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Libin: when, what and wa-how to be an...

Get the timing right, try to improve something that already exists and get an identity mug

by Steven Loeb - February 19, 2013
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How investment drives engagement

by Nir Eyal, September 24, 2012 | Comments

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Understanding the desire engine

This week, Baba Shiv and I taught a class at the Stanford Graduate School of Business called, “Using Neuroscience to Influence Human Behavior.” The course focused on the science behind how consumers make decisions. During the class, we walked through my Desire Engine framework, a four-step cycle that creates preferences and usage habits. Readers of my blog will be familiar ...

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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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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How startups can gain from gamification best practices

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, August 20, 2012 | Comments

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Vator Spark panel on gamification with CEOs of Badgeville, Bunchball, Trada

At Vator’s first Spark event, the focus was on gamification. Here's the video of the panel: "How startups can benefit from gamification techniques and best practices." On this panel were Raja Paharia, CEO and founder of Bunchball, Niel Robertson, CEO and founder of Trada, Kris Duggan, CEO and founder of Badgeville, Tim Roberts, VP of interactive design at Fitbit and moderator, Brian Blau, research director at Gartner. Here ...

Lying on your resume

by Steve Blank, August 6, 2012 | Comments

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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

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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 ...

Vision takes a whole lot of zigging and zagging

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, July 18, 2012 | Comments

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Online advertising pioneer Jeff Dachis shares his lessons learned building out his companies

In 1995, Jeff Dachis founded Razorfish, a pioneer in online advertising, which Dachis eventually led through a public offering during the dot-com boom of the late '90s. Today, Dachis presides over The Dachis Group, a social media marketing firm that's raised $30 million in funding to capitalize on the brand dollars moving online into social marketing campaigns. In this interview, ...

Running a startup is not a job, it's a lifestyle

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, July 16, 2012 | Comments

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Paul Thelen, founder and CSO of Big Fish Games, shares lessons learned about entrepreneurship

Paul Thelen is a first-time entrepreneur, having founded Big Fish Games almost a decade ago. Fast forward and Thelen is doing pretty well. Big Fish Games is on a run-rate of $200 million in revenue and it's recently acquired Self Aware Games, the producer of Card Ace: Casino, a leading grossing app on the iPad. In this interview, Thelen shares ...

Zynga, Path CEOs spill on mobile missteps

by Krystal Peak, July 10, 2012 | Comments

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Failure is a necessary step in building mobile apps according to Mark Pincus and Dave Morin

Even when every company is rushing to create and improve their mobile presence, two well-known CEOs made it clear that the road to mobile is a bumpy one -- no matter how established the business is. Zynga's CEO and founder Mark Pincus and Path’s CEO and founder Dave Morin both spoke at the Venture Beat conference held in San Francisco ...

The art of manipulation

by Nir Eyal, July 1, 2012 | Comments

	When Is creating addictive products moral? Let's admit it, we in the consumer Web industry are in the manipulation business. We build products meant to persuade people to do what we want them to do. We call these people "users" and even if we don't say it aloud, we secretly wish every one of them would become fiendishly addicted. Users take our technologies with them to bed. ...
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Entrepreneurship for the 99%

by Steve Blank, June 11, 2012 | Comments

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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. ...

Six myths about tech entrepreneurship

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, May 31, 2012 | Comments

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From what it means to be an overnight success to why business people don't start companies

My good friend Drew Curtis, founder of Fark, invited me to speak at the Haas Business School the other day. Since I've been covering entrepeneurship for years, and have become one in the last several years, he thought I should talk about entrepreneur myths. In other words, what I've learned from entrepreneurs and from being one that aren't so obvious ...

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