Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 5, 2017

At the outset, it is worth noting that when it comes to the world of venture funding, I am a bit of an outsider. Until a handful of years ago, I didn’t even know what venture capital was, let alone anything about the complicated process of actually acquiring VC funding. percent of venture capital deals, and received.33

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Venture Capital Lean Cofounder Technical Review 82

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Eric Ries , entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Lean Startup. Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology.

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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?

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Up and Running

MARCH 11, 2015

Whether or not you’re raising money for your business, getting advice from venture capitalists can be invaluable. But, getting in the doors of a Sand Hill Road VC in Silicon Valley can be an incredibly difficult undertaking. Inside the Minds of Top Venture Capitalists: Blogs You Need to Read to Understand How VCs Think.

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Venture Capital Technical Review Silicon Valley Cofounder 60

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. Just a quick history refresher.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 203

Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

In some cases, branches of the military contracted directly with Stanford which worked with local contractors in Silicon Valley to build these components or systems for the military. The Secret History of Silicon Valley Part X: Stanford Crosses the Rubicon (steveblank.com) [.] on August 18, 2009 at 4:39 am Said: [.]

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

“We’ve been reading your blog about your Lean Launchpad class.” We want to make a bet that your Lean Launchpad class can apply the scientific method to market-opportunity identification. We want to make a bet that your Lean Launchpad class can apply the scientific method to market-opportunity identification.

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Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 307

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 would discover that there was a more effective alternative in building a marketing department than hiring traditional marketers with MBA’s. Context here.)

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Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 221

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2011

If you’re a visiting dignitary whose country has a Gross National Product equal to or greater than the State of California, your visit to Silicon Valley consists of a lunch/dinner with some combination of the founders of Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter and several brand name venture capitalists. California Dreaming.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 19, 2019

Andy Rachleff co-founded the venture capital firm Benchmark Capital in 1995. Andy and I will be having a fireside chat at this year’s Lean Startup Conference in October. You’ve been in Silicon Valley since the early days. And how has that affected venture capital? It's literally impossible.

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Silicon Valley Lean Venture Capital Pre-Money Valuation 159

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2015

Read part one on the Evolution of Corporate R&D , part two on Innovation Outposts in Silicon Valley , and part three The 6 Decisions to Make Before Setting up an Innovation Outpost. Silicon Valley, Boston). Could allow the corporation to be disruptive by entering adjacent markets to the ones it currently serves.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

The book has been shepherded and edited by a great Japanese VC at Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance Venture Capital, Takashi Tsutsumi, with help from Masato Iino. Leveraging my marketing skills, I successfully made what Steve calls an “onslaught launch”, generating a lot of press coverage and apparent early success.

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Japan Customer Development Developer Customer 302

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. Steve,&# he said, “you’re missing the most interesting part of vertical markets. Markets with Customer/Market Risk are those where the unknown is whether customers will adopt the product.

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 162

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Now with a new infusion of $8 million dollars of venture capital, SuperMac had been resurrected from the dead and was attempting to restart. Why they were looking to me to run marketing wasn’t clear. The company was the laughing stock of the Mac market. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

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Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 165

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?

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Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

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

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Knowing this venture firms have come up with a canonical checklist of what they would like to see. Do they believe you have a big enough vision and market. Tons of advice is available on how to pitch , present and market your company. Your presentation doesn’t have a single word about Lean Startups or Customer Development.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. I remember presenting our ideas for Marketing Automation to one VP of Marketing in a large Silicon Valley company. Are These Your Slides?

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Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 253

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” However the Customer Development Model and the Lean Startup work equally well for startups on the web. Yet some startups such as Biotech don’t have market risk, instead they are dominated by technical risk.

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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

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 30, 2012

These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! How To Choose A Market For Your Startup Or Small Business – [link]. How To Choose A Market For Your Startup Or Small Business – [link]. Want to create a new habit?

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Social Media Small Business Central African Republic Design 100

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

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. Morale in Sales and Marketing starts to plummet. Blame it On Marketing In the next 3-6 months, a new VP of Sales is hired.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 232

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 244

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 10, 2021

With the enormous changes to our economies and financial markets?—?how how on Earth could the venture capital market stand still? One of the most common questions I’m asked by people intrigued by but also scared by venture capital and technology markets is some variant of, “Aren’t technology markets way overvalued?

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Pre-Money Valuation Valuation Venture Capital Early Stage 471

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Understanding the left-side of the mission model canvas ( activities, resources , partners , and costs) forces all teams to ask, “Are we building a product for a DOD/IC customer only or do we have a “dual-use” product that could be sold commercially and get funded by venture capital?”. This post is a continuation of the series.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds.

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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 I began to gain an appreciation of how world-class venture capitalists develop pattern recognition for these common types of problems. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

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.) Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Now In Print!

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Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 265

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building. luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building. Now In Print!

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 128

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Different market opportunities present radically different startup risks and costs. Capital Requirements In my class students form teams and spend a semester building a detailed plan for a company. The time to product and scale of investment is radically different than other startup markets.&#

Vertical 156

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 156

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. I've been in venture now twice. I was in Boston, working for the first time in venture capital as an analyst for this guy who was incredible and an amazing mentor. How do you develop power within a venture capital firm?

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Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Was SuperMac attempting to introduce radically new products and create a new market ? Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? Was the company attempting to be a low cost provider by introducing cheaper products to an existing market? No, not really.

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Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 157

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

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. After more customer interviews, we have shifted our market type hypothesis to- entering an existant market. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Order Here.

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Both Sides of the Table

JULY 16, 2010

But VC is an “illiquid asset&# so funds didn’t disappear quickly - In 2000/01 the stock market quickly adjusted punishing investors in the NASDAQ and in individual public technology stocks. What accelerated this was the collapse of the public stock markets. The best and most consistent funds in Silicon Valley (e.g.

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LP Technical Review Early Stage Silicon Valley 311

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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