VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

“After the crash, venture capital was scarce to non-existent. In a capital scarce environment following the Dot Com crash, startups needed to do more with less and survive long enough to generate revenue. Agile Development: launch an MVP early and iterate quickly.

Lean 214

Lean Seed Capital Startup Burn Rate 214

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. A number of analysts have particular focus on serving the customers of technology companies, e.g., Gartner and 451 Research. But we’re doing it slowly.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

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 251

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 251

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. That died with waterfall software development. I’m not even talking about your 12-page Powerpoint presentation that you need to raise venture capital or to talk with potential biz dev partners.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

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. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

Lean 260

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260

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. Let’s Fire Our Customers Part of the DNA of great entrepreneurs is a bias towards decisive and immediate action. Get it done, now.

Customer 216

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 216

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

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. Yet time after time, after the product shipped, startups would find that customers didn’t use or want most of the features.

Restful 243

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 243

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

The benefits of customer and agile development and minimum features set are continuous customer feedback, rapid iteration and little wasted code. But over time if developers aren’t careful, code written to find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling.

Part-Time VPE 323

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 323

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 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. Finally, I’ll write about 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.

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 228

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

I’d keep the dilution really low at that stage, and focus on very cheap customer development tactics or even a hybrid services model to test out your initial hypothesis without requiring meaningful outside funding. In any of these cases, there isn’t a standard path that all companies take.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 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. Even more serious, startups can have radically different cash needs.

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Customer/Market Risk Versus Invention Risk One day I was having lunch with a VC sharing what I learned from my students. 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.”

Vertical 162

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 162

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. We’ve managed startups like this forever; there is no other way to manage them.”

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 131

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

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. We understood none of this. More detail in future posts.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

. • Repeatable: Startups may get orders that come from board members’ customer relationships or heroic, single-shot efforts of the CEO. Does our product or service solve a customer problem (product-market fit)? How do we attract, keep and grow customers? What are revenue strategy and pricing tactics?

Venture Capital 334

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 334

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. Competing To Win Deals - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 7, 2010 The venture capital business is highly competitive.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Nayeem explained why: Building a hardware product standalone is very, very difficult because you have to deal with supply chain, you have to deal with customer service, you have to deal with fulfillment. … And most importantly, you have your customers that you want to sell your product or service to. You have your team.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And it was going to mention the two words that SuperMac marketing needed to live and breathe: revenue and profit. To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

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. Quickly iterate the product in front of customers.

Lean 263

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 263

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2013

. • Repeatable: Startups may get orders that come from board members’ customer relationships or heroic, single-shot efforts of the CEO. Does our product or service solve a customer problem (product-market fit)? How do we attract, keep and grow customers? What are revenue strategy and pricing tactics?

Venture Capital 226

Venture Capital IRR Liquidity Event Business Model 226

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

on medical device revenues, regardless of profitability delays or cash-flow breakeven. Venture Capital Issues. Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up. The amount of capital being invested in new device companies is at an 11 year low. Venture Capital.

Startup 300

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 300

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. A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. Solve a problem you can relate to.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

JANUARY 4, 2010

Now with customers and early revenue, it was out raising its first round of venture money. Lets take venture capital and grow this thing into a real business.”. They used Customer and Agile development to search for a scalable and repeatable business model to become a large company.

Hockey Stick 299

Hockey Stick Venture Capital Startup Cofounder 299

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 267

Business Model Customer Development Utah Business Plan 267

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. in developing these new models. It only emerges after an intense business model design and search activity based on the customer development process.

Lean 329

Lean Nepal Cofounder Customer Development 329

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. Your board nods sagely at your target customer list. What happened?

Silicon Valley 143

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 143

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 303

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 303

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

VC’s worked with entrepreneurs to build profitable and scalable businesses, with increasing revenue and consistent profitability – quarter after quarter. They taught you about customers, markets and profits. Startups needed millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product out the door to customers.

Internet 335

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 335

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Intellectual Property At the next class I said, “You all ought to get out and start talking to customers on day one, and get early feedback on your idea. Don’t share the details of your manufacturing process with customers until you’ve locked up your intellectual property.” Just get out of the building.” Oops,” I said, “you’re right.

Vertical 156

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 156

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

Intel under their last two CEOs delivered more revenue and profit than any ever before. For the first 75 years of the 20 th century, when capital for new ventures was scarce, the smartest engineering talent went to corporate R&D labs. 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

Dinner in a Strange Land When I was in my mid 20′s working at ESL, I was sent overseas to a customer site where the customers were our three-letter intelligence agencies. Page views drive his ad revenue, which is probably CPM based. I think it is because in the end, customers count. Mike Arrington is a capitalist.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 210

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

I thing I’ve learned over the years is that technology purists hate advertising even when it is that revenue stream that truthfully drives much of our industry. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

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

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

JULY 28, 2011

The combination of Venture Capital and technology entrepreneurship is one of the great business inventions of the last 50 years. They’ll explore the best way to deliver the product to customers, the resources required, as well as competing technologies. Filed under: Lean LaunchPad , Teaching , Venture Capital.

Engineer 284

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Intellectual Property 284