Serial Entrepreneur
Steve Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur with over 30 years of experience in high technology companies and management. He is a Consulting Professor at Stanford in the Graduate School of Engineering STVP Program.
Steve has been a founder or participant in eight Silicon Valley startups since 1978. His last company, E.piphany, started in his living room. His other startups include two semiconductor companies (Zilog and MIPS Computers), a workstation company (Convergent Technologies), a supercomputer firm (Ardent), a computer peripheral supplier (SuperMac), a military intelligence systems supplier (ESL) and a video game company (Rocket Science Games).
Steve is on the board of CafePress.com, an on-line marketplace, and IMVU, a 3D IM social network.
Steve was appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to the California Coastal Commission and is the Chairman of Audubon California and on the board of the Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST.)
His Google Tech talk, "The Secret History of Silicon Valley" (available on YouTube) is one of the definitive views on the early history of innovation in Silicon Valley.
Steve teaches entrepreneurship and a methodology of managing marketing, sales and business development in high technology startups. His course text "Four Steps to the Epiphany" is the definitive work on Customer Development and is one of the foundations of Lean Startups.
Last Updated: Wed, Oct 1, 2008
| Category | Title | Author/Speaker | Organization | Length | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Video | No VP's in a Start-up | Steve Blank | Serial Entrepreneur | 01:50 | 10/2008 |
| Video | Intimate Customer Understanding | Steve Blank | Serial Entrepreneur | 02:00 | 10/2008 |
| Podcast | Intersection of the Environment and Financial Markets | Jesse Fink · Steve Blank | Priceline, Serial Entrepreneur | 57:51 | 01/2008 |
| Video | Technology as Medium, Not Content | Jesse Fink · Steve Blank | MissionPoint Capital | 04:12 | 01/2008 |
| Video | What is Low-Carbon Investing? | Jesse Fink · Steve Blank | MissionPoint Capital | 05:11 | 01/2008 |
| Video | Environmental Entrepreneurship Over Non-Profit | Jesse Fink · Steve Blank | MissionPoint Capital | 03:11 | 01/2008 |
| Video | Merging Commercial and Philanthropic Interests | Jesse Fink · Steve Blank | MissionPoint Capital | 03:23 | 01/2008 |
| Video | The Thriving Green Economy | Jesse Fink · Steve Blank | MissionPoint Capital | 05:23 | 01/2008 |
Start-ups are not junior versions of larger companies. It's a different animal, says serial entrepreneur Steve Blank. Rather than developing a sales team or a marketing team from the get-go, Blank believes that a launching company should bring them together under the umbrella of customer development.
An entrepreneur needn't be a heart surgeon, but they must have an understanding of the tools a heart surgeon might need. That said, learning a business vertical is the responsibility of a great financier, regardless of its complexity, says Steve Blank, serial entrepreneur. Without this depth of customer understanding - knowing their problems and why they buy - no new venture can succeed.
Retired serial entrepreneur Steve Blank interviews MissionPoint Capital co-founder Jesse Fink. The two discuss the manifold investment opportunities in alternative energies and environmental conservation.
Priceline co-founder Jesse Fink explains to entrepreneur Steve Blank how his early company was a technology-enhanced solution to a business model - and not a real technology play - that succeeded in providing for both business and consumer. Fink brings these same solutions to his current investment firm, MissionPoint, who believes it will be business models and capital markets that find environmental solutions, and not the technology itself.
MissionPoint Capital Partners co-founder Jesse Fink explains what it means to merge clean energy and environmental finance, including cap and trade and other infrastructure supports, that helps bring clean tech initiatives to market faster and at a lower cost. 
From equity, to bonds, to real estate, MissionPoint Capital Partners co-founder Jesse Fink explains how traditional capital markets can be reoriented toward a low-carbon economy. Supporting non-profits is crucial in long-term environmental thinking, says Fink, as this sector pushes policy. But only for-profit business will catalyze true market solutions with pull. 
With endowments seeking the right investment products and non-profits staffing business school graduates, rather than butting heads, non-profits and for-profit enterprises are more collaborative than ever. Jesse Fink of MissionPoint Capital Partners points out that particulary in the environmental sector, the spectrum is narrowing between the two. 
Jesse Fink, co-founder of MissionPoint Capital Partners, and serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, pinpoint how green investing is ripe with opportunity and ready to jumpstart the economy. Investors in Silicon Valley and elsewhere are increasingly drawn to the ROI - and not just altruism - and they're taking notice of increased capital volume, career opportunities, and entrepreneurs who are lured by the green sector's genuine returns.