Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Although this reseearch would lead to the development of the Backward Wave Oscillator and Traveling Wave Tube for military applications, Stanford was building tubes and circuits not entire systems. doing postdoctoral internships, supervised by faculty members or hired staff (many from Fred Terman’s WWII Electronic Warfare lab.)

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Silicon Valley RSS California Government 152

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I’ve seen the Valley grow from Sunnyvale to Santa Clara to today where it stretches from San Jose to South of Market in San Francisco. I’ve watched the Valley go from Microwave Valley – to Defense Valley – to Silicon Valley to Internet Valley. So how did this happen? Where is it going?

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Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 238

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. Entrepreneurs beyond Silicon Valley, including those working abroad, often have to retool Lean Startup methods to apply them in places with very different business cultures. On September 24 in the U.S. Here’s what they had to say.

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Silicon Valley Lean Puerto Rico Japan 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 21, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. Between webcasts and interviews, we’ve been gradually introducing some of the speakers who are appearing at this year’s Lean Startup Conference. Lean validation. Now we’re ready to announce the full lineup , along with a special deal, explained below.

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Lean Startup Metrics Silicon Valley 152

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

I would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. I chose to hire engineers from within each of our target markets and set up “Steve’s one month MBA course for engineers.” These hires were definitely not your standard marketing types.

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 218

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 5, 2012

But here’s what Silicon Valley doesn’t get about Hollywood. No matter how much it bothers you, people do like to entertain themselves with a “lean back” experience. Ironically in Silicon Valley consumer Internet business have become hits driven businesses. As humans we like story telling.

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Silicon Valley Los Angeles Distribution Java 374

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

You’re Hired, You’re Fired. My first job in Silicon Valley: I was hired as a lab technician at ESL to support the training department. It makes you appreciate that the Silicon Valley technology-centric culture-bubble has little to do with the majority of Americans.) Driving across the U.S.

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Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 263

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 25, 2021

Eren Bali arrived in Silicon Valley from Turkey in 2010 hoping to relaunch Udemy , his online education company. Eren came to the US from Turkey to work at a Silicon Valley tech startup, which is actually where I first met him a few years ago. How did you first get into tech and come to Silicon valley?

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Silicon Valley Turkey Los Angeles California 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

I had hired the VP of marketing from a potential software partner who was responsible to get all this 3 rd party software on our computer. In reality we hadn’t gotten any closer to our goal than the day we hired him. In fact, we would have been better off if we hadn’t hired him as we wouldn’t have confused a warm body with progress.

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ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

This is a customer development problem. By the end of this article, you should have a better understanding of how to develop new products or tweak your existing offerings by working with existing or prospective customers to incorporate their feedback to create viable solutions to their problems, and clearly communicate their value.

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Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Hacking for Diplomacy takes the Lean Startup methodology and applies it to problems sourced from the State Department. The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2016

Hacking for Diplomacy takes the Lean Startup methodology and applies it to problems sourced from the State Department. The students “get out of the building” and test their hypotheses in front of potential beneficiaries using the Customer Development methodology, all while building and updating their Minimal Viable Products.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Washington United Kingdom Lean 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? Steve Blank has devoted many years now to trying to answer that question, with a theory he calls Customer Development. You can learn about customer development, and quite a bit more, in Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Steve Blank

AUGUST 25, 2015

I’ve spent this year working with corporations and government agencies that are adopting and adapting Lean Methodologies. Several pockets of innovation in his agency have begun to look to startups and have tried to adopt lean methods. In Silicon Valley, the operative word in any pitch is “disrupt.”

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Lean Entrepreneur Business Model Silicon Valley 120

Up and Running

MAY 28, 2015

We recently had Tim Berry, Palo Alto Software founder and business planning expert, present our Bplans audience with his latest advice on lean business planning. Start your lean business plan today: Download our Free Lean Plan Template one-page-pitch-download.pdf. I’m going to start with what’s a lean business plan.

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Lean Business Plan Video Software Review 60

ReadWriteStart

MAY 30, 2022

One in particular from a famous VC in Silicon Valley. Hire a bunch of new staff? . You’re lean, agile, and responsive to external changes, ready to test a new idea or head in a new direction. Add a spending deadline into the mix and you might as well have set your money on fire. . I turned them down. Pimp out my office?

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Bootstrapping Startup Equity Silicon Valley 147

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Successful pinball companies didn’t hire Hollywood talent. Meanwhile our company was pouring an enormous amount of dollars into building tools and video compression technology, while also hiring a lot of high-priced Hollywood talent like art directors, and script and story editors. Was my response to stop development of the games?

Silicon Valley 221

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 221

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, November 4, 2008 Principles of Lean Startups, presentation for Maples Investments Image via Wikipedia Steve Blank and I had the opportunity to create a presentation about lean startups for Maples Investments. Agile software development. Customer development. you get the idea.

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Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Entrepreneur-in-Residence After SuperMac I had been approached by one of our venture investors to be an entrepreneur in residence (EIR), a Silicon Valley phrase which says one thing but means another. Peter described the first company in which “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” and we were enthralled.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on? Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery.

Technology 142

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, February 11, 2009 The free software hiring advantage This is one of those startup tips Im a little reluctant to share, because its been such a powerful source of competitive advantage in the companies Ive worked with. This approach gives you an edge in hiring.

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Hitting “burnout” changed the trajectory of both ends of my career in Silicon Valley. Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. Two Jobs at Once When I was hired at Zilog part of the deal was that I could consult for the first six months for my last employer, ESL.

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Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 195

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

The culture and work ethic of Convergent had earned it the title “the Marine Corps of Silicon Valley”. Supercomputers get Personal Back in Sunnyvale my friend had not only been hired but had convinced the team that we should be building hardware – making a new class of computers not a software application. Now In Print!

North Carolina 129

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 129

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

Lean Business: Capacity Management, Overhead, and Your Business – [link]. Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Money matters: why women founders struggle in Silicon Valley | The Verge – [link]. What to do when you hire someone better than yourself…. |

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 105

Austin Startup

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

My primary mission was to learn from the impressive entrepreneurial ecosystem in Austin and draw lessons for developing the entrepreneurship education program for Beetroot Academy. It follows up on my posts discussing why early stage startups should — or should not — move to Silicon Valley.

Early Stage 54

Early Stage Austin Silicon Valley San Antonio 54

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 17, 2009 Join the Lean Startup discussion at Web 2.0 Expo for free Im honored to announce that my Lean Startup session at the Web 2.0 Everyone else can register to come to both sessions for free, including the Lean Startup talk in the main conference. What does this mean for you?

Lean 76

Lean San Francisco Web Continuous Deployment 76

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

We hired an interior designer and a great facilities person to manage the process. However, I’ve seen this story repeated time and again, and not just in Silicon Valley. Stay hungry, stay lean. I don’t want to be hungry and lean (nor do I want to be full and fat). Don’t let it happen to you.

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Seeing Both Sides

APRIL 28, 2011

But if you are a competent engineer, sales executive, online marketer or general manager in Silicon Valley, NYC, Boston or other start-up hotspots, the unemployment rate is 0%. CNN recently reported that 40% of the 130,000 job openings in Silicon Valley are for software engineers. 2) Hiring Inexperience.

Hiring 44

Hiring Software Review Due Diligence Silicon Valley 44

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2009

This is the first of two posts about the rise of “risk capital” and how it came to be associated with what became Silicon Valley. ———————– Building Blocks of Entrepreneurship By the mid 1950’s the groundwork for a culture and environment of entrepreneurship were taking shape on the east and west coasts of the United States.

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Silicon Valley Securities and Exchange Commission Venture Capital RSS 174

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. When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked pretty simple. Here’s why.

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Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 262

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Its easy to take Silicon Valley for granted. Ive written a little bit about the origins of Silicon Valley because I think its important for us to understand how we got here in order to make sure we preserve what is best about our community. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 11, 2019

Ann will be speaking at this year’s Lean Startup Conference in October about all of this and more. How do you develop power within a venture capital firm? How do you not only make money in terms of revenue and revenue growth, but ultimately how do you develop profits and a profit center? I've been in venture now twice.

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Founder Lean Venture Capital Cofounder 68

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Market Risk vs. Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention. In these markets it’s all about invention risk.

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 159

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

We hired union laborers to do that. I hired a Director of Product Marketing who in his last company had ran its marketing and then went out into the field and became its national sales director. What’s your advice about hiring sales/marketing folks? (I The same was true for the Product Marketing group.

Silicon Valley 268

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 268

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, June 9, 2009 The Lean Startup Tokyo edition I had a blast speaking at Startonomics Tokyo , which was organized to foster ties between the startup cultures in Japan and Silicon Valley. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

Hunter Walker

AUGUST 23, 2023

It doesn’t mean you don’t develop a personal affinity – it’s best when you do! MM: When we were building Anchor, we had a few VCs ask us if we would move the company to Silicon Valley in connection with their commitment to invest. Investing in someone is primarily a business relationship.

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Founder Angel Investor Cap Table Distribution 87

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? Call it facts for hire. It would be a bit like the hired gun in the old west, but more suited for today’s times.

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Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175