Alexander Osterwalder and I spent last week in Salt Lake City, Utah as judges at the 2nd Annual International Business Model Competition, hosted by Professor Nathan Furr, and his team at the BYU Center for Entrepreneurship. The idea of a Business Model competition first emerged when I realized that Business Plan writing ought to be taught in English Departments [...]
Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Customer Development, Lean LaunchPad | 7 Comments »
While entrepreneurship is in the news fairly regularly, I seldom make news myself. Today, however there are two important updates for entrepreneurs everywhere. Let me be brief… The “Startup Owner’s Manual” goes On Press Tuesday 2/14 Two years in the making and literally ten years in development, I’m proud to announce that my new book, [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Business Model versus Business Plan, Customer Development, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching | 71 Comments »
I was lucky enough to get interviewed by Ron Morris of American Entrepreneur Radio. Ron Morris has a great “radio voice,” and actually seemed to understand what the heck I was talking about. It made for a fun interview. Click here to listen to the interview: Steve Blank American Entrepreneur Radio interview The following week Ron Morris interviewed [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Business Model versus Business Plan, Customer Development | 3 Comments »
Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not. George Bernard Shaw We’re in the middle of our National Science Foundation Innovation Corps class – taking the most promising research projects in American university laboratories and teaching these scientists the basics of entrepreneurship. Our [...]
Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Customer Development | 10 Comments »
I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. (Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team for the fabulous logistics!) I presented to 1,000’s of entrepreneurs, talked to 17 startups, gave 12 lectures, had 9 interviews, chatted with 8 VC’s, sat on 4 panels, talked policy with 2 government ministers, 2 members of [...]
Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Customer Development, Teaching, Venture Capital | 15 Comments »
I spent the month of September lecturing, and interacting with (literally) thousands of entrepreneurs in two emerging startup markets, Finland and Russia. This is the first of two posts about Finland and entrepreneurship. —— I was invited to Finland as part of Stanford’s Engineering Technology Venture Program partnership with Aalto University. (Thanks to Kristo Ovaska and team [...]
Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Customer Development, Teaching, Technology, Venture Capital | 19 Comments »
If you’re an experienced coder and user interface designer you think nothing is easier than diving into Ruby on Rails, Node.js and Balsamiq and throwing together a web site. (Heck, in Silicon Valley even the waiters can do it.) But for the rest of us mortals whose eyes glaze over at the buzzwords, the questions are, [...]
Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Customer Development, Lean LaunchPad | 45 Comments »
Not understanding and agreeing what “Entrepreneur” and “Startup” mean can sink an entire country’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. ——— I’m getting ready to go overseas to teach, and I’ve spent the last week reviewing several countries’ ambitious attempts to kick-start entrepreneurship. After poring through stacks of reports, white papers and position papers, I’ve come to a couple [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Business Model versus Business Plan, Teaching, Technology, Venture Capital | 60 Comments »
What makes startups succeed or fail? More than 90% of startups fail, due primarily to self-destruction rather than competition. For the less than 10% of startups that do succeed, most encounter several near death experiences along the way. Simply put, while we now have some good theory, we just are not very good at creating [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Business Model versus Business Plan, Customer Development, Market Types | 12 Comments »
There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come Victor Hugo When The Boardroom is Bits A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. It’s time to ask why startup board governance has failed to keep pace with innovation. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Business Model versus Business Plan, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching, Venture Capital | 32 Comments »
There are none so blind as those who will not see. Jonathan Swift What’s Wrong With Today’s Board Meetings As customer and agile development reinvent the Startup, it’s time to ask why startup board governance has not kept up with the pace of innovation. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. [...]
Filed under: Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan, Business Model versus Business Plan, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching, Venture Capital | 18 Comments »
The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. This last post – part nine – highlights the final team presentations. Parts one through eight, the class lectures, are here, Guide for our mentors is here. Syllabus is here. This is the End Class lectures were over last week, but [...]
Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching | 13 Comments »
The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. This post – part eight – was the last formal lecture. Parts one through seven of the lectures are here, Syllabus is here. While this is the last lecture, the teams still have one more week to work on their companies, [...]
Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching | 4 Comments »
The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. With one week and one more updates to go, this post is part seven. Parts one through six are here, Syllabus is here. With a week to go the teams are starting to look like opening night before the big play. [...]
Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching | 2 Comments »
The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment with a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. With two weeks and two more updates to go, this post is part six. Parts one through five are here, Syllabus is here. While we’ve been pushing hard on the teams, this week the teaching team was about to get its [...]
Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Lean LaunchPad, Teaching | 3 Comments »
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