Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Preserve your cash: When you have unlimited cash (internet bubbles, frothy venture climate,) you can iterate on your mistakes by burning more dollars. This is the most important sentence in this post and worth deconstructing.

Lean 263

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 263

SoCal CTO

MARCH 18, 2010

Our current focus is Actors and Actresses and we are moving into other verticals. I help internet companies make money. I also serve as CEO of a small media companies that profile “Tomorrow’s Most Exciting People Today”. I usually.just focus on revenue. People understand that. they have an interest in that we can go from there.

Los Angeles 225

Los Angeles Revenue Southern California Social Network 225

VC Cafe

OCTOBER 16, 2024

ChatGPT’s advanced voice mode and Eleven Labs are setting new benchmarks in conversational AI by enhancing voice quality and realism, NotebookLM’s natural voice podcast took the Internet by storm and new open source technologies are making high quality voice cloning easier than ever. Vertical Applications Taking Off.

Vertical 170

Vertical Generative AI B2C CTO Hire 170

VC Cafe

MARCH 1, 2024

Smart Contracts – Powering the internet-native financial system, smart contract networks could generate fees of $450bn in 2030. Digital Wallets – Digital wallets could grow select vertical software platforms’ revenues to $27-$50bn in 2030. Verticalized Video Understanding – machine interpreted video.

Artificial Inteligence 176

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Software Review Generative AI 176

Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 19, 2012

Route One: High LTV per user The exact definition of a “high” user LTV depends on the specific vertical, so it’s typically better to analyze the ratio between Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC) and the Life Time Value of the customer. That unfortunate combination makes it rather difficult to reach the $100M mark.

Churn Rate 168

Churn Rate Viral Acquisition Cofounder 168

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

It took me 8 startups and 21 years to get it right, (and one can argue success was due to the Internet bubble rather then any brilliance.) No internet, no blogs, no books on startups, no entrepreneurship departments in universities, etc.

Silicon Valley 208

Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 208

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

The boom in Internet startups would last 4½ years until it came crashing down to earth in March 2000. The valuations for acquisitions were nothing like the Internet bubble, but there was a path to liquidity, difficult as it was. Every startup wanted to believe they could get acquired like YouTube for $1.4

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Welcome to the Internet bubble.) Disbelief, Anger, Resignation and Acceptance My cofounders and I went through the stages of disbelief, anger, resignation and acceptance. Here was a competitor who had appropriated our idea and gotten funded. There was lots of venting as we talked about lawsuits and issuing nasty press releases.

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 261

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

consumer Internet) might have a really, really high bar of achievement for funding. Guaranteed Funding – Not Will this type of presentation guarantee you funding? Of course not. Even if you have the worlds best Lessons Learned slides you might find out that your particular market (i.e.

Customer Development 270

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 270

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 27, 2011

What appears clear to me today is how fundamentally the Internet is changing business processes, and the advent of nifty social media tools and technologies that plug into core business processes like lead nurturing are a powerful force. The next event will be on Tuesday, November 22, 2011, at 8:00 AM (PDT), register to attend here.

Entrepreneur 116

Entrepreneur San Francisco Technical Review New Jersey 116

abovethecrowd.com

APRIL 17, 2013

Many Internet marketplaces also have a rake or vig. Before discussing the merits of low rakes versus high rakes, let us first take a look at current examples of different rakes across the Internet. All of which leads us to two very interesting rake examples that are front and center in today’s Internet – Facebook and Apple.

Europe 101

Europe Social Network Technical Review IPO 101

abovethecrowd.com

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

Entrepreneurs accurately recognize that the connective tissue of the Internet provides an opportunity to link the players in a particular market, reducing friction in both the buying and selling experience. Since Benchmark’s investment in Ebay 15 years ago, we have been fascinated by online marketplaces.

Aggregator 101

Aggregator Marketing Software Review North America 101

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 19, 2017

Established companies launch incremental products that increase the offering (more features) for less cost and/or introduce products that more correctly align with an ever-increasing vertical niche within the larger market (the “sports luxury” automobile vertical for example).

Product Development 153

Product Development Lean Developer Product 153

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Think of the Microprocessor, Personal Computer, Internet, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Google, the iPhone. Creating those technologies and companies required entrepreneurs willing to follow their own vision and convincing others that the path is worth following.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 223

View from Seed

OCTOBER 18, 2017

We believe that the internet is a super-technology, and are most excited about the second-order effects that this super-technology will have on everyday life for everyday people. We have blogged about a few of the verticals so far, including housing , food , entertainment , and others.

Vertical 166

Vertical Seed Stage Viral Portfolio 166

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

» 25 Responses Mark Soper , on November 30, 2009 at 6:55 am Said: Steve, I’m working on a consumer internet product concept at the customer discovery phase.

Customer Development 287

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 287

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

No internet, no blogs, no books [.] Reply Touching the hot stove | Hot Trends 2 Tweet , on August 14, 2009 at 7:28 am Said: [.] 1978 when I joined my first company, information about how to start companies simply didn’t exist. Thanks Steve, Great insight.

Agile 269

Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 269

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 15, 2017

Since AI and ML startups cut across verticals (analytics, fintech, health, adtech, security, etc), it’s easier to group them under the “machine intelligence” umbrella, coined by Shivon Zillis , a partner at Bloomberg Beta. Many large companies will be built (Michael Wolfe, Point Nine Capital).

Artificial Inteligence 122

Artificial Inteligence Israel Technical Review Startup 122

Duct Tape Marketing

JUNE 6, 2019

If you’ve ever opened a website on your mobile phone that seems to have you scrolling horizontally more than vertically, leaving you piecing together cut-off sentences and large photos, you’ve viewed a website that is not responsive. Responsive web design is a key tool, offering many valuable benefits to your online marketing efforts.

Small Business 78

Small Business SEO United States Mobile 78

Growthink Blog

FEBRUARY 27, 2010

Or will the convergence of content, internet, mobile applications, games and social media be the onrushing asteroids that will soon destroy the movie dinosaurs? How about Internet Video? revenues from internet video services spanning user-generated content to television shows and movies will exceed $7 billion this year.

Los Angeles 85

Los Angeles Silicon Valley Technical Review Distribution 85

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

At the time no one (including Apple) knew exactly what consumers were going to do with multimedia, it was still pre-Internet. Present at the Creation It was early 1991 and Apple’s software development team was hard at work on QuickTime , the first multimedia framework for a computer.

Video 190

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 190

crowdSPRING Blog

DECEMBER 13, 2018

Marketing intelligence experts at Datorama recommend tracking your branded impressions, internet search volume, and the performance of branded keywords. Horizontal vs vertical vs diagonal lines. Unlike vertical or diagonal lines, they look as though gravity has already acted upon them and there is nowhere for them to fall.

Marketing 162

Marketing Charlotte Naming Design 162

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

A large number of these customers had mailed back their registration cards (this was pre-Internet) with their names, phone numbers, job titles, etc. This was a company that had sold 15,000 graphics boards and monitors to consumers. So I asked the fatal question, “Has anyone ever looked at the customer registration cards?

Silicon Valley 213

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 213

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Later he would leave for a few years to start the Computing Directorate at the National Science Foundation , help spec what became the Internet and then come back and run Ardent’s engineering.) A few days later Gordon became a founder.

North Carolina 133

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 133

Both Sides of the Table

JUNE 20, 2014

I was an early and tireless advocate for the growth of the Internet video ecosystem and as virtually every article I wrote made clear I believe the 800-pound-gorilla is YouTube and will remain so for the foreseeable future. The Internet works best on Deflationary Economics. So Why MiTú? Indeed we are already seeing that online.

South America 291

South America Colombia Mexico Vertical 291

thebarefootvc

AUGUST 13, 2013

These vertical solutions would focus on specific pain pain points in the enterprise, such as logistics or customer relationship management. Entrepreneurship Startups Technology Uncategorized Venture Capital cloud computing enterprise IBM internet Salesforce SAP software startups'

Advisory Board 70

Advisory Board Cloud Venture Capital Vertical 70

Version One Ventures

FEBRUARY 20, 2020

Boris wrote about the latest opportunities in enterprise SaaS , while Max outlined some of his current investment themes , from the Open Internet to climate change. This could be similar to Hint, as an example, where people buy memberships for standardized services in a particular vertical (i.e. dental, vision, etc.).

Social Network 100

Social Network Vertical Cofounder Software Improvement 100

VC Cafe

FEBRUARY 7, 2011

I genuinely believe that when it comes to internet investments, eCommerce is not only a VC story, but that it is the VC story. Since then, and after resting aside my ego, I placed myself back in my VC shoes to try to understand what “proof” such VCs needed to feel comfortable with an eCommerce investment. Here’s why …. The eComm-aissance.

eCommerce 94

eCommerce Open Source SEM Technical Review 94

Haystack

DECEMBER 29, 2018

This was the big consumer behavior story of 2018, behind the rapid rise of digitally-native vertical brands (like the breakout , Hims), and the rise of prosumer-level data applications (like breakout Airtable). 2/ The Scooter Phenomenon. Russia has evolved in a different direction, with tight information controls and state-run media.

Technical Review 165

Technical Review Venture Capital Russia China 165

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

Anybody with a sense of how the Internet works should have known that they couldn’t commit such open fraud on this scale and expect to get away with it. Keep them coming Reply William , on August 24, 2009 at 12:00 pm Said: I doubt this is TechCrunch’s first encounter with PR people lying. Instead, this is a culture clash.

Silicon Valley 215

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 215

Austin Startup

AUGUST 7, 2017

You can find a lot of great videos, blogs and books on the Internet, but there is still no replacement for direct one-on-one mentoring. The Internet is full of great videos and blogs. We all use the same Internet. This number will double by the end of 2018 as we invite new mentors from Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

Texas 97

Texas San Antonio Houston Dallas 97

deal architect

JUNE 3, 2017

I love Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends report. The “vertical” growth in. This year though it struck me that over 95% of her 355 slides focused on consumer world – digital advertising, ecommerce, ride-sharing, gaming. wearables and digital healthcare etc.

Vertical 248

Vertical eCommerce Advertising Internet 248

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Our first thought was to spread the news ourselves, perhaps in a press release or a “white paper,” (remember this was pre-Internet.) Tell Me How to Find You But having benchmarks in hand that showed us as the winner did us no good unless all our potential customers could see them.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 128

ConversionXL

JUNE 20, 2019

Loom doesn’t require an Internet browser; Soapbox, on the other hand, is a Chrome extension. Display the video in 16:9 format for desktop viewers, then automatically resize to square or vertical for mobile viewers. Screen recordings upload automatically, and you get a link to share the video with co-workers or customers.

Hosting 127

Hosting Video Technical Review Software Review 127

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 23, 2011

In the late 90’s he saw the internet boom and helped start IronPlanet.com, a construction equipment marketplace that is nearing an IPO. At the time consumer internet venture capital was still suffering from the collapse of the Tech Bubble. The in invest in IT (Software + Internet + Healthcare). Tell us more about MetaCafe? (37:00-40:30).

Vertical 265

Vertical Curation Boston Burn Rate 265

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

The Digital Dream Team Way before the Internet phenomenon, we had created “Rocket Science the brand ” that was much bigger in size and importance than Rocket Science the company. Companies in the entertainment business around the world knew who we were, and were interested in meeting us, if only to see what the hype was about.

Silicon Valley 122

Silicon Valley Product RSS California 122

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

Research shows that over 42% of internet users worldwide now use ad blockers to reduce how much advertising they see. While there’s nothing you can do about there being too many ads on the internet, ad irrelevance, intrusiveness, and size are all elements to consider. Ad blockers. Take The Economist.

Advertising 131

Advertising Cost Customer PR 131