As an agenda for each meeting, I suggest: – How can we most add value, in addition to helping with financing? For instance, tracking ‘months-of-runway’ combined with the month-over-month change to that metric allows us to rapidly identify companies that may be distressed. Customer Development.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

Disruptive innovations are coming from startups – Telsa for automobiles, Uber for taxis, Airbnb for hotel rentals, Netflix for video rentals and Facebook for media. As a consequence, corporations used metrics like return on net assets (RONA), return on capital deployed, and internal rate of return (IRR) to measure efficiency.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

Everyone knows what a startup is for – don’t they? In this post we’re going to offer a new definition of why startups exist : a startup is an organization formed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Or depending on your metrics for success, get users, grow traffic, etc.). Winston Churchill.

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

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.

Sacramento 306

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 306

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Five Quarters of Profitability During the 1980’s and through the mid 1990’s startups going public had to do something that most companies today never heard of – they had to show a track record of increasing revenue and consistent profitability. They taught you about customers, markets and profits.

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

This week, the startup tribe from Harvard Business School is making their annual trek to Silicon Valley. They’ll hear from a variety of experts and get to see many startups firsthand. Even today, I routinely hear MBA’s advised to remove the degree from their resume when applying to startup jobs.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

To give you a better idea of what entrepreneurs in this industry are thinking about during each phase of the startup process, I interviewed SaaS entrepreneurs from all over the world, including our own COO Noah Parsons. Eric Ries, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author of The Lean Startup, popularized this strategy for web applications.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

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? How does that stack up?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

It didn’t take us very long to connect the dots between exponential growth, business model innovation and the “Lean Startup” movement. The Lean Startup movement is almost a decade old now and it’s now easier than ever for anyone to learn “Lean Startup” methods and become more entrepreneurial. in developing these new models.

Lean 326

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 326

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. 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

As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. 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 11, 2010

One of the classes I teach in the engineering school at Stanford is E145: the Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship , an introduction to building a scalable startup. Our goal is to teach students the key concepts of the startup process and help them understand that a startup is a search for a profitable business model.

Intellectual Property 226

Intellectual Property Business Model Customer Development Distribution 226

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

189 Answers To The Top Startup Questions On Your Mind. 189 Answers To The Top Startup Questions On Your Mind. Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. I love startups. Building Metrics / Usage Reports / KPI 3. Cause your scared.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Its an essential discipline of good software development, especially in startups. Nonetheless, I want to talk about a dysfunction Ive seen in several startups: they are literally refactoring themselves to death. They have a product that has a moderate number of customers. Heres a company I met with recently.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 4, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. With five days remaining before The Lean Startup Conference , we wanted to lay out what we’re offering that’s unlike any other entrepreneurship conference and explain the different levels of participation available to you.

Lean 167

Lean San Francisco Conversion Startup 167

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

I’ve introduced a new class at Stanford to teach engineers, scientists and other professionals how startups really get built. In contrast, startups search for a business model. (Or Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.)

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2010

The role of a founding CEO in a startup searching for a business model is radically different than a CEO building and growing a company. So if you’re the founder of a startup, you may want to consider who you take money from. What startup stage do they typically invest in? Do they “get&# Customer Development ?

Founder 231

Founder Vesting Later Stage Early Stage 231

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

In the case of an entrepreneur pitching for finance, its the same fear that has them putting on a facade and not comfortable in what they do and dont know that will see them a long way off getting funded. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May. .

Continuous Deployment 131

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a key lean startup concept.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 21, 2010 What is a startup? I think most people have a fairly specific image that gets conjured up when they hear the word startup. It leads people to mistakenly believe that any time they see two guys in a garage attempting the impossible, that’s a startup. Wrong again.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. After all, our startup is on a fixed budget.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 13, 2011

As customer and agile development reinvent the startup, it's time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Board meetings that guide startups haven't changed since the early 1900's. The combination of Venture Capital and technology startups is only about 50 years old.

Silicon Valley 117

Silicon Valley Balance Sheet Metrics Early Stage 117

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

It’s Episode 3 my little “ Loveline for startups. ” Introduced a few months ago as an Austin event, I’m now doing this live audio advice column to the web, taking phone calls from startups around the country. My co-hosts were Bob Walsh and Patrick Foley , hosts of the well-known Startup Success Podcast.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Hunter Walker

DECEMBER 19, 2013

With Homebrew , Satya and I both consider ourselves a startup in its “product-market fit” phase. However, measuring the outcome of a fund has a long time horizon so there are several other metrics we keep on our dashboard. ” Is it when you successfully raise your first dollar or finish the fundraising?

Cofounder 105

Cofounder Term Sheet Seed Stage Portfolio 105

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

They have many, many man-years of development and customer development in them. You have your general management meeting and in your general management meeting you talk about product development, about marketing and about finance. That is always true for all startups until they get old, right?

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Version One Ventures

MAY 22, 2018

Are you looking for help and expertise in hiring, product strategy, customer development, fundraising, coaching, therapy, etc.? co-founder problems, personnel issues, company pivot, customer fall out)? Lastly, dig down into how an investor behaved during new financing rounds or during exits. What is important to you?

Cap Table 60

Cap Table Cofounder Syndicate Syndication 60

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. What are the key financials metrics for costs in your business model? Include people, hardware, software, prototypes, financing, etc. This post – part eight – was the last formal lecture. Access to resources.

South Dakota 217

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 217

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Heres an excerpt: One of the unfortunate side effects of all the publicity and hype surrounding startups is the idea that entrepreneurship is a guaranteed path to fame and riches. Building a startup is incredibly hard, stressful, chaotic and –- more often than not –- results in failure. But only startups combine all three.

San Francisco 111

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 111

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Those of us who have had the privilege of working in the premier startup hub in the world often take its advantages for granted. Among those: plentiful financing and nerds , a culture that celebrates both failure and success, and an ethos of openness and sharing. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

Some great content around the intersection of startups and being a Startup CTO in June this year. This continues my series of posts: Top 30 Startup Posts in June 2010 Top 29 Startup Posts May 2010 Startup CTO Top 30 Posts for April 16 Great Startup Posts from March The following are the top items based on social signals.

Software Review 217

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Technical Review 217