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. (My Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. My mother kept asking if they were going to make me pay the money back.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 131

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 18, 2010 Four myths about the Lean Startup Myth: Lean means cheap. Lean startups try to spend as little money as possible. Truth: The Lean Startup method is not about cost, it is about speed. Myth: The Lean Startup methodology is only for Web 2.0/internet/consumer

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VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

As David Sacks from All in put it: On aggregate, a lot of funding was also deployed to startups in the application layer – investing in founders leveraging generative AI to either solve narrow tasks, or bring automation to tasks to reduce costs, increase accuracy, speed etc.

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Generative AI ChatGPT Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 78

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) He serves on the advisory board of a number of technology startups, and has worked as a consultant to a number of startups, companies, and venture capital firms. Looking forward for your future posts.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

The Founder’s New Insight Smart founders are never satisfied with simply executing their current business model, they are constantly observing, orienting and deciding whether their current business model can be made better. But the purpose of this post is what happens when a founder (or large company CEO) finds a better business model.

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Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 216

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2011

The Lean Startup Book is done. The finished book will come out on September 13, featuring an amazing cover designed by my IMVU co-founder Marcus Gosling and refined and tested by so many of you. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

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Lean Startup Metrics Private Equity 167

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. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup.

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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.

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 162

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. We faced this same problem in entrepreneurship and venture capital, but we are getting past it. If they don’t, there are a new breed of lean startups who understand this deep in the bones ready to take their place.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

YoungUpstarts

MAY 10, 2012

Get inspired by the interviews of 33 startup founders in this book, as they discuss how everything got started. From choosing cofounders to raising capital to overcoming failure, there are lessons for startups every step of the way in this book. Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works. Startups Open Sourced.

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Startup Lean Silicon Valley Open Source 247

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products. Customer Development and Selling Strategy If you’ve just started your company you are in customer discovery.

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 25, 2014

When I heard that Larry Ellison was stepping down as Oracle ’s CEO I asked Kathryn to think about the skills she saw in a young Larry Ellison that might make today’s founders winners. Pragmatic and Lean. World-class founders: Have a clear mission and inspire everyone to live it every day. Technology Venture Capital'

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Technical Review Venture Capital Software Review Database 334

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 12, 2014

Talking heads discuss the ins and outs of everything from product development to investment theory. Gurus wax lyrical about vision and lean, focused execution. It’s a truism in venture capital that startups fail most often not because their product explodes, but because their team implodes.

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Stock Venture Capital Lean Product Development 130

Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. A Day in the Life of A Founder For those of you who’ve never started a company, let me assure you that it never happens like the pleasant articles you read in business magazines or in case studies.

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Founder Silicon Valley RSS China 310

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 29, 2020

Most importantly, the phrase “ bootstrapping a startup ” translates into “growing your business with little or no venture capital or outside investment. It is also important to realize that, statistically speaking, most startups become operational without any venture capital or external funding sources.

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Bootstrapping Global Startup Hungary 85

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 269

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 253

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

In hindsight it appeared clear that startups that survive the first few tough years do not follow the traditional product-centric launch model espoused by product managers or the venture capital community. But it is life and death for a new venture. It is the path that is hidden in plain sight.

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital California 133

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Step 1: Start with a lean plan. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

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. And I tried to evaluate the idea and figure out: What did the founder really need here? Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? You got it.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

Execution by Vertical Market As the class progressed, students asked how the activities/functions of a startup; (Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Product Development, etc.) How does product development differ in communications hardware versus enterprise software, etc. Waterfall, Agile, Lean?

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

Altgate

OCTOBER 18, 2010

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Startup Executive Compensation Scorecard Pre-Money Valuation vs Number of Founders → No one wants to tell you your baby is ugly Posted on October 18, 2010 by admin No one wants to tell you your baby is ugly.

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Pre-Money Valuation Venture Capital Valuation Lean 59

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

The founder of what became General Motors was William (Billy) Durant. Billy Durant - Founder General Motors More in the next posts. Ford family did a pretty good job of managing founder-to-manager transition in car business and are still playing a big role in their enterprise 100 years since. What happened to him? Who was he?

Silicon Valley 179

Silicon Valley United States RSS Customer Development 179

Up and Running

JULY 24, 2015

Founders Workbench. The Founders Workbench has a variety of tools to help you get your startup off the ground. Product development. If you need a little help with your product development and getting it on store shelves, you can check out Edison Nation. They can help with development and licensing, too.

Entrepreneur 60

Entrepreneur Small Business Administration SBA Pennsylvania 60

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

It should go without saying that this post is not advice, nor is it recommendation of what you should do, it’s simply my observation of how companies using Customer Development positioned themselves to successfully raise money from venture investors. Is there a profitable business model? Can it scale?” Just as a refresher.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

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.

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Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Board meeting gets scheduled Nobody thinks too much about it until a week or two before Management team has a last-minute scramble to pull materials together Management is super focused on its daily work of … winning customers, signing biz dev, shipping product … so this prep is a last minute “fire drill” and is seen as a slight distraction.

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Stock Options Metrics Stock Valuation 226

Up and Running

MARCH 1, 2016

Boris Wertz, founding partner of Version One Ventures, believes that if you’ve worked in an industry you’re passionate about for a long time, you may know something about the market that nobody else knows. See Also: Got “Founder Fit”? If You Want Venture Capital, You Need It. He calls this “the secret of the market.”.

Non-disclosure Agreement 60

Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Non-Compete Naming 60

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

I finally understood how valuable these contests can be for students in cities or countries without a venture capital or entrepreneurial infrastructure. Over scrambled eggs and diet coke, I listened to this seasoned startup veteran describe the excitement of his students who came to the U.S. to compete.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 156

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

He should then bootstrap his product development by using the consulting fees. David should use his credibility in capacity planning and convince a dozen customers to pay him consulting fees to solve their capacity planning problems.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 18, 2010

He should then bootstrap his product development by using the consulting fees. David should use his credibility in capacity planning and convince a dozen customers to pay him consulting fees to solve their capacity planning problems.

Marketing 52

Marketing Bootstrapping Incubator Angel Investor 52

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

He spoke at the Founder Institute last week, and his advice was to not hire a PR agency until there were so many inbound requests that you can’t handle them yourself. He prefers to interact directly with the founders of a startup. He knows how to publish articles that drive page views, and this is a good one.

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 210

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Listen to this episode if you want to hear about a founder who has a product and users and paying customers … and is trying to figure out how to take his company to the next level and grow faster. Edwin: No, I do think, and I realize that very much, that if I were to take venture capital, the whole game changes.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

Am I a Founder? Raising Money Using Customer Development……… 47. Lessons Learned – A New Type of Venture Capital Pitch……… 52. Customer Development Manifesto. The Leading Cause of Startup Death: The Product Development Diagram. Customer Development In the Real World.

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Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 228

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

The timing is perfect, there is more than a little overlap with Vivek Wadhwa’s guest post on venture capital earlier today. So for this first post, here’s the best advice I can give you: join an awesome founding team and get your product out the door ASAP. I think I just really feared working for the Man. and Google.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

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. The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle.

Restful 243

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 243

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

AgileZen – project management visually see and interact with your work Kanbanery – Simple online team or personal kanban board LeanKit Kanban – Great for visualizing work of product development Kanban Pad – “Nice and lean” and free online Kanban tool Banana Scrum – A tool simple as Scrum itself.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110