Steve Blank

MAY 23, 2016

Established businesses execute business models while startups search for them. Yet everyone – investors, entrepreneurs, academics — expected new startups to follow the same practices that worked for large companies – write a business plan, forecast 5-year sales projections and build the product without ever talking to customers.

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Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2011

In the early 1970’s, as some of you might remember, our country was in the middle of the Vietnam War—-and the Air Force was happy to have me. My job was to replace failed electronic warfare equipment in fighter planes as they returned from bombing missions over North Vietnam. The answer turned out to be a war.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

And we filled it with racks of receivers and displays , wire and strip recorders and communications intercept equipment that could search the electromagnetic spectrum from 50 megahertz to 3 gigahertz, and this is 1943. We stripped out B-24 bombers, took out all the bomb racks, took out all the bombs and even took out all the guns.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 28, 2009

The Vietnam war was winding down. Even though the bombers we lost over North Vietnam were older versions, called B-52 D-models, many of the systems were the same. Sure the rest of the stories diverge though… can’t really imagine a Soviet counterpart to the Customer Development method. Reply Ben C. ,

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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.” Thailand: Bats, Moths and John Scoggins I was 19 in 1973 and in Thailand in the Air Force working on electronic warfare equipment on fighter planes, gunships and Wild Weasels, at the tail end of the Vietnam War.

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Steve Blank

MAY 13, 2009

So, of course, as soon as he was gone, I went searching for a spare wool blanket…and found one in a supply cabinet. Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi Mississippi was the Training Center responsible for teaching 10’s of thousands of students a year how to repair radar, communications, and electronics.

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