Om Malik runs Gigaom, probably the most interesting and accurate site on the blogosphere. Om was kind enough to have me in for an interview. We covered a wide range of topics. This talk on Risk and Culture in Silicon Valley is a small 1 minute snippet of a longer interview on his blog.
Filed under: Family/Career/Culture, Teaching, Technology, Venture Capital | 11 Comments »
The team at True Ventures was kind enough to invite me to speak at their Founders Camp. They pull in the founders of all their startups for 24 hours of activities, speakers, and discussions. I was blown away by the raw talent of these teams. They had someone translating my words into a diagram as I [...]
Filed under: Venture Capital | 3 Comments »
I spent a few days in March in Ann Arbor Michigan as a guest of Professor Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Dean for Entrepreneurial Programs, and Doug Neal, Director of Center for Entrepreneurship in the Engineering School at the University of Michigan. I gave a keynote on entrepreneurship to MPowered, the student Entrepreneurship Organization, spoke on a panel [...]
Filed under: Teaching, Venture Capital | 28 Comments »
Carpe Diem We’re now in the second Internet bubble. The signals are loud and clear: seed and late stage valuations are getting frothy and wacky, and hiring talent in Silicon Valley is the toughest it has been since the dot.com bubble. The rules for making money are different in a bubble than in normal times. What [...]
Filed under: Technology, Venture Capital | 51 Comments »
If you’re a visiting dignitary whose country has a Gross National Product equal to or greater than the State of California, your visit to Silicon Valley consists of a lunch/dinner with some combination of the founders of Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter and several brand name venture capitalists. If you have time, the President of [...]
Filed under: Family/Career/Culture, Technology, Venture Capital | 32 Comments »
For its first few decades Silicon Valley was content flying under the radar of Washington politics. It wasn’t until Fairchild and Intel were almost bankrupted by Japanese semiconductor manufacturers in the early 1980’s that they formed Silicon Valley’s first lobbying group. Microsoft did not open a Washington office until 1995. Fast forward to today. The [...]
Filed under: Technology, Venture Capital | 53 Comments »
One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is not understanding the relationship they have with their investors. At times they confuse VC’s with their friends. Lets Go to Lunch At Rocket Science our video game company was struggling. Hubris, bad CEO decisions (mine) and a fundamental lack of understanding that we were in a “hits-based” entertainment [...]
Filed under: Rocket Science Games, Venture Capital | 31 Comments »
Utah may be known for many things, but who would have thought that Utah, and particularly Brigham Young University (BYU), would be participating in the transformation of entrepreneurship? I spent last weekend in Utah at BYU as a guest of Professor Nathan Furr, (a former Ph.D. student of our MS&E department at Stanford,) where they are set [...]
Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan, Teaching, Venture Capital | 8 Comments »
The benefits of customer and agile development and minimum features set are continuous customer feedback, rapid iteration and little wasted code. But over time if developers aren’t careful, code written to find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling. Ironically it becomes the antithesis of agile. And the magnitude of [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Technology, Venture Capital | 84 Comments »
Over the last 40 years the U.S. has evolved an entrepreneurial ecosystem with two of the most unlikely partners – venture capital investors and technology entrepreneurs. This alliance has led to an explosion of technology innovation, scalable startups and job creation. Tied at the hip, VC’s and entrepreneurs take large risks together. VC’s invest in [...]
Filed under: Venture Capital | 28 Comments »
In November 2010 as part of my interview about entrepreneurs and Customer Development, the Shoshin Project also asked me about my thoughts on investing in innovation. They wanted some words of wisdom for their investment bank and hedge fund customers. This falls into the “Asking someone who was handy versus knowledgeable” category. (I was a [...]
Filed under: Venture Capital | 1 Comment »
I spent two weeks of December in Chile as a guest of Professor Cristóbal García, Director of EmprendeUC at the Catholic University of Chile, which just signed up a 3-year collaboration partnership with Stanford’s Technology Ventures Program. I did a keynote on innovation hubs at the newly created DoFuture program, spoke at Santiago’s Startup Weekend on Customer and Agile [...]
Filed under: Teaching, Venture Capital | 35 Comments »
Too often we are so preoccupied with the destination, we forget the journey. Unknown Entrepreneurs hear that VC pitches ought to be short, 10-20 slides. What most don’t know is that there is no way they can deliver a presentation that short by just “writing” the slide deck. You Got to be Kidding An entrepreneur [...]
Filed under: Venture Capital | 12 Comments »
When It’s Darkest Men See the Stars Ralph Waldo Emerson This Thanksgiving it might seem that there’s a lot less to be thankful for. One out of ten of Americans is out of work. The common wisdom says that the chickens have all come home to roost from a disastrous series of economic decisions including [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Customer Development Manifesto, Venture Capital | 79 Comments »
Consumer Internet investing seems to have split off from traditional Venture Capital, and is creating a new category of VC’s: Lean VC’s. I think you can blame Customer and Agile Development for a small part of it. Here’s why. Electron-based Venture Capital When I first came to Silicon Valley the world of Venture Capital looked [...]
Filed under: Customer Development, Venture Capital | 24 Comments »
For Orders Outside the U.S.
Team, Student and Classroom discounts.
For International Orders
Now In Print! Steve Blank's 30 years of Silicon Valley startup advice.
Follow me on twitter @sgblank
Follow my speaking schedule on Plancast @sgblank
Get the Podcasts for Free
