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. The functions of an early-stage board are pretty obvious and well understood: Providing introductions to customers, biz dev partners, recruits, the press, other investors, etc. In the Early Days.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Reply One difference between VCs and Entrepreneurs « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog , on April 20, 2009 at 7:06 am Said: [.] Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Blank: “Speed and Tempo” – Fearless Decision Making for Startups. Great startups have a tempo of 10x a large [.] Order Here.

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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? He said, “Look again.”

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

Union Square Ventures The next morning I got to spend time with Brad Burnham , partner at Union Square Ventures talking about their investment strategy and insights about web-based businesses. Bill and his partner Fred Wilson have invested in ~30 or so companies with 27 still active. Eric and I will be working on others.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

Also, there are a variety of strategies for “easing out&# gracefully such as finding an outsourcing vendor or new partner. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. I’ve watched new CEO’s brought into large existing consumer products companies to turn around a failing strategy. Fire might be a strong word.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

The culture and work ethic of Convergent had earned it the title “the Marine Corps of Silicon Valley”. He was my role model at Convergent, mentor at Ardent and partner at E.piphany. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. And so was his reputation for being verbally abusive to his direct reports.

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Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

So I got out out of the building to meet and understand our customers and distribution partners. I remember after a month or two of talking to 14-22 year old male gamers (our potential target market,) I realized that for the first time in my career I had no emotional connection to my customers or channel partners.

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Austin Startup

JUNE 27, 2017

Austin-Based Venture Capital Firms There are a eleven venture capital firms based in Austin that are actively investing today, six of which are first funds. VC Firms Actively investing in Austin Companies Finally, there are a group of venture capital firms that are not based in Austin that are active investors here.

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David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

I’ve been a traditional equity VC for 8 years, and I’m now researching new business models in venture capital. RBI normally requires founders to pay back their investors with a fixed percentage of revenue until they have finished providing the investor with a fixed return on capital, which they agree upon in advance.

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Version One Ventures

OCTOBER 17, 2018

And we also look at companies that are creating the best product for a specific vertical – including bio/healthcare and other emerging tech. From Fund I and now to Fund III, we have been able to serve as an important bridge between Silicon Valley and other tech ecosystems. It is a true honor to be a partner of yours!

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

Or at times an even more honest answer, “My senior partners say this is the only way to do it.” Look at the early Silicon Valley companies – Homebrew Club =>PCs. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Why change something that has worked so well over the last three decades?” Order Here.

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Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. These two posts were amazing.

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ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 6, 2011

Drawing on traditions in the Latin American community, Julie and her partner are bringing to market a very specific product to address a very specific pain, and I believe she can build a very successful e-commerce business based on this idea.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You leave the comfort of your existing job, convince a few partners to join you and you jump off the bridge together. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. Great, sign me up.

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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.” So I gave my “ The Secret History of Silicon Valley ” talk as the keynote to the CIA’s venture capital conference. So here it is in five parts.

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Austin Startup

DECEMBER 20, 2020

Follow Amber on Twitter @amberallen_aa #Gaming #Esports #VirtualReality #AugmentedReality #MixedReality #AmbersReality Andy Tryba recently launched a new company with Donald Park from Vista Equity, called Ionic Partners, after almost a decade running companies for Joe Liemandt.

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Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

Partners Booths While your booth may be small, some of your potential or existing partners may have much larger ones, in much more visible locations. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. For a small company this is like throwing your tradeshow money on the floor. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

Hewlett’s partner Dave Packard wanted to get into the computer business.) And venture capital and entrepreneurship has made life even tougher for the modern corporation. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. It was priced at $22,000 – equivalent to about $140,000 in 2009 dollars.

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Cracking the Code

JANUARY 19, 2016

Even in 2006, when I joined Bessemer Venture Partners, there was still a lot of skepticism in the Silicon Valley around SaaS (one of my first blog post in 2006 was titled: “W hy I disagree with Tony Zingale — CEO of Mercury Interactive — on the future of SaaS "). Mobile will drive new use cases.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Did the partner have a good or bad day, etc. We were able to raise a Seed round from Bessemer Venture Partners on a powerpoint idea, and never found the repeatable customer model. But we had to keep driving for a year before deciding to return half the capital we raised and shutting down. Did the VC’s like your team ?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

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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Austin Startup

AUGUST 7, 2017

Instead of arguing why Dallas might be better than Houston we should be talking about how we can work together to get our share of venture capital dollars more in line with our population size and startup activity by unlocking additional capital sources that have been previously inaccessible to tech. It’s not Silicon Valley.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

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’ve been on the side of your potential partners, and I know that often too much ‘persistence’ is offputting. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

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Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Our “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” story played great in Silicon Valley, they ate it up in Hollywood, and the business press tripped over themselves to talk to us. The positive effect of the tidal wave of press was as a door opener for us to raise money from corporate partners. Order Here. Now In Print!

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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.) You’re Hired, You’re Fired. Driving across the U.S. I was stunned.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2009

Funded by military contracts, these 1950′s microwave tube startups would help build Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial culture and environment. Unlike the other Stanford tube spinouts which were funded with military contracts, Watkins-Johnson would be one of the first venture capital funded companies in the valley.

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Reid Hoffman

SEPTEMBER 8, 2020

One of the reasons that Silicon Valley has been so successful at building blitzscaling companies is its “fail fast” mantra, which encourages entrepreneurs to determine whether or not their startup can achieve product-market fit as early in the company’s lifecycle as possible. WHAT LEADS TO PIVOTS? Not all pivots are created equal.

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Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Meanwhile my partner was in heaven working with his newly hired group of game designers directing and producing our first games. No, not really, but my partner owns the studio and tells me it’s spectacular and everyone will love it. Go spend some time outside the building talking to potential distribution partners. Order Here.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

Convergent Technologies When I was in my 20’s I worked at Convergent Technologies , a company that was proud to be known as the “Marine Corps of Silicon Valley.” And one would become my mentor and partner in later companies.) Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. sigh* It’s a sad thing.

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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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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

This is the second of three posts about the rise of “risk capital” and how it came to be associated with what became Silicon Valley. ———————– The First Valley IPO’s Silicon Valley first caught the eyes of east coast investors in the late 1950’s when the valleys first three IPO’s happened: Varian in 1956, Hewlett Packard in 1957, and Ampex in 1958.

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Both Sides of the Table

JANUARY 18, 2011

I first met the founder of Pose, Dustin Rosen , when he was a junior person with an LA-based venture capital firm called The Mail Room Fund. I asked him to present to my partners. Jeff was obsessed with Instagram at that time as nearly every Silicon Valley VC seemed to be (and still is). Pose is no different.

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www.chubbybrain.com

SEPTEMBER 28, 2011

If you are an entrepreneur seeking funding, try our free Funding Recommendation Engine to identify a list of angels, venture capital and state grant programs that best match your business. At the end, I asked myself what are the most critical resources I need to be successful and the answer was partners and developers.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

We were about to be partners in building a new product family. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. The change in his demeanor – from trying to kill me – to laughing, as it dawned on him where I was going, could only be described as hysterical relief. “40%?” Yes, yes and yes. Order Here.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2009

In hindsight this list looks pretty organized but in reality we made it up as we went along, accompanied with all the husband and wife struggles of being married and trying to raise a family in Silicon Valley. Most Silicon Valley startups have great policies for having your dog at work but not your kids.) Long vacations.

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Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 13, 2020

It reminds me of living in Silicon Valley 10 years ago when so many foundational SaaS companies were started. Cloud Entrepreneurs: Embracing the “Silicon Valley State of Mind" Accel has been a big believer in cloud since the early days of this secular shift. Big milestones for the old continent!

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

Evangelos has spent the last 15 years as a Venture Capitalist, first at Apax Partners and later at Trident Capital. During the last three years he’s worked with over 100 companies, many of which established Innovation Outposts in Silicon Valley. Venture capital firms, as we know them only date back to the 1970s.)

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