Customer Development | Startups | Steve Blank Podcast - Clearshore

Fund Raising is a Means Not an End

Steve Blank — Tue, 11 Jun 2013 22:19:54 +0000

For many entrepreneurs “raising money” has replaced “building a sustainable business” as their goal. That’s a big mistake. When you take money from investors their business model becomes yours…read full post.

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Who’s Doing the Learning?

Steve Blank — Mon, 03 Jun 2013 22:16:37 +0000

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University of Minnesota Commencement speech – May 10th 2013

Steve Blank — Wed, 15 May 2013 19:55:07 +0000

I am honored to be with you as we gather to celebrate your graduation. This school has a distinguished roster of graduates… Earl Bakken, the founder ofMedtronic, was an Electrical Engineering grad, and Bob Gore of Gortex, and your current president are both alums of your Chemical Engineering program…read full post.

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Guns and Cyber Security

Steve Blank — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:05:50 +0000

I grew up in New York City and for a few years heaven on earth for me was going toBoy Scout camp in the summer near the Delaware River. The camp had all the summer adventures a city kid could imagine, hiking, fishing, canoeing, etc. But for me the best part was the rifle range….read full post.

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Fly High

Steve Blank — Mon, 29 Apr 2013 19:57:41 +0000

Todd Branchflower was one of my Lean LaunchPad students entrepreneurial enough to convince the Air Force send him to Stanford to get his graduate engineering degree. After watching my Secret History of Silicon Valley talk, he became fascinated by how serendipity created both weapon systems and entrepreneurship in World War II – and brought us federal support of science and Silicon Valley…read full post.

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When Hell Froze Over – in the Harvard Business Review

Steve Blank — Tue, 16 Apr 2013 19:50:53 +0000

In my 21 years as an entrepreneur, I would come up for air once a month to religiously read the Harvard Business Review. It was not only my secret weapon in thinking about new startup strategies, it also gave me a view of the management issues my customers were dealing with…read full post.

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China Startups (The Complete Series)

Steve Blank — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 23:22:26 +0000

I just spent a few weeks in Japan and China on a book tour for the Japanese and Chinese versions of the Startup Owners Manual. In these series of 5 posts, I thought I’d share what I learned in China. All the usual caveats apply. I was only in China for a week so this a cursory view. Thanks to Kai-Fu Lee of Innovation Works, David Lin of Microsoft Accelerator, Kevin Dewalt and Frank Hawke of the Stanford Center in Beijing, and my publisher China Machine Press…read posts 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5.

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The Lean LaunchPad Goes to High School

Steve Blank — Sat, 02 Mar 2013 20:57:17 +0000

While the Lean LaunchPad class has been adopted by Universities and the National Science Foundation, the question we get is, “Can students in K-12 handle an experiential entrepreneurship class?” Hawken School has now given us an answer…read full post.

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Failure and Redemption

Steve Blank — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 21:49:09 +0000

“What’s gone and what’s past help
Should be past grief.”

William Shakespeare - The Winter’s Tale

We give abundant advice to founders about how to make startups succeed yet we offer few models about dealing with failure…read full post.

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Why Big Companies Can’t Innovate

Steve Blank — Sat, 23 Feb 2013 21:53:31 +0000

My friend Ron Ashkenas interviewed me for his blog on the Harvard Business Review. Ron is a managing partner of Schaffer Consulting, and is currently serving as an Executive-in-Residence at the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley. He is a co-author of The GE Work-Out and The Boundaryless Organization. His latest book is Simply Effective. For what I had thought were a few simple ideas about taking what we’ve learned about startups and applying it to corporate innovation, the post has gotten an amazing reaction…read full post.

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