Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

and the emergence of new industries, markets and customers. These growing national companies were challenged to figure out how to organize an organization of increased complexity that resulted from their large size, and geographic scale as well as their horizontal and vertical integration.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Venture Capital United States Technical Review 120

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 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

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.) Sales people cost money, and when they’re not bringing in revenue, their wandering in the woods is time consuming, cash-draining and demoralizing.

Lean 250

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 6, 2014

When you first start your company and raise initial venture capital your board probably consists of 1-3 founders and 1-2 VCs. I’m going through this situation now with the first investment that I ever made as a VC in Invoca – (Inbound voice call), a SaaS marketing automation company. how & when to raise capital.

Technical Review 325

Technical Review Early Stage Software Review Los Angeles 325

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

The Equity Kicker

NOVEMBER 8, 2012

Then before long all dentists will be using a system like this and an entire mini-vertical will have been transformed. The second vertical to go was hearing aids where I’ve heard up to 90% of high end hearing aids are now 3D printed. A company called Sirona sells the machines dentists use to 3D print crowns.

Vertical 142

Vertical Audio Venture Capital Channel 142

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 3, 2011

In How To Defend Your Dream Against All Odds , Alex and I explore the company's journey to $200 Million in revenue, while their VCs wrote them off. Zoho is already over $100 million in revenue and is seeing tremendous traction. In that case, the verticals of choice could be manufacturing, wholesale and retail.

North Carolina 116

North Carolina San Diego Entrepreneur Balance Sheet 116

Hearpreneur

FEBRUARY 19, 2023

#2- Competitive Photo Credit: Denise Hemke Over the past decade, entrepreneurship has become huge that the market has become quite saturated. The market is super competitive and if you don't offer what the consumer needs, you won't stand a chance. Thanks to Matt Bowman, Thrive Internet Marketing Agency ! #9-

Artificial Inteligence 108

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Entrepreneur Global 108

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers? And without revenue how do we know if we achieved product/market fit to exit Customer Validation?” They’re putting money into web services/business – most without early revenue.

Customer Development 223

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 223

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. A true marketplace needs natural pull on both the consumer and supplier side of the market. Friction of Supplier Sign-Up.

Aggregator 101

Aggregator Marketing Software Review North America 101

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 8, 2019

Throughout that development process the marketing team kept pressing, leading the company to 50,000 influencers over the Summer, which made us the largest warm contact influencer network in the market. I knew all the time I’m not that type of person to give in ever, regardless of difficult situations in life and in business.

Entrepreneur 120

Entrepreneur Technical Review Vertical Las Vegas 120

VC Cafe

MAY 18, 2022

After a 13 year bull market run, anywhere you look in the stock market these days, it’s mostly RED. The tech companies that have been stock market darlings, breaking new records, are struggling, many missing analysts expectations. And the markets reacted to all of these. market visualisation in May 2022.

Term Sheet 190

Term Sheet Startup Valuation Ukraine 190

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 123

Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 123

Austin Startup

AUGUST 7, 2017

Texas has produced world-changing startups in the past such as Dell Software , National Instruments and Whole Foods Market but all of those were founded more than 30 years ago. Some businesses can service all four cities with a single distribution hub in one of the cities, making it a unique market for launching new businesses.

Texas 97

Texas San Antonio Houston Dallas 97

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 15, 2017

Don’t take my word for it – in the roundup of venture capital predictions for 2017 , I found it to be the top recurring theme. Many large companies will be built (Michael Wolfe, Point Nine Capital). Venture Capital investments in AI, Europe 2016 (Source: Dealroom ). Billion in VC funding.

Artificial Inteligence 122

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Startup 122

VC Cafe

NOVEMBER 7, 2022

Generative AI will really become magic when it moves from 'playful' to 'useful' – we will use multiple generative AI tools at work in the future, like we use grammarly and canned responses today… AI will become more vertical, and specific per role — Eze Vidra (@ediggs) November 5, 2022.

Generative AI 195

Generative AI Artificial Inteligence API Vertical 195

Steve Blank

MAY 17, 2022

An AI leverages deep natural language processing, text analysis, and computational linguistics to gain insight into customer opinion, understanding of consumer sentiment , and measuring the impact of marketing strategies. Examples: Brand24 , MonkeyLearn. What Does this Mean for Businesses? Hang on to your seat. AI Hardware for the Edge.

Artificial Inteligence 419

Artificial Inteligence Software Review Algorithm Technical Review 419

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 126

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 126

Cracking the Code

MARCH 28, 2022

Before answering this, let’s take a look at what happened in the global software and cloud market over the last year. Before answering this, let’s take a look at what happened in the global software and cloud market over the last year. of market capitalization. This world of giants is dominated by one colossus: Microsoft.

Global 62

Global Europe Software Review 62

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. Did the VC’s like your team ? Did the partner have a good or bad day, etc.

Customer Development 264

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

Customer Development 228

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 228

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

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

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.

Silicon Valley 263

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

View from Seed

MARCH 29, 2018

We wanted to learn more about the nuanced industry market forces before applying the same hands-on investing model we do with tech startups in other verticals. The venture capital market in this category is fairly concentrated among series A and expansion-stage funds that prefer to invest in companies with substantial revenue.

Vertical 120

Vertical Stealth Portfolio Seed Capital 120

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

This curriculum is based on the various questions entrepreneurs have asked me over these 64 sessions, spanning financing, positioning, customer acquisition, marketing, sales, channel, and various other early stage, startup-related issues. John already has a couple of customers, and needs about 50 customers to get to $1M in annual revenue.

Vertical 115

Vertical Web San Francisco Entrepreneur 115

Seeing Both Sides

AUGUST 16, 2012

Last week, I wrote about Akamai , a company with strong network effects that successfully transitioned from a single product to build a platform that garners over a billion dollars in revenue and is now a core part of the Internet’s fabric. Expedia grew to account for roughly one third of the company’s revenues. Think about that.

Part-Time VPE 54

Part-Time VPE Software Review Costa Rica Technical Review 54

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. 4) You don’t see any revenue gain past three years. But at times it’s why entrepreneurs can sink their own companies.

Customer 201

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 201

Haystack

NOVEMBER 12, 2018

By all accounts, the Utah-HQ’d company did everything the right way, was an overnight success 16 years in the making, and only raised venture capital as a growth company after years of bootstrapping. Of course, SAP or others could’ve made a run at Qualtrics earlier, and who knows – maybe folks had tried and failed.

Acquisition 105

Acquisition Utah IPO Venture Capital 105

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 18, 2010

What a pleasure that I got to spend an hour talking with both Om Malik (whom I’ve always respected his views) and Paul Jozefak , a venture capital partner at Neuhaus Partners in Germany (and formerly the head of Europe for SAP Ventures). The strategy of GigaOm and where they differentiate in the market.

Venture Capital 225

Venture Capital Non-Compete Vertical Europe 225

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 14, 2021

Fast forward to today; since we founded Taxfyle in 2015, it has earned the support and investment of numerous venture capitalists and is one of the fastest-growing companies in any sector in the U.S. 5000 list , which lists private American companies based on three-year revenue growth between 2016 and 2019. Magazine’ Inc.

CPA 134

CPA Founder Vertical Cofounder 134

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 241

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 241

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. A year goes by, you miss your revenue plan, and you’ve burned through your first VP of Sales. What happened?

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 133

The Equity Kicker

MAY 9, 2016

I just read Nicolas Colin’s Brief History of the World (of Venture Capital). We can generalise this into a blueprint for ecosystems generally: Find a vertical market where there is a comparative advantage – Silicon Valley started with military technology, in London fintech and ecommerce are good candidates.

Silicon Valley 60

Silicon Valley Venture Capital eCommerce Startup 60

Start Up Blog

JANUARY 28, 2015

Read here, ‘make it available to the corporate market to buy’ Just like a strong social media voice became an asset, expect personal data trails to have as much or more value in the coming years. We are also seeing lots of backwards and forwards vertical integration. Google becoming an Auto Industry player.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Startup Australia Artificial Inteligence 48

Start Up Blog

JANUARY 5, 2015

Read here, ‘make it available to the corporate market to buy’ Just like a strong social media voice became an asset, expect personal data trails to have as much or more value in the coming years. We are also seeing lots of backwards and forwards vertical integration. Google becoming an Auto Industry player.

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Startup Australia Artificial Inteligence 48

techcrunch.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2010

Researchers polled experts in lending, mezzanine capital, private equity, venture capital and private businesses themselves. Not a big shock, but things don’t look pretty, especially in the venture capital world. 41% of them feel that they qualify for venture capital funding. Add to this that 72.7%

Venture Capital 62

Venture Capital Technical Review Sweat Equity Valuation 62

Mucker Lab

DECEMBER 2, 2015

Most brilliant “Internet of Things” ideas are quicksand for capital unless you have the branding, vertical integration and customer lock-in that Apple achieved. 20 years ago, a majority of “Sand Hill” venture capital went into enterprise-focused startups. The iPod model will separate IoT platforms from fads.

Vertical 60

Vertical Widget Distribution China 60