Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 2, 2021
This article first appeared in West Point’s Modern War Institute. . We just completed the fourth week of our new national security class at Stanford – Technology, Innovation and Great Power Competition. Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I designed the class to cover how technology will shape all the elements of national power (America’s influence and footprint on the world stage).
Startup Professionals Musings
JUNE 2, 2021
In case you hadn’t noticed, the key elements of a competitive advantage for your business have changed as businesses move online, and your domain is instantly global. The old approaches of controlling distribution channels, saturating retail, and methodically scaling your brand awareness don’t protect you anymore. The real challenge is to win massive consumer preference repeatedly.
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View from Seed
JANUARY 13, 2021
This year will mark the 10 th year anniversary of NextView. I’ll be writing a number of posts looking back over the first decade of the life of this firm. In some ways, this feels like an eternity. But in the grand scheme of things, 10 years is a blip, and one that had a continuous bull market in tech. So whatever conclusions or observations I draw should be seen in this context.
deal architect
FEBRUARY 1, 2021
Brian Sommer and I have recorded 12 episodes in this series - see index here.
Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic
Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in
Both Sides of the Table
JANUARY 10, 2021
Socially distant hiking in Sedona (we drove there) I recently wrote about my weight-loss journey over the past 18 months where I lost 65 pounds without a fad diet and returned to my college weight. If you want to get in better shape and haven’t read that you might start there. I separately wrote about some food plans I use. I started advice with the premise that no amount of exercise or food eating plan would help with long-term fitness or weight goals unless you first had a mental plan and a se
YoungUpstarts
MARCH 3, 2021
Christa Martin shares some of the fundamental considerations for businesses to understand prior to undertaking the deployment AI for audience segmentation. The post 5 AI Trends That Will Shape Your Business In 2021 appeared first on Young Upstarts.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Startup Professionals Musings
JANUARY 30, 2021
Most technical entrepreneurs focus hard on building an innovative product, but forget that an elegant solution doesn’t automatically translate into a successful business. Businesses require an equally elegant business model, with the right price, messaging and delivery channel to the right target customers to keep the dream alive and growing. Defining the right business model requires the same diligence as designing the right product, but the approach and skills required are different.
Startup Professionals Musings
JUNE 12, 2021
Soon you should be able to ask your browser or smart phone context-specific questions like "Where should I take my wife for a good movie and dinner?" Your browser would consult its intelligence of what you and she like and dislike, take into account your current location, and then suggest the right movies and restaurants. If you are the first to deliver this, your startup might be the next Google!
Startup Professionals Musings
JANUARY 24, 2021
For the elite startups and entrepreneurs who manage to attract the investor they dream of, and survive the term sheet negotiation, there is still one more hurdle before the money is in the bank. This is the mysterious and dreaded due diligence process, which can kill the whole deal. In reality, it is nothing more than a final integrity check on all aspects of the business and the team.
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 26, 2021
As an entrepreneur mentor, my mission is to foster the attributes in you as a startup founder that I believe will lead to success. I know from experience that my friends who are angel investors are looking for the same indications, although none of us has a scorecard , or even know exactly what we are looking for. Sometimes good things are easy to see in others, but hard to see in yourself.
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 16, 2021
Confidence and self-esteem are critical to your success as an entrepreneur, or any business role. As a mentor, I’m regularly frustrated by people who try to cover their lack of confidence with ego and arrogance , rather than working on the base issue. Every business leader and investor I know quickly sees through the façade, and tags you as a high risk and difficult person to work with.
Startup Professionals Musings
APRIL 14, 2021
As a logical and data-driven business advisor, I have long focused on facts, technology, and quantifiable pain in guiding entrepreneurs. Yet, these days, I am seeing overwhelming evidence that customer buying decisions, especially with consumers, are often based on emotional and psychological factors , including passions from others, your experience, and social relationships.
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 3, 2021
As a long-time mentor to new entrepreneurs and business owners, I have noticed that many no longer associate more fulfillment and satisfaction with more money, power, and success. It seems that fulfillment to these new entrepreneurs is all about changing the world and legacy. In fact, customers today also seem more attracted to companies with a higher purpose than profit.
Startup Professionals Musings
JANUARY 3, 2021
Starting an entrepreneurial business, or maintaining the competitiveness of a mature business, requires innovation. Yet everyone I know seems to have a different perspective on what constitutes real innovation, and why is seems to happen so rarely. Another challenge is to debunk some of the common myths that seem prevent many from even assuming they can innovate.
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 21, 2021
When someone introduces me to an “idea person,” I automatically jump to the down-side conclusion that this person doesn’t do follow-up. Of course there are people who are great at getting things done, but haven’t had an original idea in their life. Great entrepreneurs, like Bill Gates, are great at both. I was with IBM in the early PC days when Bill worked with us to provide PC DOS and other software.
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 12, 2021
Sometimes entrepreneurs are so focused on making change happen for customers that they forget that continually changing themselves and their company is equally important. Some get stuck in a rut and get run over by competitors with new technology, like Eastman Kodak, and others get pushed into a crisis, like Apple did, before they reinvent themselves into a new market.
Steve Blank
JUNE 8, 2021
We just finished our 6th annual Hacking for Defense class at Stanford. What a year. With the pandemic winding down it finally feels like the beginning of the end. This was my sixth time teaching a virtual class during the lockdown – and for our students likely their 15th or more. Hacking for Defense has teams of students working to understand and solve national security problems.
Startup Professionals Musings
APRIL 24, 2021
If you are a young startup founder, how do you find that CEO or other executive for your “dream team” to close on funding or complement your skills to kick start your company? It makes logical sense to scour the job boards, engage an executive recruiter, or scan the networking sites like LinkedIn for a good array of candidates, and then interview the ones with the best resumes.
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 1, 2021
Most entrepreneurs I meet are reluctant to disclose anything about their idea to investors before getting a signed confidential disclosure agreement (CDA). Professional investors and advisors, on the other hand, usually refuse to sign these agreements today due to the risk of litigation and administrative workload, and will walk away. How can you make this a win-win opportunity?
Startup Professionals Musings
JULY 25, 2021
Every entrepreneur with a new technology tells me that his innovation will be industry-disrupting, meaning that it will render the existing technology obsolete, and create a new market. Yet truly disruptive innovations, like the smartphone from Apple and the rise of the Internet, are very rare, and are generally unpredicted. So why would any investor ever believe any of these claims?
Startup Professionals Musings
SEPTEMBER 25, 2021
Every inventor seems to think their invention is worth a million dollars, but I haven’t seen anyone pay that much for one yet. In fact, I often have to tell aspiring entrepreneurs that their inventions have zero value, at least not until they are put in the context of a business plan, with qualified people committed to executing the plan. Early-stage ideas fall in the same category.
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 20, 2021
It takes an effective team to attract and serve a community in business these days. With real-time online reviews and feedback via the Internet, and instant relationships via social media, a voice from the top that is inconsistent with what is heard from the firing line defines a dysfunctional and noncompetitive company for today’s customer. Thus team makeup is the critical success factor.
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 6, 2021
Change is hard. I see entrepreneurs every day who are trying to change the world with a new idea, and startups that are trying to survive their hyper-growth phase by changing processes to meet demand. In both cases, it’s easy for them to become frustrated and give up, since most have never been trained in change management, and don’t even know what questions to ask.
Startup Professionals Musings
JANUARY 8, 2021
Most leaders agree that poor customer service is a business killer today, in terms of lost customers, reduced profits, and low morale. Yet the average perception of customer experience has not improved. Young entrepreneurs and startups, in particular, often remain naively unfocused, despite their passion, of what it takes to provide the high-quality service expected.
Startup Professionals Musings
APRIL 18, 2021
If your startup is great enough to get a term sheet from angel investors or a venture capitalist, the next step for the investor is to complete the dreaded due diligence process. This is the last step of the process, where surprises in the evaluation of the management team, documentation, and personnel problems can derail the investment. Some startups do nothing to prepare for the due diligence process, assuming the people and business plan documents will speak for themselves.
Startup Professionals Musings
MARCH 6, 2021
Many startups fail before reaching that magic “cash-flow positive” position they have been striving for, despite seemingly reasonable financial projections. A closer analysis often indicates the cause to be a lack of diligence in handling common business finances. These mistakes are usually masked by excuses, like the economy turned on me, or my competitors played dirty.
Steve Blank
NOVEMBER 23, 2021
This article first appeared in West Point’s Modern War Institute. We just completed the seventh week of our new national security class at Stanford – Technology, Innovation and Great Power Competition. Joe Felter , Raj Shah and I designed the class to cover how technology will shape the character and employment of all instruments of national power.
Startup Professionals Musings
NOVEMBER 7, 2021
Some aspiring entrepreneurs are so desperate for funding, or naïve, that they ignore the obvious signs of scams and rip-offs on the Internet, praying for a windfall. One would think that with all the sad stories and tools published over the past twenty years, this problem would be behind us. But people are still begging for more technology or laws, often to protect them from themselves.
Startup Professionals Musings
SEPTEMBER 29, 2021
In my experience as an employee, up to an executive, in large companies as well as small, I’ve found that people who are consistently negative and complain are a big constraint on productivity, as well as the most difficult management problem that most business leaders face. The challenge is to get negative people to see themselves as part of the problem, rather than the solution.
Startup Professionals Musings
JUNE 23, 2021
As a consumer, I rarely pay attention to your marketing pitch, but I certainly always remember a exceptionally positive total experience with your team, based on a memorable set of interactions from first contact to discussions with friends. Yet, as a business consultant, I often find minimal focus on improving employee engagement and assessing their customer-facing performance.
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 27, 2021
More and more entrepreneurs are hearing about the successful graduates and investors queued behind a few well-known startup incubators, including Y Combinator, TechStars, and the Founder Institute. They dream of appearing at the door, with their idea on the back of a napkin, and popping out a few months later with investor money to burn. The reality is far different.
Startup Professionals Musings
JUNE 28, 2021
Entrepreneurs who require funding for their startup have long counted on self-accredited high net worth individuals (“angels”) to fill their needs, after friends and family, and before they qualify for institutional investments (“VCs”). The many crowd funding platforms on the Internet, led still by Kickstarter and IndieGoGo , were expected by many to put regular people in charge of funding new opportunities, and kill the need for angel groups.
Startup Professionals Musings
FEBRUARY 8, 2021
In my experience as an angel investor for new startups, I’m always surprised by how many entrepreneurs are looking for funding without outside advisors. An experienced Board can give them credibility, as well as advice on the many pitfalls of starting a new company. Especially if you are a first-time business owner, the payback for this initiative is well worth the effort and cost.
Steve Blank
MAY 19, 2021
As Director of the U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force Pete Newell delivered innovation at speed and scale in the Department of Defense. Pete is now CEO of BMNT, a company that delivers innovation solutions and processes for governments. Here are Pete’s 5 principles that will accelerate innovation. To help a large Defense organization wrestle with how to increase the velocity of innovation in their ranks Steve Blank and I spent the better part of last week with our heads together re
Startup Professionals Musings
DECEMBER 5, 2021
Every time I challenge a business plan with little or no budget for marketing, I get the answer that they will be using “viral” marketing, which costs nothing. The founder explains that the product or service is so “buzz-worthy” that the merits will spread rapidly through word-of-mouth only, meaning people loving it and recommending it to their friends.
Startup Professionals Musings
SEPTEMBER 17, 2021
Most aspiring entrepreneurs believe that a great idea alone will assure business success. Experts argue that it’s more important to have a great plan, and personal business acumen. Hardly anyone mentions selling principles. Yet in this age when customers have a thousand alternatives, and are overwhelmed by a multitude of messages, sales efforts can make or break a business.
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