The most important early customers for your startup usually turn out to be quite different from who you think they’re going to be. He’s Only in Field Service When I was at Zilog, the Z8000 peripheral chips included the new “Serial Communications Controller” (SCC). As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Market Types, Zilog | Tagged: Customer Development, Steve Blank, Tips for Startups | 9 Comments »
Once I recovered from burnout at Zilog, I was working less and accomplishing more. I even had time to find a girlfriend who was a contractor to the company. One of her first comments was, “I didn’t know you even worked here. Where were you hiding?” If she only knew. What’s the Worst that Can [...]
Filed under: Marketing, Technology, Zilog | Tagged: Entrepreneurs, Steve Blank | 20 Comments »
At Zilog I was figuring out how to cope with job burnout. And one of my conclusions was that I needed to pick one job not two. I had to decide what I wanted to do with my career – go back to ESL, try to work for the Customer, or stay at Zilog? While [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, ESL, Family/Career, Zilog | Tagged: Cold War, ESL, Steve Blank | 9 Comments »
If you hang around technology companies long enough, you or someone you know may experience “burnout” – a state of emotional exhaustion, doubt and cynicism. Burnout can turn productive employees into emotional zombies and destroy careers. But it can also force you to hit the pause button and perhaps take a moment to reevaluate your [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, ESL, Family/Career, Zilog | Tagged: Early Stage Startup, Entrepreneurs, Steve Blank | 13 Comments »
What Business Are We In? While the Rocket Science press juggernaut moved inexorably forward, a few troubling facts kept trying to bubble up into my consciousness. The company was founded to build games with embedded video to bring Hollywood stories, characters, and narratives to a market where “shoot and die” twitch games were in vogue. [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Rocket Science Games | Tagged: Steve Blank, Entrepreneurs, Early Stage Startup | 7 Comments »
At Rocket Science while my partner Peter was managing the tools and game development, I was managing everything else. Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing. Our “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” story played great in Silicon Valley, they ate it up in Hollywood, and the business press tripped over themselves to [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Marketing, Rocket Science Games | Tagged: Steve Blank, Early Stage Startup, Tips for Startups | 10 Comments »
What do you mean you don’t want to hear about features? I was now a CEO of Rocket Science, and having a great time building the company (more about that in future posts.) Unfortunately, while I had gone through phases of video game addiction in my life, in no way could I be described as [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Rocket Science Games | Tagged: Steve Blank, Entrepreneurs, Early Stage Startup, Tips for Startups | 7 Comments »
I did a fireside chat with a few entrepreneurs interested in Customer Development at Draper Fisher Jurvetson, the venture firm behind such Skype, Baidu, Overture, …. Ravi Belani was nice enough to set it up, blog about the talk and film it. The relevant part starts about 4:30 into the video (wait for it to download.) [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Market Types, Technology | Tagged: Customer Development, Customer Discovery, Customer Validation, Early Stage Startup, Entrepreneurs, Steve Blank, Tips for Startups | 3 Comments »
Sometimes faith-based decisions can be based on too much faith. Entrepreneur-in-Residence After SuperMac I had been approached by one of our venture investors to be an entrepreneur in residence (EIR), a Silicon Valley phrase which says one thing but means another. To an entrepreneur, being asked to join a venture firm with an Entrepreneur-in-Residence title means [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Rocket Science Games | Tagged: Steve Blank, Entrepreneurs, Early Stage Startup | 11 Comments »
Excuse the non-Customer Development, non-entrepreneurial post. I can’t get this one out of my head. ———— The VENONA Project One of the most interesting (declassified) stories of cryptography is the deciphering of Soviet communications to their diplomatic missions in the U.S during World War II. What was amazing about these decrypts was the Soviets used [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley | 2 Comments »
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