Steve Blank's Blog, page 59

Keeping Score

One of the toughest problems for entrepreneurs is to keep score as they search for their business model.

Keeping Score

One of the key concepts of Customer Development is writing down your initial hypotheses (guesses) of all the parts of your business model, then updating them with the facts you find outside the building.

Since I first wrote the book Four Steps to the Epiphany I've realized that an even better way to keep score is by diagramming each of your  business model hypotheses on a...

You Can't Take It With You

If you've had a great career what happens to all your knowledge and experience when you retire?

Great Suit

My wife and I had dinner last night with a friend of hers from high school. Tom, her husband whom I had never met before joined us as well. I took one look at his suit and guessed "high-powered lawyer. " (I was right, the suit probably added another $250 per billable hour.)

Over dinner we got chatting, and I found out that besides the great suit, Tom was actually a pretty remarkable guy...

The Phantom Sales Forecast – Failing at Customer Validation

Startup CEO's can't delegate sales and expect it to happen. Customer Validation needs to have the CEO actively involved.

Here's an example in a direct sales channel.

Customer Development Diagnostics over Lunch

A VC asked me to have lunch with the CEO of  a startup building cloud-based enterprise software. (Boy did I feel like Rip Van Winkle.) The board was getting nervous as the company was missing its revenue plan.

These lunches always start with the CEO looking like they had much better...

The New Deal – A Founding CEOs Value is Non Linear

As a founder I fought with VC's over vesting as they brought in a new CEO and walked me out the door. As a board member I negotiated with founding CEO's over vesting when I thought it was their time to go. At best this is an argument where no one wins, at worst it's like a nasty divorce.

I'll offer that both entrepreneurs and VC's have the wrong model for founding CEO equity compensation. The customary vesting model has founders vest their stock over 4-years, and when the founding CEO gets in ...

Welcome to the Lost Decade (for Entrepreneurs, IPO's and VC's)

If you take funding from a venture capital firm or angel investor and want to build a large, enduring company (rather than sell it to the highest bidder), this isn't the decade to do it. The collapse of the IPO market and dysfunctional math in the venture capital community has stacked the odds against you.

Here's why.

The Golden Age for Entrepreneurs and VC's
The two decades from 1979 when pension funds fueled the expansion of venture capital to 2000 when the dot-com bubble burst were the...