article thumbnail

The Secret History of Minnesota Part 1: Engineering Research Associates

Steve Blank

No Knowledge of Computers Silicon Valley emerged from work in World War II led by Stanford professor Fred Terman developing microwave and electronics for Electronic Warfare systems. Silicon Valley wouldn’t have a computer company until 1966 when Hewlett Packard shipped the HP 2116 minicomputer.

Minnesota 288
article thumbnail

See More than 120 Speakers and Mentors at The Lean Startup Conference

Startup Lessons Learned

As the emeritus Chief Technology Officer of the United States, he still connects government and Silicon Valley. He was a very early employee of Facebook , and engineering director there through the moment it blew up. Now he’s VP of engineering at Dropbox , where he’s seeing similar growth.

Lean 165
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Ardent 1: Supercomputers Get Personal

Steve Blank

A Phone Call After I left MIPS Computers I was in New York tagging along with a friend (a computer architect whose products at Apple a decade later would change the shape of personal computing) who was consulting for a voice recognition startup. We were sitting in our cheap hotel room when the phone rang. We were going to be guessing.

article thumbnail

Convergent Technologies: War Story 1 – Selling with Sports Scores.

Steve Blank

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers.

article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, December 7, 2008 The hackers lament One of the thrilling parts of working and writing in Silicon Valley is the incredible variety of people Ive had the chance to meet. Id really prefer he had hired a VP of Engineering, or whoever that can manage me effectively.)

article thumbnail

The Future of Web Startups

www.paulgraham.com

Series A rounds, where you raise a million dollars or more, will be custom deals for the forseeable future. They buy a lot of startups— more than most people realize, because they only announce a fraction of them. silicon valleys. Some investors will still want to cook up their own deal terms.

Web 54
article thumbnail

Women 2.0 » FounderDating: How I Found My Co-Founder

www.women2.org

After quitting my job and starting Sorced , I spent a few months validating my business concept by creating the product mockups and doing customer development. So, we chose a business concept, established the pain point, discussed the solution, identified monetization and customer acquisition strategies, and assessed market opportunity.