VC Cafe

NOVEMBER 25, 2019

In last week’s The Economist, the gist of the lead story is that entertainment – an industry that has been associated with flailing newspaper subscriptions and, relatedly, a sector struggling given the rise of technology – is in fact, the “new oil” for the contemporary epoch.

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Steve Blank

JANUARY 6, 2011

And with the 30-year statute of limitations now passed, stories about who I worked for (and the names of agencies.). I orignally wrote it with four goals in mind: First, to explain to my kids, then just graduating from High School, stories about their dad’s life when he was their age.

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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.) It was my ex boss from Convergent Technologies, “Steve we’ve all just resigned from Convergent and we’re starting a new company.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

As we were out looking for our Series B round, our company had gotten the attention of “name of big VC firm here” who wanted a play in enterprise software. Never Get Even, Get Ahead With a set of orders from brand name customers, we had growing confidence that we had achieved product/market fit. Are These Your Slides?

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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. . When I met my now-wife, I realized that any technology that can find me a spouse is a killer app. I previously posted a detailed presentation with sales technology tools useful for B2B sales.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

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

Silicon Valley 127

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

The first hint lies in its name; this is a product development model, not a marketing model, not a sales hiring model, not a customer acquisition model, not even a financing model (and we’ll also find that in most cases it’s even a poor model to use to develop a product.) So what’s wrong the product development model?

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

In building ESL Perry made a conscious choice to emulate Hewlett Packard (then considered the “gold standard” of a great technology company.) Filed under: ESL , Secret History of Silicon Valley , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Bill Perry , ESL , Signals Intelligence , Cold War « Startup Ethics: Albatross or Essential?

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

I didn’t recognize the behavior at the time, but anyone who loves technology and gadgets has at one time or another has bought a technology toy – USB memory sticks, iPod Shuffles, umbrellas with LED lights, alarm clocks that talked, Flip Video Cameras, etc. You may know it by its final name. The Novelty effect?

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

This year, marketing need to provide sales with 40,000 active and accepted leads, company and product name recognition over 65% in our target market, and five positive product reviews per quarter. We will accomplish this through demand-creation activities (advertising, PR, tradeshows, seminars, web sites, etc.), The Sharp End of the Stick?

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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.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. That meant that our boards were packaged in boxes sold to retailers and were displayed on shelves in their computer stores.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

Steve my name is Donald xx, and I’m the head of external affairs of the CIA’s venture capital firm and we’d like you to keynote our conference.” Except at this VC conference, 100 or so of the 300 attendees had badges that had their first name and only the last initial of their last name.

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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. Play spooky music here.

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cdixon.org

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

But it’s probably wise to be more secretive in some vertical markets: [link]. and an investor, has a great blog on entrepreneurship and venture capital. Then again, there’s a difference between publishing a description of the idea on your website and simply announcing a name and perhaps a tag line. link] Nivi.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

The remaining company kept the Hewlett Packard name and focussed on computers. After failing dismally at making disposable digital cameras in 2003 Pure Digital Technologies reinvented their company in 2007 to make the Flip line of camcorders. Agilent is a $5.8 billion dollar test and measurement company.

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The Next Web

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Founded in 2008, Shanghai-based CooTek is the company behind TouchPal X Keyboard and TouchPal Contacts , which lets you type contact names directly on your smartphone’s dial pad. It makes use of sentence and word gesture technology, as well as contextual prediction, touting to save users about 60 percent keystrokes.

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Austin Startup

SEPTEMBER 19, 2017

This is useful for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is to help you navigate the right channels in your vertical and open doors to potential customers. And founding teams with limited operational backgrounds in their vertical or domain will create doubt. (An Never discount the power of a warm intro.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

Stanford’s research on the earth’s ionosphere would lead to meteor-burst communication systems and Over the Horizon Radar used by the NSA and CIA to detect Soviet and Chinese missile tests and ultimately to the research that made Stealth technologies possible. Instead of rebuilding its WWII forces, the U.S.

Silicon Valley 173

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Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

And that he might want to think about aligning all his video and Internet products under that name. As we were plotting marketing strategy, I mentioned that the phrase “Speaking to the Big Dogs” might end up as his corporate brand.

Silicon Valley 201

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 1, 2009

Where are the charitable foundations, business schools and hospitals named after him? Sure one guy got kicked out – which could have been avoided if he ran company well enough to keep financial control – and the other hung in there and got institutions named after him. Yet you never hear who built that company. Who was he?

Silicon Valley 179

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Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

In previous companies I could talk about technology details and how the product features could solve a customers problem. Hollywood Meets Silicon Valley was an Oxymoron A key premise of our new company was that our video compression and authoring technology would revolutionize how games were made and played.

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2009

If you present slides privately, assume a high probability that your competitors will acquire them Do not put your trade secrets, proprietary algorithms, patentable technology, secret sauce, etc. I just found out that someone stole my idea today and also is using my name with “The&# in front of it. on presentation slides – ever.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

An existing market is one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.”

Silicon Valley 206

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

Perhaps you can determine whether a product is new by asking customers to name the competition. If they can’t name anything, you’ve got a new product that you can position in a new market (or in non-new market by comparing your product to substitutes (there are no direct competitors in this case)). It was a new product.

Customer Development 220

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Steve Blank

MAY 21, 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 203

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

As its name should communicate, the Customer Development model focuses on developing customers for the product or service your startup is building. These steps mesh seamlessly and support a startup’s ongoing product development activities. Each step results in specific deliverables.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 253

Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

Every successful technology company has repeatedly reinvented itself. I’m sure its customers wonder, “Why is an organic grocer named RydeOn?”. In the world of technology companies, a pivot generally involves changing the product in a substantive way that changes how the company engages with its customers.

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Austin Startup

AUGUST 7, 2017

Texas is the most promising technology investment opportunity in the United States and Capital Factory is going to turbocharge it. What will it take for Texas to produce startups of that kind of scale and impact in technology, food, retail, entertainment, energy, education, real estate, transportation and health?

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

It was adopted by the consumer packaged goods industry in the 1950s and spread to the technology business in the last quarter of the twentieth century. My pet name for the process is “Ortho.&# It has become an integral part of startup culture. These are the markets for continuous innovations of all stripes. Ortho kills.

Silicon Valley 269

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

By the late 1930′s when HP started, a small group (measured in hundreds) of engineers who made radio tubes were building the valleys’ ecosystem for electronics manufacturing, product engineering and technology management. And since there was no Venture Capital in the 1950′s/’60′s where was the money coming from?

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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. Chris Rust, Clear Ventures). Many large companies will be built (Michael Wolfe, Point Nine Capital). Venture Capital investments in AI, Europe 2016 (Source: Dealroom ).

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Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Startup 122

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. Zilog produced one of the first 8-bit microprocessors , the Z-80 (competing at the time with Intel’s 8080 , Motorola 6800, and MOS Technology 6502.) Burnout can turn productive employees into emotional zombies and destroy careers.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

If you’re a startup raising money or just want to see your name online, there’s not a better blog on the web. Reading this TechCrunch post made me remember the first time I saw someone confront a worldview they didn’t expect. Discovering that your worldview is wrong or mistaken can be a life-changing event.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

A large number of these customers had mailed back their registration cards (this was pre-Internet) with their names, phone numbers, job titles, etc. All with names, addresses, phone numbers, job titles; all wonderful data longing for human contact. This was a company that had sold 15,000 graphics boards and monitors to consumers.

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Haystack

JANUARY 2, 2020

A topic that’s been on my mind a lot in 2019 is “time diversity” in venture capital funds. I can name a few 4-year funds on one hand. These are firms that have returned capital at scale. used to be around 5 years. Today, it’s rare to find a 5-year fund. I know of one.

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This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 31, 2021

They’re popping up in a variety of different verticals, led by one called On Deck and they’re causing a lot of people to ask the question if a very specific and highly relevant continuing professional education and network is buyable in smaller chunks off the shelf… Is college worth it? But what about the network?

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