Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

In times when venture capital is hard to get, investors extract high costs for failure (down-rounds, cram downs , new management teams, shut down the company.) Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.) How do we raise the big bucks?”

Lean 259

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 259

David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

I’ve been a traditional equity VC for 8 years, and I’m now researching new business models in venture capital. RBI normally requires founders to pay back their investors with a fixed percentage of revenue until they have finished providing the investor with a fixed return on capital, which they agree upon in advance.

Revenue 60

Revenue Technical Review Software Review Equity 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

They were one of the first companies to sell an external disk drive for the original Mac; they had the first “color paint programs” for the Mac; and when the Mac was just black and white they had the first color graphics boards and large screen color monitors for the Mac. The first step was to recruit a new management team.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 161

abovethecrowd.com

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

In many cases, a deeper focus on a particular category or vertical allows these marketplaces to distinguish themselves from broader marketplaces like eBay. The company was founded in 2012 by Michiel Prins , Jobert Abma , Alex Rice and Merijn Terheggen , and today serves the needs of over 1,000 corporate bug bounty programs.

Internet 88

Internet Matching Vertical Hosting 88

Austin Startup

MARCH 7, 2018

Austin Diversity Evangelists Mellie Price Director of Diversity Capital Factory Managing Director, Health CoLab Dell Medical School Mellie Price is a successful entrepreneur, angel investor, venture capitalist, and now university commercialization disruption at the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas.

Technical Cofounder 48

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 48

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

6, 2011 we hosted our 64th free One Million by One Million (1M/1M) strategy roundtable for entrepreneurs, and the first for this year. As usual, then, I worked with three entrepreneurs working on specific businesses. In the Entrepreneur Journeys methodology, we focus on customer validation as early as possible. Mava Consulting.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I Love Business Plan Competitions I had a breakfast with a friend who has founded a few companies in Thailand and started the New Ventures Program at one of their universities. Local venture investors and/or companies offer cash prizes for the winners. I hate business plan competitions. to compete.

Business Plan 152

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 152

VC Cafe

JUNE 19, 2020

“Because COVID is shaking our habits and beliefs it opens the door to discussion to whether we should change our whole system,” says veteran investor Sir Ronald Cohen, chairman of the Global Steering Group for Impact Investment and the man known as “the father of British venture capital” . A Global Impact Tech Alliance.

Venture Capital 174

Venture Capital Global South Africa 174

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. But at times it’s why entrepreneurs can sink their own companies. No trade-up program? More on this in later posts.)

Customer 214

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 214

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 13, 2011

The venture capital industry is so heavily skewed to Northern California, which the remains spilled over Boston, New York & Southern California. So it was wonderful to hear from a leading venture capital firm based in Washington DC. A contemporary analog to this type of vertical integration is Comcast/NBC-U.

Cofounder 277

Cofounder Merger Founder Venture Capital 277

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Filed under: Customer Development , Customer Development Manifesto , Market Types « “Lessons Learned” – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch Closure » 21 Responses Tweets that mention Times Square Strategy Session – Web Startups and Customer Development « Steve Blank -- Topsy.com , on November 16, 2009 at 7:20 am Said: [.]

Customer Development 227

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 227

abovethecrowd.com

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

Entrepreneurs accurately recognize that the connective tissue of the Internet provides an opportunity to link the players in a particular market, reducing friction in both the buying and selling experience. oDesk enables companies to easily provision programming talent from all corners of the globe.

Aggregator 101

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www.businessinsider.com

SEPTEMBER 6, 2012

Heres What That Led To Explosive Growth For Chinese And Indian Entrepreneurs. Heres What That Led To Explosive Growth For Chinese And Indian Entrepreneurs. According to Grahams email, Google Ventures has been seeking to cap the price at which their loans will convert into shares at half the price other investors are willing to take.

Silicon Valley 54

Silicon Valley Startup Valuation Venture Capital 54

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

All branches of the military (the Air Force and Army would fund the program as well) wanted Stanford to build prototypes of electronic intelligence and electronic warfare systems that could be put into production by partners in industry. This means they could fund other non-military academic programs from this overhead.

Silicon Valley 152

Silicon Valley RSS California Government 152

David Teten

NOVEMBER 30, 2020

Pre-seed startups (all vertical) are welcome to register to world’s largest pre-seed startup accelerator, the Founder Institute Final Admissions Deadline: October 04. 50/50 Startups – “We’re an incubator for equally owned tech ventures by Palestinian and Israeli entrepreneurs.”. Siraj Capital. Apply here.

UAE 60

UAE United Arab Emirates Technology 60

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Given the hardware I had worked on at ESL, learning microprocessors wasn’t that hard but figuring out how to teach hardware design and assembly language programming was a bit more challenging. If you wanted your own applications, you had to write them yourself.

Silicon Valley 195

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 195

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

The Focus on a Finished Product Rather than a Minimum Feature Set The passion of an entrepreneur coupled with the product development diagram drives you to believe that all you need to do is build the product (in all its full-featured glory) and customers will come. One’s hypothesis and assumptions are the equivalent of apriori guesses.

Customer Development 243

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 243

The Next Web

FEBRUARY 24, 2014

Nick Davidov is the Investment Director at iTech Capital and Managing Director of The Pult Group. For many investors and entrepreneurs in the West, doing business in Russia can seem like a step into the unknown. QIWI plc is the largest Russian operator of electronic payment systems and was founded by a group of iTech Capital LPs.

Russia 140

Russia Europe Government Vertical 140

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

It also made me understand what kind of support sales people needed from marketing and what marketing programs were wasted motion. were the first computer entrepreneurs here. Making sales calls with him taught me what a world class salesperson was like. So, here is my assignment. Find out Memorex’s position in Silicon Valley.

Technology 142

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Was our compensation program good, great? Key applications : At the time color desktop publishing customers used only four key applications: Page layout programs called Quark and PageMaker, a photo manipulation package called Photoshop, and a drawing program called Illustrator. What did they think about our company?

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 206

Austin Startup

AUGUST 20, 2017

Capital Factory Women in Tech Summit 2017 In conjunction with our month of women speakers and related programming, we are excited to announce our first Women In Tech Summit on August 23rd. This afternoon long Summit will bring together the most influential, and inspiring women across verticals. Register ASAP to secure your spot.

Austin 54

Austin Vertical Venture Capital Founder 54

Austin Startup

DECEMBER 20, 2020

I used to meet a high profile entrepreneur or investor moving here every month and now it seems it’s one or two a week. Normally, you can literally just show up at Capital Factory and hang out in the kitchen. He’s been programming since he was a kid running some of the first online communities and networked games.

Austin 110

Austin Texas Cofounder Los Angeles 110

www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

We love a good entrepreneurial success story – entrepreneur as protagonist overcomes obstacles and builds a thriving, successful company (and become wealthy while doing so). I would advise any entrepreneur or investor considering content to think twice, as Howard Lindzon from Wallstrip warned us. It’s free.

Software Review 79

Software Review Startup Technical Review Vesting 79

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Now we needed to put the tactical programs in place to make this repositioning strategy happen. We had thought really hard about “ market type ” and decided to reposition the company from a technology provider to a solutions provider.

Silicon Valley 126

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 126

cdixon.org

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

A frequent question entrepreneurs have when they are just starting their company is: how secretive should I be about my idea? This includes investors, entrepreneurs, people who work in similar areas, friends, people on the street, the bartender, etc. (I and an investor, has a great blog on entrepreneurship and venture capital.

Stealth 68

Stealth Startup NDA Cofounder 68

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

automatic links to generated images Rietveld - asynchronous code reviews on changesets Tech*if*er0*urs – blog on roadmap for learning rails Best free programming books Project Management Basecamp - web-based project management and collaboration tool. WebSequenceDiagrams - sketch sequence diagrams.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. Just like in the world of startups, we can start to use micro-scale pilot programs, executed in lean fashion, to gather real facts for making ROI decisions about new project investment. 12comments: Dougvs said.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

JUNE 1, 2009

This was about the time Christies and Sotheby’s were starting to auction Soviet space program artifacts , and I was thinking that perhaps a spacesuit in the lobby would be appropriate given our name. When you got off the elevator, you faced a non descript corporate-looking set of walls.

Silicon Valley 135

Silicon Valley San Francisco RSS Vertical 135

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering.

Silicon Valley 199

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 199

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you’re an entrepreneur, ESL is the most important company you’ve never heard of. Two years out of the Air Force, serendipity (which would be my lifelong form of career planning) found me in Silicon Valley working for my first company: ESL. If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born.

Silicon Valley 190

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 190

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

A similar thing happens when a software program is repeatedly ‘improved’ so people can “do more things&#. The extra rent they were paying on palatial digs would have bought six months worth of runway… Reply Cy Quick , on May 15, 2009 at 10:49 pm Said: The same mechanism operates with nation-states and empires.

Silicon Valley 226

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Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2009

I am also a pilot, and computer engineer, and love to read stories about sigint and black aircraft programs. Every potential startup founder should think about their level of comfort operating in chaos and uncertainty. It may not be for you. Also, it would be nice to do something that helps this country (but not solely for that reason).

Silicon Valley 182

Silicon Valley Iraq RSS Vietnam 182

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2009

military missile program in the 1950′s (Atlas, Thor, etc.) My Brothers Keeper During the Cold War, when Ted Hall was under suspicion of being a Soviet spy, his brother Ed Hall , stayed in the Air Force and worked on every U.S.

Silicon Valley 141

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 141

Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2009

ELINT Tasking The ELINT program sought answers to operational questions like: What was the Radar Order of Battle a penetrating bomber would face? Venture Capital, Microwaves and the OSS Dean Watkins the leader of TWT research at Stanford’s Electronic Laboratory, left Stanford in 1957 and co-founded Watkins-Johnson (with R.H.

Silicon Valley 169

Silicon Valley RSS SBIC California 169

Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

My team is setting the big dish up for Moon Bounce, which is quite difficult to do on chump change for 3 letter agency budgets, but we have the privelege of permission to put on a program on and aroud the 26 June.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego RSS California 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

Terman proudly pointed out that only Stanford, MIT and Harvard had a military sponsored electronics program. about the earliest days of entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley, it’s worth checking out this post from serial entrepreneur Steve Blank. By 1947 the U.S. military was funding half of Stanford’s engineering school budget.

Silicon Valley 169

Silicon Valley RSS Europe Germany 169

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

But it will definitely raise questions during the phone screen, for reasons that are best explained by simile: Programming with.NET is like cooking in a McDonalds kitchen. My example: I have mainly programmed _by choice_ in Python, Ruby, Scala, Haskell, C# and currently I’m doing Java. It’s so blinded, it’s shocking.

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107