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 »
This is Part VI of how I came to write “The Secret History of Silicon Valley“. This post makes a lot more sense if you look at the earlier posts as well as the video and slides. —————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers, Tina Selig and [...]
Filed under: Air Force, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Technology | Tagged: Electonic Warfare, Fred Terman, Signals Intelligence, Steve Blank, World War II | 17 Comments »
When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. – The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance I always had been curious about how Silicon Valley, a place I had lived and worked in, came to be. And throughout my career as an entrepreneur I kept asking questions of my VC investors and friends; Where did entrepreneurship [...]
Filed under: Secret History of Silicon Valley, Technology | Tagged: Cold War, Entrepreneurs, Steve Blank | 14 Comments »
This is Part IV of how I came to write “The Secret History of Silicon Valley“. Read Part III first and it will make a bit more sense. All You Can Read Without a Library Card It was 1978. Here I was, a very junior employee of ESL, a company with its hands in the [...]
Filed under: ESL, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Technology | Tagged: Bill Perry, Cold War, ESL, Signals Intelligence, Steve Blank | 5 Comments »
This is Part III of how I came to write “The Secret History of Silicon Valley“. 1978. Two years out of the Air Force, serendipity (which would be my lifelong form of career planning) found me in Silicon Valley working for my first company: ESL. If you’re an entrepreneur, ESL is the most important company [...]
Filed under: ESL, Secret History of Silicon Valley, Technology | Tagged: Bill Perry, Cold War, ESL, Signals Intelligence, Steve Blank | 15 Comments »
This is post II of how I came to write “The Secret History of Silicon Valley“. 1974. The Vietnam war was winding down. After been stationed at three fighter bases in Thailand (Ubon, Udorn and Korat) and working on Electronic Warfare suites on F-4’s, A-7’s, F-105’s and AC-130’s, I got orders to report to a [...]
Filed under: Air Force, Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Steve Blank | 16 Comments »
About a month ago I had one of the strangest phones call of my life. “Steve my name is Donald xx, and I’m the head of external affairs of the CIA’s venture capital firm and we’d like you to keynote our conference.” CIA? “Do you mean the Culinary Institute of America? And you’d like me [...]
Filed under: Air Force, Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Steve Blank | 14 Comments »
I am going to post on Mondays and Thursdays – at least until I run out of war stories. Posts are going to be a mix of topics: entrepreneurship, secret history and conservation. I’ll try to mix the topics up during the week. BTW, keep the comments coming, they’re read and appreciated.
Filed under: Conservation, Customer Development, Secret History of Silicon Valley | Tagged: Steve Blank | 3 Comments »
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