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The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how SiliconValley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how SiliconValley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. How did SiliconValley start?
I got smarter about the world outside of SiliconValley, met some wonderful people who made me feel part of their family and shared some thoughts about entrepreneurship. This post is a personal view of what I saw in what I call “Chilecon Valley” — in no way does it represent the views of the fine institutions I teach at.
I just read Brotopia: Breaking Up the Boys’ Club of SiliconValley. While SiliconValley has grown to have global influence, in many ways the cultural leadership from the venture community has dramatically shrunk in the last decade. Yes, in the dim past of SiliconValley the execs really wore suits.).
—————- The next piece of the Secret History of SiliconValley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering. What Does WWII Have to Do with SiliconValley?
I also got the insights of her biggest champion from within Andreessen Horowitz, Margit Wennmachers , who talked me through when she first met Meredith, how she’s grown, the maturity of Meredith to interact with SiliconValley’s good & great and be nonplussed about it.
But for the last decade “innovation” in Chinese software meant something different than it did in SiliconValley. Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about SiliconValley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Of course “copy” is too strong a word. Management 101.
Technical Marketing Years later in my career I would realize I had simply reinvented what the early pioneers in SiliconValley knew and did – hiring engineers who were domain experts who could talk as peers to customers and communicate effectively with their own company’s engineers. Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply.
Filed under: Customer Development , Customer Development Manifesto « The Secret History of SiliconValley 12: The Rise of “Risk Capital” Part 2 Raising Money Using Customer Development » 8 Responses Jake Lumetta , on November 2, 2009 at 10:49 am Said: Great post. Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply.
Much has been written about when it is time to hire a “professional CEO” to run a startup company and of course that has long been a norm in SiliconValley when founders find that their inexperience may be a limiting factor in company growth ( know as the Peter Principle ). So why did Larry need to return?
I was out and about in SiliconValley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. I remember presenting our ideas for Marketing Automation to one VP of Marketing in a large SiliconValley company. It’s just a story about what happened to me.
No Knowledge of Computers SiliconValley emerged from work in World War II led by Stanford professor Fred Terman developing microwave and electronics for Electronic Warfare systems. SiliconValley wouldn’t have a computer company until 1966 when Hewlett Packard shipped the HP 2116 minicomputer.
My first job in SiliconValley: I was hired as a lab technician at ESL to support the training department. It makes you appreciate that the SiliconValley technology-centric culture-bubble has little to do with the majority of Americans.) Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. Great read.
Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. The search for a profitable and scalable business model might require a startup [.] Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!
Brentwood Associates [SiliconValley] –> Founded in the early 70s and focused primarily on VC, Brentwood had big wins in both IT like Wellfleet Communications (big chunk of what eventually became Nortel) and WebTV (part of Microsoft) and healthcare (various businesses that make up a big chunk of what is now Medtronic and Baxter).
Notes Wadhwa, “Jason [Calacanis], Fred [Wilson], and SiliconValley VC’s, I’ve got news for you: you’ve got it all wrong. At the margin you can make yourself better at sales, product design, marketing, leadership, capital raising, etc. Wadhwa is entitled to his point of view and he may be right. Or at least 73.6%
I’m going to link this this and read it weekly Reply Mark Gibson , on April 22, 2010 at 8:27 am Said: Hi Steve, I’ve read Four Steps a couple of times now (loved the Secret History of SiliconValley) and enjoy your blog-posts…this is on target. Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice.
As someone who has experienced more than a few office cultures like the one described above, I’m here to tell you that the “work as hard as possible” ethos that seems pervasive — not just in SiliconValley, but throughout much of the corporate world — is not just wrong, it’s counter productive.
Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. From now forward I’m going to reorient my thinking toward accomplishing the end goal rather than reviewing my progress as a bunch of steps I’ve taken. John Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!
» Dig for Leadership - Stories that try to make the world a better place. , AKPC_IDS += "1128,"; (No Ratings Yet) Loading … Posted in Leadership | Tagged [.] Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. tags: vc entrepreneurship) [.] Reply Can You Trust Any VC’s Under 40? carry on reading.
Clarity of purpose in leadership matters. Doing nothing is avoiding real leadership. No matter how mad some people become – he is certainly one of the most respected figures in SiliconValley. I think people with this affliction have a hard time being great leaders. They dither on decision-making.
The beauty of SiliconValley and the ethos it has driven in all of us is acceptance of failure and a profound respect for those who at least try. Leadership over backbenchers? I wish I had 20% of her confidence, focus and leadership skills at 25. Are you willing to give them the benefit of the doubt?
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 SiliconValley.” I have been swinging for the fences for several years as a young entrepreneur at the executive leadership level for several start-ups and most recently starting my own.
Look at the early SiliconValley companies – Homebrew Club =>PCs. Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. When a technology is radically new, people buy a product for its technical features. At this stage you can more easily get away without doing any serious marketing or customer enquiries.
Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. I think Pfizer was lulled into the “if we build it, they will come&# nature of drug [.] Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!
He’s spent the last four years in SiliconValley out of uniform continuing that work. The result will be agency leadership creating new organizational structures that make innovation a continual process rather than an ad hoc series of heroic efforts. Solution 5 : The reality is that the DoD/IC is not SiliconValley.
During my time in SiliconValley, I was struck by the fact that most successful entrepreneurs seemed to personally know and regularly hear from all the “movers and shakers” who had the investment capital and leadership they needed. I’m a believer in the old saying that investors look for great people, more than great ideas.
Two years out of the Air Force, serendipity (which would be my lifelong form of career planning) found me in SiliconValley working for my first company: ESL. But part of his life that that doesn’t even merit a Wikipedia entry is that Bill Perry used SiliconValley to help end the cold war.
That’s no longer the case in SiliconValley. Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. There are variety of web-based business models (see here ) where the initial goals are not revenue. Keep teaching! Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.
Hitting “burnout” changed the trajectory of both ends of my career in SiliconValley. Zilog Zilog was my first SiliconValley 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.
Only in SiliconValley could we have got funded with this idea, and not surprisingly, it was our technology that had the VC’s confused. Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. Or “I’ve seen a lot of movies so let’s start a movie studio.” As I work with a startup, this blog is very helpful. Order Here.
Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. I am about to talk to an entrepreneur on how to approach his pitch to VC’s and I believe this is a great approach to it. Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!
» Dig for Leadership - Stories that try to make the world a better place. , AKPC_IDS += "499,"; (No Ratings Yet) Loading … Posted in Leadership | Tagged [.] Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. The rest is worth reading as well. steve Am I a Founder? The Adventure of a Lifetime.
Tackling the human aspect of entrepreneurship, leadership and management, the book surmised that each of us are biased towards one of four traits – namely heart, smarts, guts, or luck – in our decision-making processes. The epicenter of its thesis revolves around an Entrepreneurial Aptitude Test (E.A.T.)
Rincon is part of the new breed of Seed Stage VCs and with the leadership of Jim Andelman has charted out the most authentic early-stage investment strategy in Southern California. Any SoCal entrepreneur raising early-stage money should put Rincon on their short list.
his next article on SuperMac, “Building the Killer Team – Mission, Intent, and Values&# , Steve further pounds the table on some principles of leadership that I think are [.] Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. your lawyers that you want to have an extremely firm date for the closing process.
But for the last decade “innovation” in Chinese software meant something different than it did in SiliconValley. Entrepreneurs in Beijing were knowledgeable about SiliconValley, entrepreneurship and the state of software and tools available for two reasons. Of course “copy” is too strong a word. Management 101.
Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. In your experience how have you attempted to solve this? Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!
Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. This is why I’m so perplexed by this recent Steve Blank comment: Entrepreneurs who have a startup or two under their belt tend to rattle off preliminary customer [.] Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S. Now In Print!
of total entrepreneurs born in China and India is not even close to what entrepreneurship in SiliconValley looks like. Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. In the country of birth it says 0.6% of the founders surveyed were born in China, 3.8% were born in India. steve Michael F. Order Here.
And finally, we’ll dig into the fundamental changes in leadership, management, and mindset that will allow people to weather this period of extraordinary change and come out the better for it. In an instant, remote work went from a small SiliconValley trend to a ubiquitous element of daily life. Now everybody does.
In it Shackleton defined courage and leadership. He’s as good as any startup CEO in SiliconValley. In 1912 Ernest Shackleton placed this ad to recruit a crew for the ship Endurance and his expedition to the South Pole. This would be one of the most heroic journeys of exploration ever undertaken. You couldn’t be more wrong.
Nothhaft, in his new book “ Great Again: Revitalizing America's Entrepreneurial Leadership ” are already calling these last ten years the “Lost Decade.” Nothhaft has put together a challenging but small list of things we have to do to revitalize our innovation leadership, and I’m supportive: Liberate entrepreneurs from regulatory shackles.
The SiliconValley-oriented technology press outlets don’t cover us because we’re not in San Francisco, even though we’re more successful than most of the startups they cover. After the success of Smart Bear, I should be setting my sights on something big, not this. Period, full-stop.
Steve Blanks 30 years of SiliconValley startup advice. Reply Play Wack-a-Mole – gently, now – With Your ‘Bad’ Customers | CityOf.com – More Local… FASTER. , on July 9, 2010 at 12:50 pm Said: [.] Reply Leave a Reply Click here to cancel reply. Order Here. To Order Outside of the U.S.
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