Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds. Success depends on finding startups that have identified acute customer pains in large markets where conditions are ripe for a new entrant. The cloud , open-source development tools and web 2.0 The Oregon startup scene today looks very different from what it did 10 years ago.

Early Stage 286

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 286

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. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup. Lets see why.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund and mutual fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. The only problem that faces startup investors now is how to mine this new data layer efficiently to increase returns.”. But we’re doing it slowly. are using AngelMob.co

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

This is part of my ongoing series of posts and I need to file this one under both Raising Venture Capital and Startup Advice. The last couple of years has also seen the huge initial success of Ycombinator, the Lean Startup and many other product driven approaches to going to market. Let’s take your revenue line.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

As we’ve grown we’ve become less and less responsive to changing market and customer needs. While our revenue is looking good, we can be out of business in two years if we can’t keep up with our customer’s rapid shifts in platforms. Filed under: Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital.

Part-Time VPE 318

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 318

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

The Customer Development process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model , reducing customer and market risk. The first step of Customer Development is called Customer Discovery. outside the building and test them in front of customers.

Burn Rate 248

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 248

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I’ve spent my life in innovation, eight startups in 21 years, and the last 15 years in academia teaching it. the wave of semiconductor startups in the 1960’s/70’s, the emergence of Venture Capital as a professional industry, the personal computer revolution in 1980’s, the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s and finally.

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. What Do VC’s Do?

Silicon Valley 217

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 217

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 2, 2011

There's a lot out there around Customer Development - read Steve Blank : Entrepreneurship as a Science – The Business Model/Customer Development Stack - Steve Blank , October 25, 2010 Checklists for Chaos, The Path to Success - Steve Blank , October 28, 2010 and reading about Lean, MVPs, etc. is a requirement.

Valuation 198

Valuation Revenue Pre-Money Valuation Early Stage 198

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. I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development.

Customer Development 215

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

What if we could increase productivity and stave the capital flight by helping Life Sciences startups build their companies more efficiently? One would think that designing a medical device would be a simple engineering problem, and startups would be emerging right and left. Venture Capital Issues. In the U.S.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

To an entrepreneur, being asked to join a venture firm with an Entrepreneur-in-Residence title means you have been tapped on the shoulder by the VC gods. The CDROM content business in the early 1990’s was one of the many of the long line of venture capital fads.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

The best entrepreneurship textbooks and blogs assume that advice to startups is generalizable. But as I learned from my students this “one-size-fits-all” approach does not work for all startups. Different market opportunities present radically different startup risks and costs.

Vertical 149

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 149

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

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

———– One of my ex students came out to the ranch to give me an update on his startup. It all starts with understanding what a startup is. What’s a Startup? Just as a reminder, a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Why small amounts?

Venture Capital 333

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 333

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

This tendency is a two edged sword: by iterating strategy a startup can dramatically improve the size and trajectory of the company, but at times this process can be the bane of venture investors (and why they have prematurely grey hair.)

Customer 195

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 195

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

A lot of entrepreneurs think that their startup is the next big thing when in reality they’re just building a small business. How can you tell if your startup has the potential to be the next Google, Intel or Facebook? A first order filter is whether the founders are aiming for a scalable startup. The Scalable Startup.

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 276

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. He previously founded N&N Investments LLC, a real estate investment holding company; and is a program leader and fellow of the Startup Leadership Program. .

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

If these sound like reasonable answers to you, and you are in a startup/small company, update your resume. No one had sat the marketing department down and defined what our department Mission (with a capital “M”) was. What I was actually hearing was a failure of management.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2011

This site aggregates and filters content from thought leaders who talk about topics such as Marketing , Sales , Design , Revenue , Hiring , Social Media , Business Models , Metrics , PR , Venture Capital , Angel Investors , Bootstrapping , Incubators , Agile and many others.

Intellectual Property 175

Intellectual Property Aggregator Startup IP 175

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. Electron-based Venture Capital. Here’s why.

Lean 258

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 258

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

———– One of my ex students came out to the ranch to give me an update on his startup. It all starts with understanding what a startup is. What’s a Startup? Just as a reminder, a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Why small amounts?

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 225

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

If you take funding from a venture capital firm or angel investor and want to build a large, enduring company (rather than sell it to the highest bidder), this isn’t the decade to do it. The collapse of the IPO market and dysfunctional math in the venture capital community has stacked the odds against you. Here’s why.

Venture Capital 297

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 297

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 7, 2013

What CEOs, management teams and shareholders care about is growth —revenue growth, greater user adoption, increased market share, bigger margins, etc. It didn’t take us very long to connect the dots between exponential growth, business model innovation and the “Lean Startup” movement. in developing these new models.

Lean 326

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 326

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

I’ve seen a range of options for supporting entrepreneurs, which I can rank from least to most involvement in companies by investors: financier VCs, e.g., Correlation Ventures. portfolio operator VCs, e.g., Andreessen Horowitz, ff Venture Capital, First Round Capital, Google Ventures. mentor VCs, e.g., most VCs.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

But then, because there might be entrenched competitors and your concept is radically new, you still need to invest in the customer development process to learn how to get design wins from companies who may be happy with their existing vendors. For example, complex new semiconductor architectures, (i.e.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 16, 2012

When venture capital teamed up with technology entrepreneurs in the 1960’s they brought with them the canonical MBA planning tool – the business plan. This makes sense in a company where your customers, channel and competition are known. And your revenue plan is something more than a hallucination. The Business Plan ?-

Business Model 263

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 263

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

What are they, how do they differ and what can startup do to take advantage of them? Paths to Liquidity: a quick history of the four waves of startup investing. Lean Startups/Back to Basics (2000-2010): No IPO’s, limited VC cash, lack of confidence and funding fuels “lean startup” era with limited M&A and even less IPO activity.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Your Customers are Not Who You Think For years I thought this “million unit chip sale by accident&# was a “one-off&# funny story. That is until I saw that in startup after startup customers come from places you don’t plan on.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

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. Intel under their last two CEOs delivered more revenue and profit than any ever before. Risk capital has provided financing for new ideas in the form of startups.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

If you’re a startup raising money or just want to see your name online, there’s not a better blog on the web. Reading this TechCrunch post made me remember the first time I saw someone confront a worldview they didn’t expect. Is this behavior an outlier or is it the norm in the PR industry? Or is it just someones end of innocence ?

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

Steve Blank

JULY 28, 2011

This approach would shape Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial ethos: In startups, failure was treated as experience (until you ran out of money). The combination of Venture Capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. And it will lead to more startups and job creation.

Engineer 278

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 278

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

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2012

I offered what I just learned from spending a day at the ranch with the R&D group of a $100 billion corporation along with the insights my Startup Owners Manual co-author Bob Dorf who has several Fortune 100 clients. Plans and processes are in place, and rules, job specifications, revenue, profit and margin goals have been set.

Business Model 333

Business Model Customer Development United States Operations 333

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Many thanks, you’ve changed my startup a hundred times already. Maybe the core of what you talk about in getting companies to success lies in the answer to these 2 questions. Oh, I absolutely love your “I was having coffee with person the other day&# stories. Keep ‘em coming.

Sales 120

Sales Silicon Valley RSS Las Vegas 120