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Why too many startups (er) suck

by Steve Blank, September 27, 2012 | Comments

The 'hurdle' for successful scalable startups is high

This is a guest post by my Startup Owner’s Manual co-author Bob Dorf. While statistics are weak on startup success rates, the worst one I’ve seen suggests that two in 1000 venture-backed startups will ever achieve $100-million or more in valuation. Another stat puts that number at 2% rather than 0.2%. Either way, the “hurdle” for successful, scalable startups is high, and it ...

Entrepreneurship is hard but you can't die

by Steve Blank, September 10, 2012 | Comments

	Everyone has events that shape the rest of their lives We Sleep Peaceably In Our Beds At Night Only Because Rough Men Stand Ready To Do Violence On Our Behalf Everyone has events that shape the rest of their lives. This was one of mine. ——- I’ve never been shot at. Much braver men I once worked with faced that every day. But for a year and a half I ...
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The Lean LaunchPad Online

by Steve Blank, September 6, 2012 | Comments

Learn how to start a company

You may have read my previous posts about the Lean LaunchPad class taught atStanford, Berkeley, Columbia, Caltech and for the National Science Foundation. Now you too can take this course. I’ve worked with the Udacity, the best online digital university on a mission to democratize education, to produce the course. They’ve done an awesome job. The course includes lecture videos, quizzes and homework assignments. Multiple short ...

Vision versus hallucination

by Steve Blank, August 31, 2012 | Comments

	Founders and pivots A founder’s skill is knowing how to recognize new patterns and to pivot on a dime. At times the pattern is noise, and the vision turns out to be a hallucination. Knowing how to sort between vision and hallucination can avoid chaos inside your startup. Yuri, one of my ex-students started a big-data analytics company last year. He turned his PhD thesis ...
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Lying on your resume

by Steve Blank, August 6, 2012 | Comments

It's not the lie that will catch up with you, it's the coverup

It’s not the crime that gets you, it’s the coverup.Richard Nixon and Watergate Getting asked by reporter about where I went to school made me remember the day I had to choose whether to lie on my resume. I Badly Want the JobWhen I got my first job in Silicon Valley it was through serendipity (my part) and desperation (on the part of ...

Unrequited love

by Steve Blank, August 3, 2012 | Comments

When your 'partners' aren’t putting up proportional value, it’s not a relationship

If there’s only one passionate party in a relationship it’s unrequited love. Here’s how I learned it the hard way. The Dartmouth football teamAfter Rocket Science I took some time off and consulted for the very VC’s who lost lots of money on the company. The VC’s suggested I should spend a day at Onyx Software, an early pioneer in Sales Automation in ...

Making a dent in the universe

by Steve Blank, July 23, 2012 | Comments

	Results from the NSF I-Corps Our goal teaching for the National Science Foundation was to make a dent in the universe. Could we actually teach tenured faculty how to turn an idea into a company? And if we did, could it change their lives? We can now answer these questions. Hell yes. The Lean LaunchPad class for the National Science Foundation (NSF) Over the last six months, ...
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Tenacious

by Steve Blank, July 19, 2012 | Comments

Keep your eyes on the prize, not the obstacles

TE·NA·CIOUS/TƏˈNĀSHƏS/ Adjective: Not readily letting go of, giving up, or separated from an object that one holds, a position, or a principle: “a tenacious grip”. Not easily dispelled or discouraged; persisting in existence or in a course of action. When I was a entrepreneur I’d pursue a goal relentlessly. Everything in between me and my goal was simply an obstacle ...

Entrepreneurship for the 99%

by Steve Blank, June 11, 2012 | Comments

Using the Lean LaunchPad class to foster Mainstream Entrepreneurship

This is a guest post from Jerry Engel, the Faculty Director of the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (and the Founding Faculty Director of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley.) ———– The 99%As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. Berkeley. ...

Why Facebook is killing Silicon Valley

by Steve Blank, May 23, 2012 | Comments

	The Facebook IPO has reinforced the new calculus for investors We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one ...
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Five days to change the world

by Steve Blank, May 14, 2012 | Comments

The Columbia Lean LaunchPad Class

We’ve taught our Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship class at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and the National Science Foundation in 8 week, 10 week and 12 week versions. We decided to find out what was the Minimum Viable Product for our Lean LaunchPad class. Could students get value out of a 5-day version of the class? The SetupAt the invitation of Murray Low at the Entrepreneurship Center in the Columbia ...

Why innovation dies

by Steve Blank, May 7, 2012 | Comments

The road for innovation does not go through committee

Faced with disruptive innovation, you can be sure any possibility for innovation dies when a company forms a committee for an “overarching strategy.” —– I was reminded how innovation dies when the email below arrived in my inbox. It was well written, thoughtful and had a clearly articulated sense of purpose. You may have seen one like it in your ...

How to build a billion-dollar start-up

by Steve Blank, April 20, 2012 | Comments

Value propositions solve a problem or fulfill a human social need

The quickest way to create a billion-dollar company is to take basic human social needs and figure out how to mediate them online. (Look at the first wave of the Web/mobile/cloud start-ups that have done just that: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Match.com, Pandora, Zynga, WordPress, LinkedIn.) It’s your turn. Hard-wired This week I’m in New York teaching a 5-day version of my Lean LaunchPad class at Columbia ...

Blinded by the Light

by Steve Blank, April 3, 2012 | Comments

	The Epiphany Epiphany e·piph·a·ny noun /iˈpifənē/ A moment of sudden revelation or insight We now know how to teach entrepreneurs how to think about business models and use customer development to turn hypotheses into facts. But there is no process to teach how to get an epiphany. We can only try to create the conditions where this might occur. ————- It All Just Came to Me In a ...
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National Science Foundation Innovation Corps

by Steve Blank, March 26, 2012 | Comments

What America Does Best

We ran the first National Science Foundation Innovation Corps class October to December 2011. 63 scientists and engineers in 21 teams made ~2,000 customer calls in 10 weeks, turning laboratory ideas into formidable startups. 19 of the 21 teams are moving forward in commercializing their technology. Watching the final presentations it was clear that the results were way past our initial expectations (comments from ...

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