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. Of all the Chinese government programs, the Torch Program is the one program that kick-started Chinese high-tech innovation and startups. Innovation Clusters.

Programming 287

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 287

Steve Blank

AUGUST 21, 2013

In the real world a big pivot in life sciences far down the road of development is a very bad sign due to huge sunk costs. Other pivots involved moving from a platform technology to become a product supplier, moving from a therapeutic drug to a diagnostic or moving from a device that required a PMA to one that required a 510(k).

SBIR 321

SBIR Technical Review Lean Startup 321

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

What does your Chief Technology Officer do all day? Often times, it seems like people are thinking its synonymous with "that guy who gets paid to sit in the corner and think technical deep thoughts" or "that guy who gets to swoop in a rearrange my project at the last minute on a whim." But along the way, something strange happened.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Dino Vendetti a VC at Bay Partners, moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Over the years Dino and I brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Part 3: Engineering a Regional Tech Cluster. Tech investing is risky. ——-.

Early Stage 295

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 295

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

In my 21 years as an entrepreneur, I would come up for air once a month to religiously read the Harvard Business Review. It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with. ” Groucho Marx.

Technical Review 223

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 223

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

luck… and as one of Steve Blank’s posts today mentioned, you can’t test hypotheses from within your building.

Customer Development 129

Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 129

Steve Blank

MARCH 12, 2014

Therefore we needed them to think and learn about two parts of a startup; 1) ideation - how to create new ideas and 2) customer development – how do they test the validity of their idea (is it the right product, customer, channel, pricing, etc.). Hawken students practicing Customer Discovery in a mall.

Lean 335

Lean Customer Development Startup Silicon Valley 335

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. The United States is now a debtor nation to China and that the bill is about to come due. These are probably the two sites where I've posted the most reviews. One out of ten of Americans are out of work.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 21, 2013

In the talk I reviewed the basic components of the Lean Startup and described how we teach it. 15:22 NASA and Technology Readiness Level (TRL). Startup Tools here Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Teaching , Venture Capital. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching Venture Capital'

Video 288

Video Oakland Lean Venture Capital 288

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2012

Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or Customer Development there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. I want to tell you a story about how a team pivoted and succeeded by synchronizing product and customer development. I explained how we’d manage technical risks.

San Jose 261

San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 261

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. What started as a technical problem actually turned out to be a human and process problem. We didnt even practice TDD across our whole team.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

In 2007, I graduated United States Air Force Academy as a computer engineer and entered the Air Force’s acquisition corps , excited and confident about my ability to bring technology to bear for our airmen. I was their technical man on the inside – making sure big defense contractors delivered on their promises.

Lean 271

Lean Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 271

Steve Blank

AUGUST 29, 2011

More than 90% of startups fail, due primarily to self-destruction rather than competition. After 50 years of technology entrepreneurship it’s still an art. 74% of high growth Internet startups fail due to premature scaling. Simply put, while we now have some good theory , we just are not very good at creating startups yet.

Software Review 300

Software Review Early Stage Technical Review Startup 300

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 30, 2012

The class teaches founders how to dramatically reduce their failure rate through the combination of business model design, customer development and agile development using the Startup Owners Manual. More importantly, it makes no demands of you to stand and deliver your weekly customer development progress in front of your peers.

Startup 335

Startup Lean Incubator Business Model 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. There is a earlier phase *prior to Vacuum Tubes* in Santa Clara Valley tech history as well involving Federal Telegraph and “Federal-Poulsen Arc Converter&# radio transmitter. Who would have known?

Silicon Valley 302

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 302

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

This is a customer development problem. By the end of this article, you should have a better understanding of how to develop new products or tweak your existing offerings by working with existing or prospective customers to incorporate their feedback to create viable solutions to their problems, and clearly communicate their value.

Customer Development 126

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

some came from our customer service, some were to improve performance / scalability from tech ops, some were bug fixes, etc.) They attended property management association meetings in Oregon outside of the technology echo chamber of California to get a sense for people’s daily problems. I rarely see the tech team do this.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

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. Of all the Chinese government programs, the Torch Program is the one program that kick-started Chinese high-tech innovation and startups. Innovation Clusters.

Programming 179

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 179

Steve Blank

JANUARY 30, 2013

Since there weren’t corporate resource for further evaluation, (one of our programs’ constraints was not to create new permanent infrastructures for implementation,) we had no choice but to assign the idea to a business unit and ask them to perform due diligence the best they could. (By

Programming 273

Programming Technical Review Incubator Intellectual Property 273

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. Tech acquisitions went crazy at the same time the IPO market did. 3) invest in and take equity stakes in exchange for capital.

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Such direct experiences allows one to test critical “leap-of-faith” assumptions about what customers like and dislike. Customer development (the understanding of customer needs) must be married to agile development (a process which drives waste out of product development).

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? Let’s start with how much value you think you’ll create for your customer if they use your product in terms of hours saved, costs avoided, extra sales, better conversion rates or whatever.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

Once he was on board, I sat down with him on a weekly basis to review our progress with our list of software vendors. Reply Daily Review #21 | The Queue Blog , on November 9, 2009 at 8:06 pm Said: [.] Think Different I still remember the day I discovered that I thought about progress differently than other people.

Silicon Valley 332

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 332

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 23, 2010

Fairchild, the first successful semiconductor company in the valley, was founded on two technical innovations: manufacturing transistors out of Silicon instead of the then conventional Germanium, and using a diffusion manufacturing process which enabled the production of silicon mesa transistors in batches on assembly line.

Silicon Valley 244

Silicon Valley Technical Review Spain Engineer 244

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. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious. Are These Your Slides?

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 261

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

For example, to outflank a competitor who had faster products, Intel moved the conversation about microprocessors away from speed and technology to create a valued brand. Both Apple and Intel were selling complicated technology but did so by simplifying the message so it had broad emotional appeal. Pick the media they said they read.

Marketing 318

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 318

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.” I had thrown myself into a startup because work was an exciting technical challenge with a fixed set of end points and rewards. The Adventure of a Lifetime.

Entrepreneur 295

Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS 295

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

OCTOBER 10, 2011

I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. 50% the fault of a Nokia management that didn’t see it coming, while 50% was due to brilliant Apple execution.) Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team for the fabulous logistics!) Note to Finland – lighten up.

Finland 332

Finland Naming Russia Government 332

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Notice that none of those five reasons deals with TDD or automated testing, which have changed the game. This is the approach of test-driven-development (TDD). Even if youve developed for years without automated tests, this one practice is part of a remarkable feedback loop. Do you have testers?

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Steve Blank

JUNE 19, 2014

Over the last two and a half years the National Science Foundation I-Corps has taught over 300 teams of scientists how to commercialize their technology and how to fail less, increasing their odds for commercial success. Application are due by August 7th (details are here.). They cannot be done by proxies.

Lean 277

Lean SBIR Intellectual Property Customer Development 277

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 8, 2010

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. It is the key to “customer development” that Steve Blank talks about. I’m going to save that for a future blog post.

PR 279

PR Technical Review Portfolio Customer Development 279

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

When I went through their financials as part of my due diligence I realized that if they ditched their low margin disk drive products, it wouldn’t take much to make them a profitable company. They had an existing distribution channel and their dealers and customers thought they knew who the company was and what it stood for.

Silicon Valley 170

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 170

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2010

Over time, innovations outside the company (demographic, cultural, new technologies, etc.) The company loses customers, then revenues and profits decline and it eventually gets acquired or goes out of business. valued by their existing customers – fairly well. F urther Reading : Harvard Business Review Articles.

Search 251

Search Agile Customer Development Technical Review 251

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

competitive analyses, channel and customer collateral (white papers, data sheets, product reviews), customer surveys, and market requirements documents. And our Director of Technical Marketing was superb at understanding customer needs and communicating them to engineering. It will cost you your job.” It became [.]

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

A version of this article first appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. Then the cycle repeats with a new set of technologies.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, June 2, 2010 The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business Review) I continue my series for Harvard Business Review with the Lean Startup technique called Five Whys. Five Whys has its origins in the Toyota Production System. Applied to a start-up, heres how it works. Speed up or slow down?

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132