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?

Silicon Valley 230

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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. The first step was to recruit a new management team.

Silicon Valley 157

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David Teten

DECEMBER 3, 2019

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. . In liquid markets, most of the calories expended on technology and analytics are focused on trade selection, or “ origination ”. 2) Market .

Technical Review 78

Technical Review Software Review Analytics Private Equity 78

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. Since I wasn’t an engineer, my contribution was around the team-building and fund raising. I was an idiot.

Silicon Valley 195

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. Ultimately you want to see if you can find customers and a market for the product as specified – as early as possible. Technology?

Vertical 124

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 124

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. Since my class was using the Customer Development text, I updated this diagram on to reflect in which markets the process was appropriate.

Vertical 133

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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. My mother kept asking if they were going to make me pay the money back.

Silicon Valley 128

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VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

But builders who see AI as the driving force behind product development and GTM strategy will actually create new markets and experiences that never existed before. Index Ventures also pointed out the potential of generative AI to disrupt vertical SaaS.

Generative AI 78

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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.

Customer Development 266

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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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VC Cafe

MAY 23, 2023

More and more, established companies are leaning into generative AI by either adding generative AI features to their existing suite of tools or partnering with AI companies (mostly OpenAI or the open source HuggingFace) to launch entirely new products. There’s an interesting thing happening in the generative AI world.

Generative AI 165

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Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

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.

Customer Development 126

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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.

Silicon Valley 149

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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.

Customer Development 231

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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?

Customer Development 243

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 243

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

To an entrepreneur, being asked to join a venture firm with an Entrepreneur-in-Residence title means you have been tapped on the shoulder by the VC gods. As Peter began to speak extemporaneously our mouths slowly fell open as he described the video game market, its size, its demographics, the state of the technology, and the state of games.

Silicon Valley 120

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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. He was now CEO of a new company in our market.

Silicon Valley 243

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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. Our friends who run the state park surrounding our ranch will join all of us for Thanksgiving dinner.

Silicon Valley 145

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Little Indians and Big Indians At MIPS Computers , my second semiconductor company, I was the VP of Marketing and defacto head of Sales. I was just in marketing. Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. No, not really. All I had done was proudly go out and get customer input.

Customer Development 283

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 283

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Home Books for Startups Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Resources Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Categories Air Force (9) Ardent (9) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (29) California Coastal Commission (3) Conservation (2) Convergent Technologies (1) Customer Development (98) Customer Development Manifesto (..)

Silicon Valley 305

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Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

But make sure it fits who you are. a comment » Yet another brilliant post from Steve Blank, this time about what it takes to found, co-found, or work in a startup at various stages of [.]

Cofounder 227

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

And since there was no Venture Capital in the 1950′s/’60′s where was the money coming from? The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. What created this microwave startup culture in the 1950′s? Why was it occurring here?

Silicon Valley 290

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

What Markets? My job was to figure out what markets Ardent should target, who were the key customers in these markets and what applications these customers had to have. The one thing I did know is that we were probably going to be running some of the same applications as the market leader Cray. It was Volume 7 issue 2.

Silicon Valley 158

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Ardent would be my third technology company as a VP of Marketing (Convergent Technologies and MIPS Computers were the other two.) I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” It would be the company where I actually earned the title.

North Carolina 128

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Status Report At Ardent the marketing department was responsible for acquiring applications for our supercomputer. 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. I realized that my daughter had confused motion with action.

Silicon Valley 330

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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. as one attempt to clearly define how exactly the company is creating value in the market. to compete.

Business Plan 148

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. Market Type But most startups aren’t in existing markets. Your board nods sagely at your target customer list.

Silicon Valley 137

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Now, helping potential customers discover new things they might like is the job of the discipline of marketing. But that job is changing dramatically, and this brings us to the next major problem facing traditional media organizations: Media companies are failing at marketing. There are too many products clamoring for attention.

San Francisco 113

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Lessons to Learn By the time I joined Ardent I thought I was an experienced marketer, but I’ll never forget my first real lesson in what it meant to understand customers and product/market fit. I thought I was bright, aggressive and could do no wrong as a marketer. Read the previous Ardent post for context.)

Silicon Valley 281

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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. For me this was one of the joys of entrepreneurship – constant learning and new insights.

Customer 210

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 210

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

He was introduced through mutual friends to Highland Capital. At the time consumer internet venture capital was still suffering from the collapse of the Tech Bubble. But it was an attractive time to enter because the successful internet companies were scaling and in need of capital. Tell us more about MetaCafe? (37:00-40:30).

Vertical 265

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

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. what Market Type is your startup? The next thing you need to do is match your sales team with your market type.

Technology 141

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steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Home Books for Startups Guide Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Tools Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Email Subscription Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Categories Air Force (12) Ardent (10) Audubon (1) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (39) Business Model versus Business Plan (..)

Software Review 110

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Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Our first question was, did the total number of customers that had already bought products from our competitors and us represent a saturated market or the tip of the iceberg? In other words what was the Total Available Market (TAM) and how much of the market had been already served? First, I presented what I had learned.

Silicon Valley 141

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Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

And even better, marketing got to design the graphics for the lobby and hallway (bright and colorful neon) to better represent the color graphics business we were in. While our competitors furiously worked on regaining market share, we were arguing about whether the carpets should be wool or nylon. Stay hungry, stay lean.

Silicon Valley 222

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Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

The company was founded to build games with embedded video to bring Hollywood stories, characters, and narratives to a market where “shoot and die” twitch games were in vogue. So I hired a VP of Marketing from Sega, one of the video game platforms on which our games would run. Look, we’re on the cover of Wired magazine.

Silicon Valley 218

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

At the same time we were educating the press , we began to educate our own marketing department about what exactly we were supposed to be doing inside the company. During the first few weeks I asked each of my department heads what they did for marketing and the company. Titles are not the same as what your job is. This is a big idea.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 267