Entrepreneurial education in grades K-12, if it exists at all, still focuses on teaching potential entrepreneurs small business entrepreneurship – the equivalent of ‘how to run a lemonade stand.’ – Steve Blank
Not all startups are alike. One of the key ways they differ is in the relationship between a startup’s new product and its market. – Steve Blank
First and deadliest of all is a founder’s unwavering belief that he or she understands who the customers will be, what they need, and how to sell it to them. – Steve Blank
My imagination ran 24/7, and to me, every problem was a challenge to solve and new product to create. It wasn’t until I started teaching that I realized that not everyone’s head worked the same way. – Steve Blank
I have to think my success in the VC business was due in no small part to seeing Larry Ellison in action back in the day. – Steve Blank
Skunk works differed from advanced research groups in that they were more than just product development groups. They had direct interaction with customers and controlled a sales channel which allowed them to negotiate their own deals with customers. – Steve Blank
The food replacement category is what it sounds like – companies are substituting plants or food grown in a lab to replace meat, fish, eggs, milk – or, like Soylent, to package nutritionally complete meals into a drink. – Steve Blank
The Lean Startup is a process for turning ideas into commercial ventures. Its premise is that startups begin with a series of untested hypotheses. They succeed by getting out of the building, testing those hypotheses and learning by iterating and refining minimal viable products in front of potential customers. – Steve Blank
Normally when I have students over, we sit in the house and look at the fields to try to catch a glimpse of a bobcat hunting. – Steve Blank
Great entrepreneurial DNA is comprised of leadership, technological vision, frugality, and the desire to succeed. – Steve Blank
Startups have finite time and resources to find product/market fit before they run out of money. Therefore startups trade off certainty for speed, adopting ‘good enough decision making’ and iterating and pivoting as they fail, learn, and discover their business model. – Steve Blank
It’s worth noting that everything – from the Internet to electric cars, genomic sequencing, mobile apps, and social media – were pioneered by startups, not existing companies. – Steve Blank
A startup is not just about the idea: it’s about testing and then implementing the idea. A founding team without these skills is likely dead on arrival. – Steve Blank
For Customer Development to succeed, everyone on the team – from investor or parent company to engineers, marketers and founders – needs to understand and agree that the Customer Development process is different to its core. – Steve Blank
For busy young adults, the lure of meal substitutes is simple – it’s all about convenience – the level of effort to open a bottle or package is minimal, and the time from thinking you’re hungry to eating is almost zero. – Steve Blank
Describing something as the ‘Woodstock of…’ has taken to mean a one-of-a-kind historic gathering. – Steve Blank
When your product solves a problem that costs customers sleep, revenue, or profits, things are definitely looking up. – Steve Blank
You can get a good handle on a company’s culture before you even get inside the building. For example, when companies say, ‘We value our employees’ but have reserved parking spots, a private cafeteria, and over-the-top offices for the executives, that tells you more than any PR spin. – Steve Blank
Innovation in an existing company is not just the sum of great technology, key acquisitions, or smart people. Corporate innovation needs a culture that matches and supports it. – Steve Blank
In corporations, the penalty for repeated failure on known tasks is being reassigned to other tasks or asked to leave the company. – Steve Blank
Value Proposition Design is a ‘must have’ for anyone creating a new venture. It captures the core issues around understanding and finding customer problems and designing and validating potential solutions. – Steve Blank
One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is not understanding the relationship they have with their investors. At times, they confuse VCs with their friends. – Steve Blank
The goal of listening to customers is not to please every one of them. It’s to figure out which customer segments serve your needs – both short and long term. – Steve Blank
If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job. – Steve Blank
