Steve Blank
Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur and has been a founder or participant in eight Silicon Valley startups since 1978. After he retired, he wrote a book about building early stage companies: Four Steps to the Epiphany. He's moved from being an entrepreneur to teaching entrepreneurship to both undergraduate and graduate students at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University and the Columbia University/Berkeley Joint Executive MBA program. The “Customer Development” model that he developed in his book is one of the core themes for these classes. In 2009 he was awarded the Stanford University Undergraduate Teaching Award in the department of Management Science and Engineering.
Recent Posts
Incentives are one thing. Legends are another.
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
Entrepreneurs and the early startup team all need to be motivated by a shared vision, passion and desire to build a large company. Yet it’s the company legends that live on.
Our little startup was less than a year-old. We had been busy assembling our team and had just hired the last member... Continue Reading
Speed and Tempo: Fearless decision making for start-ups
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
I was catching up over breakfast with a friend who’s now CEO of his own startup. One of the things he mentioned was that when it came to decision-making he still tended to think and act like an engineer. Each and every decision he made was carefully thought through and weighed. And he... Continue Reading
Snatching victory from adversity
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
Sometimes what sounds like bad news when talking to customers might be your finest hour.
As we started E.piphany, we got out of the building to test our hypotheses by talking to potential customers in and around Silicon Valley. On one of our most memorable visits, we met with Joe DiNucci, the VP of Marketing at... Continue Reading
Can a single bottle of soda decimate your company? Absolutely.
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
Sometimes financial decisions that are seemingly rational on their face can precipitate mass exodus of your best engineers.
Last week, as a favor to a friend,... Continue Reading
Someone stole my startup idea
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
In my 21 years of startups, I had my ideas “stolen” twice. The first time it happened, it was no big deal. The other, it was serious.
Before I start that tale, a disclaimer: This is not legal advice. It’s not even advice. It’s just a story about what happened to me that you might... Continue Reading
Killing innovation with corner cases
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
I was visiting a friend whose company teaches executives how to communicate effectively. He had just filmed the second of a series of videos called, Speaking to the Big Dogs: How mid-level managers can communicate effectively with C-level executives (CEO, VP’s, General Managers, etc.) As we were plotting marketing strategy, I mentioned that the phrase “Speaking to the... Continue Reading
After VC cash? Show ‘em what you’ve learned
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
I joined the board of Cafepress.com when it was a startup. It was amazing to see the two founders, Fred Durham and Maheesh Jain, build a $100 million company from coffee cups and T-shirts.
But Cafepress’s most memorable moment was when the founders used a “Lessons Learned” VC pitch to raise their second round of... Continue Reading
Lean startups aren’t cheap startups
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
At an entrepreneurs panel last week questions from the audience made me realize that the phrase “Lean Startup” was being confused with “Cheap Startup.”
For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries’s description of the intersection of Customer Development, Agile Development and (if available) open platforms and open source.... Continue Reading
Do you have what it takes to be a founder?
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves the following series of questions:
Are you comfortable with chaos? (Startups are disorganized) Are you comfortable with uncertainty? (Startups never go per plan)... Continue Reading
Get out of my company!
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
Some of the most important business lessons are learned in the most unlikely ways. At Ardent I learned many of them with a sharp smack on the side of the head from a brilliant, but abusive, boss. Not a process I recommend, but one in which the lessons stuck for a lifetime.
... Continue Reading
How to fire your customers
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
As a board member, investor and consumer, I’ve seen several companies fire their customers. While this sounds inexplicable to an outside observer, sometimes it makes sense. Other times it’s just plain dumb.
One of the great things about being an entrepreneur is that you are constantly running a pattern recognition algorithm... Continue Reading
Do dysfunctional families breed entrepreneurs?
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
I was having lunch with a friend who is a retired venture capitalist and we drifted into a discussion of the startups she funded. We agreed that all her founding CEOs seemed to have the same set of personality traits – tenacious, passionate, relentless, resilient, agile, and comfortable operating in chaos. I said,... Continue Reading
Can you trust any VCs under 40?
(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. This column originally appeared on his blog.)
Over the last 30 years Wall Street’s appetite for technology stocks have changed radically – swinging between unbridled enthusiasm to believing they’re all toxic. Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies.
You... Continue Reading
Launching a start-up and having a family life: It’s possible!
Raising our kids and being an entrepreneur wasn’t easy. Being in a startup and having a successful relationship and family was very hard work. But entrepreneurs can be great spouses and parents.
This post is not advice, nor is it recommendation of what you should do; it’s simply what my wife and I did to raise our kids in the middle of starting multiple companies. Our circumstances were unique and your mileage will... Continue Reading
Four rules for running with the big dogs
I’ve just met four great startups in the last three days.
All four were trying to resegment an “Existing Market” – 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 these startups are trying to lure some of the current or potential customers away from incumbents by either offering a lower cost product... Continue Reading
Entrepreneurs: Beware the curse of the new building
At some point in my career, I began to ponder how/why startups morph from agile, “can do” companies to ones that have lost their edge. I didn’t need to look much further than the “new building” debacle I had a hand in.
One of the things you do right in a startup, is you move from one cheap and cramped building to another as you grow, with desks, cubicles and engineers piled cheek to jowl.
One... Continue Reading
Touching the hot stove
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, no entrepreneurship departments in universities, etc. It took lots of trial and error, learning by experience and resilience... Continue Reading
Your customers are not who you think
The most important early customers for your startup usually turn out to be quite different from who you think they’re going to be.
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 from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. I vividly... Continue Reading
You’re not as good as the press thinks
(Editor’s note: In the mid-1990s, serial entrepreneur Steve Blank was CEO of Rocket Science Games, a video game developer that lived by the motto “Hollywood meets Silicon Valley” . After releasing three mediocre titles – including “Obsidian” and “The Space Bar” – that never sold well, the company closed its doors in 1997. Here, Blank recounts one of the many problems the company ignored along its path to failure.)
At Rocket Science while my... Continue Reading