Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

They knew the technology trendsetters in their fields and got us in front of them. In short order they learned how to transition from being customers on the receiving end of a sales pitch to giving one. Back in the 1960’s and 70’s no sane MBA’s would work for a Silicon Valley startup.) Order Here. Now In Print!

Engineer 224

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 224

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. He continued: “I’d like to convince my boss so our company can be your first customer.”

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 261

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made 2,000 customer calls in 8 weeks , turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. 19 of the 21 teams are moving forward in commercializing their technology. We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. billion U.S.

Incubator 310

Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 310

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

to make sense of the unstructured feedback received from customers. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building. Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. Now In Print!

Customer Development 129

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 129

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.&# Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. In a startup it doesn’t matter if you’re 100% right 100% of the time.

Silicon Valley 309

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 145

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 145

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 11, 2010

The Customer Development process is the way startups quickly iterate and test each element of their business model , reducing customer and market risk. The first step of Customer Development is called Customer Discovery. outside the building and test them in front of customers.

Burn Rate 252

Burn Rate Silicon Valley Marketing Boston 252

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

But for the last decade “innovation” in Chinese software meant something different than it did in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Of course “copy” is too strong a word. Fear of Failure.

China 328

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 328

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Posted on September 14, 2009 by steveblank Over the last 30 years Wall Street’s appetite for technology stocks have changed radically – swinging between unbridled enthusiasm to believing they’re all toxic. Large companies were acquiring technology startups just to get in the game at the same absurd prices.

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

SoCal CTO

JANUARY 5, 2011

Some really great stuff in 2010 that aims to help startups around product, technology, business models, etc. First Principles. Steve Blank , January 25, 2010 10 Tips for Adding Game Mechanics to a Non-Gaming Service - ReadWriteStart , September 21, 2010 Startups & VCs: Learn How to Design, Market, & Eat Your Own. -

Silicon Valley 378

Silicon Valley Startup Term Sheet Venture Capital 378

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

We’re standing 15 air miles away from the epicenter of technology innovation. I’ve seen the Valley grow from Sunnyvale to Santa Clara to today where it stretches from San Jose to South of Market in San Francisco. I’ve watched the Valley go from Microwave Valley – to Defense Valley – to Silicon Valley to Internet Valley.

Restful 249

Restful Silicon Valley San Jose Puerto Rico 249

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Hitting “burnout” changed the trajectory of both ends of my career in Silicon Valley. Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. Recovery That weekend I left the Valley and drove along the coast from San Francisco to Monterey. The bill had come due.

Silicon Valley 206

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 206

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

Two years out of the Air Force, serendipity (which would be my lifelong form of career planning) found me in Silicon Valley working for my first company: ESL. If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. Fred Terman Sent Us In 1953 the U.S.

Silicon Valley 201

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 201

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

I’ve spent the last week in Santiago, a guest of Professor Cristóbal García at the Catholic University of Chile as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program. Entrepreneurship and innovation in what I call “Chilecon Valley” is being talked about continually here. Teaching in Chile. Valaparaiso houses.

Chile 241

Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 241

Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

corporation – starting a new technology division bringing disruptive technology to market at General Electric. One of GE’s new divisions – GE’s Energy Storage – has been given the charter to bring an entirely new battery technology to market. He’s as good as any startup CEO in Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley 239

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 239

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

At some point in my career as I began to formulate thoughts about mission and intent, I started to think about the broader role of marketing in a growing technology company. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. on April 10, 2009 at 6:58 am Said: Amazing blog. The Sharp End of the Stick? It became [.]

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

The previous post described how China built its science and technology infrastructure. This post is about the how the Chinese government engineered technology clusters. Torch has four major parts: Innovation Clusters , Technology Business Incubators (TBIs), Seed Funding (Innofund) and Venture Guiding Fund. Innovation Clusters.

Programming 179

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 179

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

Customer Development/Lean Startups In hindsight startups and the venture capital community left out the most important first step any startup ought to be doing – hypothesis testing in front of customers- from day one. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot. Berkeley and at Stanford.

Silicon Valley 208

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 208

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. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.

Video 190

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 190

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

However, you will be dealing with almost daily change, (new customer feedback/insights from a Customer Development process and technical roadblocks ,) as the company searches for a repeatable and scalable business model. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. You’re not joining a big company.

Cofounder 230

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 230

Steve Blank

MAY 29, 2011

But he left to work on what he told me he came to do - crack the innovation code of Silicon Valley and share it with the rest of the world. He set up Blackbox.vc, a seed accelerator for technology startups (and one of the tour stops for entrepreneurs from around the world.) Max dropped out of Stanford after his first quarter.

Technical Cofounder 335

Technical Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 335

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

In class I teased Todd that while the Navy had me present my Secret History of Silicon Valley talk in front of 4,000 cadets at the Naval Post Graduate School , I had yet to hear from the Air Force Academy. In the first year, they had developed a proof of concept around the Xbox Kinect – and Ryan had high hopes for the future.

Lean 271

Lean Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 271

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

The percentage of marketing departments to live in the ivory tower rather than get out to meet with customers has got to be staggeringly high. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print! Blog at WordPress.com.

Silicon Valley 213

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 213

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

But for the last decade “innovation” in Chinese software meant something different than it did in Silicon Valley. Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about Silicon Valley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Of course “copy” is too strong a word. Fear of Failure.

China 220

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 220

Steve Blank

APRIL 19, 2010

Thirty plus years ago when I came to Silicon Valley Asian’s and Indian’s in high technology were a small minority and almost none were running companies or in venture capital. Today Silicon Valley, New York and Boston, are magnets for entrepreneurs in the U.S. Entrepreneurs are born not made.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley Venture Capital China New York 235

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.

North Carolina 133

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 133

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2021

This was followed by an 8-minute slide presentation describing their customer discovery journey over the 10 weeks. While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas , (videos here ), Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique. Stay tuned. He runs H4X Labs.

Lean 417

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Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Our firm has a portfolio of companies across a broad range of markets and the way we look at it is pretty simple – the deals fall into two types: those with customer/market risk and those with invention risk.” Markets with Customer/Market Risk are those where the unknown is whether customers will adopt the product.

Vertical 167

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Our friends who run the state park surrounding our ranch will join all of us for Thanksgiving dinner. Order Here. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 156

Silicon Valley Turkey United States RSS 156

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

As the emeritus Chief Technology Officer of the United States, he still connects government and Silicon Valley. Bill Gross founded Idealab in 1996, making it the longest-running technology incubator alive today. Todd Park convened the team that saved Obamacare.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO. Yet when I talked to my venture capital friends, they said, “Well, that’s just how startups work. Order Here.

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 133

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

All teams raised their hands and screamed: we hundreds of angels and dozens of VCs, all of them say they will only fund deals with prototypes, beta customers, first revenue and executive teams all in place, and they say it will be 2 years from now because their coffers are out of cash and LPs in default. Yeah, I said. Bootstrap for years!

Vertical 159

Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 159

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

We had been attempting to compete by their rules with the same types of technology messages. Up until now all the graphics board companies supplied “technology”, and it was up to the customers to figure out which of these arcane specs was best for their business. Very much in addition to the text.

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 161

Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

At a university business plan competition, for the first time they can swim in the sea of expertise that we/I take for granted in the middle of Silicon Valley. I love business plan competitions (and with my valley-centric bias, I think Berkeley and Stanford have two of the best.) bplan document is just that. Order Here.

Business Plan 160

Business Plan Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital 160

Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. Facts are the rock on which you build your strategy and tactics In a startup second-hand facts are almost as useless as opinions. I’ve learned so much! Thanks for sharing! Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!

Silicon Valley 150

Silicon Valley Customer RSS Philippines 150

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. Every generation of new technology seems to find a willing audience in naïve journalists and eager readers.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122