This post makes more sense if you read the previous post – The Leading Cause of Startup Death: The Product Development Diagram. After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Customer Development Manifesto | Tagged: Customer Development | 34 Comments »
When I started working in Silicon Valley, every company bringing a new product to market used some form of the Product Development Model. Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer [...]
Filed under: Customer Development | Tagged: Customer Development, Early Stage Startup, Entrepreneurs, Tips for Startups | 23 Comments »
I love TechCrunch. If you’re a startup raising money or just want to see your name online, there’s not a better blog on the web. Reading this TechCrunch post made me remember the first time I saw someone confront a worldview they didn’t expect. Discovering that your worldview is wrong or mistaken can be a [...]
Filed under: ESL, Family/Career/Culture, Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Tips for Startups | 14 Comments »
I’ve just met four great startups in the last three days. An Existing Market All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market.” An existing market is one where competitors have a profitable business selling to customers who can name the market and can tell you about the features that matter to them. Resegmentation means [...]
Filed under: Customer Development | Tagged: Customer Development, Customer Discovery, Early Stage Startup, Entrepreneurs, Tips for Startups | 10 Comments »
This post is the latest in the “Secret History Series.” They’ll make much more sense if you read some of the earlier ones for context. See the Secret History bibliography for sources and supplemental reading. ———————– Swords Into Plowshares After the end of World War II, returning veterans were happy to beat swords into plowshares (and microwave [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley, Technology | Tagged: Cold War, Electonic Warfare, Fred Terman, Signals Intelligence | 5 Comments »
Apologies for a “Secret History” post that appeared today and now is gone from the blog. (Those of you with a reader still have it.) It was a rough draft you’ll see again when I can finish complete sentences. (Something you can appreciate if you’ve read my class text on Customer Development.) My only excuse [...]
Filed under: California Coastal Commission | Leave a Comment »
I’m a slow learner. 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.) In 1978 when I joined my first company, information about how to start companies simply didn’t exist. No internet, no blogs, no books on startups, [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Customer Development | Tagged: Customer Development, Entrepreneurs, Tips for Startups | 9 Comments »
This post is the latest in the “Secret History Series.” They’ll make much more sense if you read some of the earlier ones for context. See the Secret History bibliography for sources and supplemental reading. ———————– In the 1950′s Stanford University’s Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) continued to develop innovative microwave tubes for the U.S. military. This next [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Cold War, Electonic Warfare, Fred Terman, Signals Intelligence | Leave a Comment »
One of my first posts (here) was learning about bats, moths and electronic countermeasures in natural systems in Thailand in the middle of the War in Vietnam. Catching up on my back issues of Science magazine all I could do was smile when I read the title of an article in the July 17th issue: [...]
Filed under: Air Force | Leave a Comment »
This post makes sense in context with the previous post. ——– The Korean War catapulted Stanford University’s Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) into a major player in electronic intelligence and electronic warfare systems. Encouraged by their Dean, Fred Terman, scientists and engineers left Stanford Electronics Research Laboratory to set up companies to build microwave tubes and systems for [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Cold War, Electonic Warfare, Fred Terman | 2 Comments »
These next series of posts chronicles the untold story of how one professor returning from one war decides to enlist Stanford University in waging the next one and by accident, laid the foundation for Silicon Valley, venture capital and entrepreneurship as we know it today. These posts cover two distinct periods – the first, the [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Cold War, Electonic Warfare, Fred Terman, Steve Blank | 8 Comments »
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