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 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Since NewTV won’t be making the content, they will be licensing from and partnering with traditional entertainment producers. NewTV will depend on partners like telcos to distribute the content. After the crash, venture capital was scarce to non-existent. Will consumers want to watch short-form mobile entertainment?

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 19, 2010

Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures, Jason Calacanis , founder of Mahlo.com, and Mark Suster of GRP Partners, have all weighed in on the nature side – you’re born being an entrepreneur or your not. Mark Suster, Vivek Wadhwa and Patrick Chung, Partner at New Enterprises Associates will be debating. Taking Sides.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley Venture Capital China New York 235

Steve Blank

JANUARY 27, 2011

This startup search process is the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. A business model competition would emulate the “out of the building” experience of real entrepreneurs executing the customer development / business model / agile stack. And they are ready to share!

Business Model 285

Business Model Utah Intellectual Property Agile 285

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

Max and his partners interviewed and analyzed over 650 early-stage Internet startups. Filed under: Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital. He set up Blackbox.vc, a seed accelerator for technology startups (and one of the tour stops for entrepreneurs from around the world.) Congratulations.

Technical Cofounder 335

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 335

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Oh, and we had no installed customer base. 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.

Silicon Valley 332

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 332

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

The ultimate goal of Innofund is to get the startups far enough along in technology and market validation so other sources of financial capital (banks, VC’s, corporate partners) will invest. Most Venture Capitalists in China viewed the Innofund the same way most U.S. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

Programming 179

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 179

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. This methodology forces rapid hypothesis testing and Customer Development by getting out of the building while building the product. And since the rest of the slides were about Customer Development, I taught those.

Incubator 310

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 310

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

Greycroft is Alan’s venture capital firm that recently raised its second fund ($130 million) with offices in both New York and LA. We’re here for Greycroft’s CEO Summit – a gathering of the CEO’s of their portfolio companies with guest speakers covering topics including how to build your team, PR, customer development, etc.

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

Draw Your Ideas - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 16, 2010 I saw Jack Dorsey give this talk at The 99% Conference last month. The Yin and Yang of Product and Engineering - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , May 22, 2010 For a tech company, product and engineering are the heart and soul of the business.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. 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. It’s just a story about what happened to me. Are These Your Slides? He said, “Look again.”

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 261

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

Customer Development ) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. Customer Development) to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions.&# Reply One difference between VCs and Entrepreneurs « Lightspeed Venture Partners Blog , on April 20, 2009 at 7:06 am Said: [.]

Silicon Valley 309

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 309

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Yet two smart VC firms, Sigma and Matrix Partners, realized that somewhere in this mess there was value. Now with a new infusion of $8 million dollars of venture capital, SuperMac had been resurrected from the dead and was attempting to restart. And with all of that they had gone broke, out of business and into Chapter 11.

Silicon Valley 170

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 170

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Almost every private equity and venture capital investor now advertises that they have a platform to support their portfolio companies. Nick Kim , Crosscut’s Head of Platform, in his presentation at the 4th Annual VC Platform Summit, shared their Platform development methodology, which he viewed as an exercise in product development.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

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.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 223

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 6, 2015

She had so much insight to share that we broke the interview into two parts, 1) Corporate Venture Capital and more broadly, 2) How the Fortune 500 Can Buy, Invest and Partner with the Innovation Economy (coming soon). . I recently had a chance to interview Mari Joller , an expert on corporate innovation, on this topic.

Venture Capital 60

Venture Capital Balance Sheet Technical Review Portfolio 60

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

Having a teaching partner makes life a lot easier and the class improves. But it wasn’t until Ann Miura-Ko joined me as a teaching partner that this “teach the model not the plan” idea jelled. After Stanford, Ann joined Mike Maples’ Venture Capital firm Floodgate as a partner. Teaching Team.

Business Model 236

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 236

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 24, 2009

New strategic direction in companies with loyal customers have different consequences then when you had no customers Acquiring new customers are a lot more expensive that converting existing ones. 5) The customer’s needs don’t match your long term direction. Fire might be a strong word.

Customer 218

Customer Silicon Valley RSS California 218

The Next Web

DECEMBER 30, 2012

How to Build a Startup (EP245) by Steve Blank: You’ll learn the key steps of the Customer Development process. How to identify and engage the first customers for your product, and how to gather, evaluate and use their feedback to make your product, marketing and business model far stronger. Khan Academy.

Artificial Inteligence 156

Artificial Inteligence Founder Private Equity Ruby 156

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Storm Clouds - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 12, 2010 We have enjoyed an amazing run in the web startup and investing space over the past five or six years. Competing To Win Deals - A VC : Venture Capital and Technology , November 7, 2010 The venture capital business is highly competitive.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

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. The CDROM content business in the early 1990’s was one of the many of the long line of venture capital fads. Lots of ideas sound exciting because people are clueless.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 15, 2009

And one would become my mentor and partner in later companies.) Filed under: Customer Development , Family/Career , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , Tips for Startups « Am I a Founder? Two of my role models for my career were in this company. (And But this story is not about Convergent.

Entrepreneur 295

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 295

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

Private equity and venture capital investors are copying our sisters in the hedge fund and mutual fund world: we’re trying to automate more of our job. PEVCTech is partnering with Blue Future Partners to run the first large-scale survey of VCs’ technology stack. Google Ventures (GV). Greylock Partners.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

This post is about the rise of Chinese venture capital and how it helped build the countries entrepreneurial ecosystem. The Rise of Chinese Venture Capital. This helped the startups qualify for funding from banks and venture capital firms. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

Venture Capital 279

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 279

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

No one will say work less and go home and spend time with your partner and/or family. Filed under: Customer Development , ESL , Technology | Tagged: Steve Blank , Entrepreneurs , ESL « Convergent Technologies: War Story 1 – Selling with Sports Scores A Wilderness of Mirrors » 17 Responses Michael F.

Agile 269

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 269

David Teten

MARCH 28, 2012

Best Practices in Venture Capital Portfolio Company Value Creation. Lowering that failure rate would be highly impactful on venture capitalist returns, if we could figure out how to do it. Koen, Gyorgy, and Adham are all Columbia Business School MBA 2012 students and former consultants with McKinsey and BCG.

Portfolio 144

Portfolio Private Equity Venture Capital Early Stage 144

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

the teams spent the last two weeks learning what activities, resources and partners they would need to actually deliver their solution. And in these last two weeks of class, they learn what activities, resources and partners they’ll need to deliver their solution and derive what it costs to build the company to deliver it.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley San Diego Technical Review Incubator 120

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. Taking My Class.

Lean 120

Lean Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder Channel 120

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010

It’s the kind of thing you can repeat in an elevator, simple to understand , universally applicable , and, most importantly, doesn’t burden your tech team with a lot of custom development. Often times, that comes in the form of analytics, which is what a biz dev partner would want in order to check on the success of the deal.

Early Stage 138

Early Stage Developer Technical Review Widget 138

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

Secondly, they had an owned & operated (O&O) website – Google.com – and Overture had shut down GoTo.com at the request of their very profitable and large distribution partners. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

He was my role model at Convergent, mentor at Ardent and partner at E.piphany. Reply steveblank , on October 5, 2009 at 2:08 pm Said: Chris, Ben was the founding VP of Engineering at Ardent. Future posts will have some Ben stories. steve Chris Ryland , on October 5, 2009 at 12:08 pm Said: Anyway, looking forward to this series.

North Carolina 133

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 133

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

Or, if you can’t skip a round, when should you try to work extra hard to minimize dilution and when should you be prepared to take more dilution for the right partner/situation? Also, the benefit of raising a pre-seed from great partners probably outweighs the cost. Founders with limited experience.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

ReadWriteStart

JULY 21, 2011

When we were trying to raise money for E.piphany, my last startup, I was negotiating with a venture capital firm called Infinity Capital. But it was my eighth startup and my partner Ben was even more experienced. All we had were six slides, and I wanted a $10 million post-money valuation. We can do $9.99

Post-Money Valuation 122

Post-Money Valuation Valuation IPO Venture Capital 122

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

The positive effect of the tidal wave of press was as a door opener for us to raise money from corporate partners. Our VP of Business Development had no problems getting meetings and fund raising was easy. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2013

This post is about the rise of Chinese venture capital and how it helped build the countries entrepreneurial ecosystem. The Rise of Chinese Venture Capital. This helped the startups qualify for funding from banks and venture capital firms. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

Venture Capital 171

Venture Capital China Offshore SBIR 171

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

If you’re a venture capitalist … you have limited partners that give you money to invest on their behalf, and you’re responsible for giving them outsize returns. As an entrepreneur, you’re always fighting that external war whether that’s with partners or with investors. Nayeem : (Nods.)

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

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. What didn’t? Go to trade shows like it matters.

Silicon Valley 139

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 139