Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

Gathering feature requests from customers is not what marketing should be doing in a startup. In a startup the role of Customer Development is to: test the founders hypothesis about the customer problem test if the product concept and minimum feature set solve that problem This is a big idea and worth repeating.

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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. It took lots of trial and error, learning by experience and resilience through multiple failures.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

If these sound like reasonable answers to you, and you are in a startup/small company, update your resume. Most startups put together a corporate mission statement because the CEO remembered seeing one at their last job, or the investors said they needed one. What I was actually hearing was a failure of management.

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Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Our salesmen focused on accounts that ordered the largest number of chips and ignored tiny little startups that wanted to build personal computers around these chips (like Cromemco, Osborne, Kaypro, Coleco, Radio Shack, Amstrad, Sinclair, Morrow, Commodore, Intertec, etc.) Keep in mind this is still several years before the IBM PC and DOS.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

As a company with a past history, the company had a massive advantage over a typical startup – it had customers. Normally in a startup you spend an inordinate amount of time and energy in Customer Discovery and Customer Validation. Does anyone know where the registration cards that the customers sent back are?”

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Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

Reply Dan , on June 4, 2009 at 7:55 pm Said: Great story — reminds me of one I witnessed, very analogous but about 15 years later: I was working on a digital music startup around ’98, ( [link] ) and pitched it to then CEO of mp3.com Steve Blanks 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice. com Michael Robertson.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Startups and Sales If you read this post you can come away with the impression that every startup with a direct salesforce needs a consultative sales team. what Market Type is your startup? Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

I had last been in Chapel Hill on a winter’s day in 1986, traveling with the VP of Sales of our new supercomputer startup, Ardent. We were on the University of North Carolina campus to meet with Fred Brooks and Henry Fuchs. We were sitting in our cheap hotel room when the phone rang.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 26, 2009

So no post today on entrepreneurship, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Customer Development, Lean Startups, etc. This post was mentioned on Twitter by Brendan McManus, [Startup Digest]. Startup Digest] said: Thanksgiving Day [link] [via @sgblank] [.] Just a reflection on my family and hopes for our children.

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Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2009

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. Now In Print!

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 129

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

And in the tradition of great startups, on the way out Perry took 6 of his best managers with him. In five years, ESL went from a plucky startup to the market leader in Sigint and telemetry intercepts. In 1964, Bill Perry, the head of the lab, frustrated with GTE’s management, quit (GTE, a phone company had bought Sylvania in 1959.)

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

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. I was consulting for the two venture capital firms who between them put $12 million into my last failed startup. (My It was a long way from Ellis Island.)

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

That is until I saw that in startup after startup customers come from places you don’t plan on. He’s Only in Field Service When I was at Zilog, the Z8000 peripheral chips included the new “ Serial Communications Controller &# ( SCC ).

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Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

And now am leading a startup of my own ( [link] ) where we’re students of you and Eric Ries’ lean startup principles. invention of electronic warfare, part I and [.] My first business trip to the valley was to visit California Microwave. Thanks for connecting the historical dots!

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Steve Blank

MARCH 20, 2009

Facts are the rock on which you build your strategy and tactics In a startup second-hand facts are almost as useless as opinions. It reminded me of “earlier days&# , when I was just starting out in running business operations for startups. Now what was the strategy? What did I learn so far?

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mashable.com

OCTOBER 11, 2011

10 Essential PR Tips for Startups. Sign up for her course on “ PR for Startups ” to learn more about getting media coverage for your fledgling business. Not to mention, early-stage startups usually only employ a few people focused on product and development. Read on for my startup tips.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

Would you sell an ebook version on this site for all the rest of us trying to incorporate your model in our startups? most (interesting) startups you’re either doing something completely new or you’re resegmenting an existing market. Very much in addition to the text. Hope it gets here quick and in one piece!

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Steve Blank

MAY 7, 2009

Over scrambled eggs and diet coke, I listened to this seasoned startup veteran describe the excitement of his students who came to the U.S. Win, lose or draw, these students have a life changing experience where they can network and get smarter as they see what good startup thinking looks like. to compete.

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Steve Blank

JULY 27, 2009

Perhaps if you have a union job based on seniority, but not in any startup I’ve ever seen. When are you and Peter Barrett planning to fire up another startup ? For entrepreneurs good things come to those who ask. What’s Marketing? I can do the former but am desparate to learn the latter.

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Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

<< (tags: startups) [.] Rocket Science 4: The Press is Our Best Product « Steve Blank >>The Customer Validation lesson of, “no formal launch until you have early sales validating the product and sales process” was also born here.<< Reply Dan L , on July 13, 2009 at 7:32 pm Said: Interesting story.

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Software By Rob

JULY 1, 2010

Join nearly 6,000 startup entrepreneurs by subscribing to my RSS feed. Instead, we’re talking about building your startup to maximize its value based on factors the market values, since these factors will make it a better company to own in the both the short- and long-term. Nothing scalable (or fun) about that.

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techcrunch.com

AUGUST 12, 2012

Zachary Bogue And Matt Ocko Launch Data Collective, An Early Stage Fund For Big Data Startups. Zachary Bogue And Matt Ocko Launch Data Collective, An Early Stage Fund For Big Data Startups. The fund views its portfolio startups as fulfilling one of the three layers of the “Big Data stack”: 1. Enterprise. Smartphones.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. In either type of startup you want to put in place processes in place to reduce risk.

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mashable.com

OCTOBER 27, 2010

Here, developers and dev shops are organized by vertical so you can find a shop that has expertise in the kind of app you want to build. Fees for these devs and shops run from under $5,000 to more than $20,000. Another good resource is Appolicious’ directory.

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cdixon.org

SEPTEMBER 17, 2011

Why you shouldn’t keep your startup idea secret. I have a personal diligence rule that when speaking to people at large companies, the facts that they tell you are very useful but their opinions about startup ideas no more valuable than any other smart person’s opinions). cdixon.org - chris dixons blog. Follow @cdixon.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. would look in each of the verticals. For example, How does sales differ from one market to another?

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Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2009

There is no certainty about a startup on day-one. At each startup I couldn’t wait to do this. Fact-based Execution However, successfully executing a startup requires the company to become Fact-based as soon as it can. Faith-based Entrepreneurship At first, entrepreneurship is a Faith-based initiative. Great, sign me up.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2009

Resegmentation means these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product, or by offering features that appealed to a specific niche or subset of the existing users. An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.”

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Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

I love Google. I think its one of the smartest companies out there. And it hires very smart people from the best schools. And if you meet their criteria of a “good student”, you ought to go to work there. You don’t get grades for having resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition and tenacity. You just get successful.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 23, 2009

sgblank Lean Startup Cirle 111909 This movie requires Adobe Flash for playback. They were kind enough to sponsor a meet-up in San Francisco. The video below was my presentation to the group. The slides below go with the video. Just click through them as you watch the video.

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Software By Rob

AUGUST 11, 2009

Join nearly 6,000 startup entrepreneurs by subscribing to my RSS feed. August 11th, 2009 | Micropreneurship , Startups Building your startup? Subscribe via RSS On Twitter? Follow me Startups for the Rest of Us. If youre trying to grow your startup youve come to the right place. at 9:05 am [.] . #9

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Steve Blank

MARCH 22, 2009

And you’d like me to do my talk on Customer Development and startups?” “No, we’re the other CIA.” On first glance it appears as if they are spending to much energy in the vertical portion of the jump, relative to the horizontal portion. Do you mean the Culinary Institute of America?

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Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2009

I continued to give these briefings as a consultant to ESL even after I had joined my first chip startup; Zilog. My officemate who would replace me on the site, Richard Farley , would go on to a more tragic career.) ESL had no marketing people. It had no PR agency. It shunned publicity.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 255

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 3, 2009

Posted on December 3, 2009 by steveblank In my 21 years of startups I’ve had my ideas “stolen” twice. Filed under: Rocket Science Games « Customer Development is Not a Focus Group Someone Stole My Startup Idea – Part 2: They Raised Money With My Slides?! Once it almost mattered. This is about the time it didn’t.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 22, 2009

But entrepreneurial leaders sometimes forget that in startups, you can’t allow a “corner case” to derail fearless decision making. Unlike large corporations, startup meetings are not about achieving consensus for every objection raised. They are about forward motion, momentum and feedback loops (i.e. Customer Development.)

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