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

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

Yet two smart VC firms, Sigma and Matrix Partners, realized that somewhere in this mess there was value. And with all of that they had gone broke, out of business and into Chapter 11. Their guess was that they would find value in the high margin graphics business.

Silicon Valley 170

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

If you were a “with it” VC you needed to have a “Content&# or “Multimedia&# company in your portfolio to impress your limited partners – educational software companies, game companies, or anything that could be described as content and/or Multimedia. Not all VCs are equal.

Silicon Valley 120

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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. Write it down and keep it in a tradeshow handbook for those who will follow.

Silicon Valley 139

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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

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David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

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. For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. I have developed a founder curriculum on my blog.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 31, 2014

Creating a vertically oriented regional ecosystem is a pretty amazing accomplishment for any country or industry. But other critical hypotheses such as activities, resources, partners, channels needed testing offshore. Identify activities/resources/partners locally and then globally. while building their products in China.

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ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

Because we wanted to document every aspect of the process before partnering with new freelance writers. Choose to expand vertically or horizontally. A safe approach is to partner with contractors and freelancers to fulfill new business. Do a damn good job, and you’ll develop those deals into bigger accounts over time.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. So I have a question for you, Jason.

Cofounder 208

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

You make several first order approximations about your business model, distribution channels, demand creation, and customer acceptance. You leave the comfort of your existing job, convince a few partners to join you and you jump off the bridge together. No building, no money, no customers, no market? Employ customer development.

Silicon Valley 236

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David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

PEVCTech is partnering with Blue Future Partners to run the first large-scale survey of VCs’ technology stack. Johann Kratzer of Blue Future Partners , a fund of funds, observed, “The majority of the hundreds of funds we’ve diligenced rely predominantly on their relationships to source deals. Greylock Partners.

Private Equity 60

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Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

And you’d like me to do my talk on Customer Development and startups?” “No, we’re the other CIA.” Their VC firm, In-Q-Tel , has been in business for 10 years, and like most VC firms they have an annual event where they show off their new portfolio companies to their limited partners and other VC partners.

Silicon Valley 270

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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. For a small company this is like throwing your tradeshow money on the floor. Look for locations near entrances, food concessions, rest rooms, seminar rooms, or close to major exhibitors.

Silicon Valley 207

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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.

Silicon Valley 159

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Steve Blank

JUNE 18, 2009

When I ran Rocket Science our corporate partners were in Japan (Sega), Germany (Bertelsmann) and Italy (Mondadori) and some travel was unavoidable. My ideas about Customer Development started evolving around these concepts. Thanks to my wife for being a great partner. Document every step. It takes two.

Entrepreneur 334

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley RSS Customer Development 334

Steve Blank

AUGUST 10, 2009

They would also set the standard for the 20% carry for general partners. They would be one the first venture firms to organize their firm as a partnership rather than an SBIC or public company. Tommy Davis would go on to found the Mayfield Fund in 1969.

Silicon Valley 178

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

Hewlett’s partner Dave Packard wanted to get into the computer business.) We Changed Our Mind In 1966, 10 years after Hewlett’s memo, Hewlett Packard’s revenue and headcount had grown ten fold; $200 million and 11,000 employees – all from test and measurement equipment.

Silicon Valley 192

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Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

We were about to be partners in building a new product family. This requires deep customer and competitive knowledge. 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.

Silicon Valley 149

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news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

We already have some competitors in the vertical and while there is no point in trying to hide the actual idea, there are differences in the way we implement stuff that can get us an advantage over the competition. >> There are some other serious reasons why we dont want to go public right now. Now I work in the defense industry.

Stealth 41

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 17, 2009

Stanford had a Customer Development loop going on inside their own lab. The discoveries in tube and circuit research suggested new electronic intelligence and countermeasure techniques and systems; in turn the needs of the Applied Lab pushed tube and circuit development.

Silicon Valley 158

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Whitney Company by writing a personal check for $5M and hiring Benno Schmidt as the first partner (Schmidt turned Whitney’s description of “private adventure capital&# into the term “venture capital”). set up companies to do just that – find and formalize investments in new and emerging industries. In 1946 Jock Whitney started J.H.

Silicon Valley 183

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 29, 2009

The Group is worth noting for: Investing their own private money, Reid Dennis would found Institutional Venture Partners in 1974 First group specifically investing in the valley’s electronics industry SBIC Act of 1958 During the cold war the launch of Sputnik-1 by the Soviet Union in 1957 both traumatized and galvanized the United States.

Silicon Valley 130

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 8, 2009

Law firm partners often have anger management issues, but the thing about anger is that it is not always wrong to be angry — if somebody is angry at you because you did something wrong, then that anger is valid. Customer development isn’t just for [.] understands and groks Customer Development.

Silicon Valley 286

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steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Reply steveblank , on September 16, 2009 at 7:00 pm said: Greg, The Google Group “Lean Startup Circle&# at [link] is a wonderful repository of Customer Development/Lean Startup success and failure. It’s more reference material. Thus, these pages. I’ll add more as time goes on.

Software Review 110

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