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
In this clip, the difference between vertical markets - niche players serving a specific need or customer set; and horizontal markets - goods or services that enable a platitude of businesses - are defined for the student of entrepreneurship. The needs of start-ups differ dramatically by vertical, says serial entrepreneur Steve Blank. And taking advice from new enterprises in a different market niche can end in disaster. Take heed when receiving advice from friends in a neighboring business vertical. 
Public relations and media contact should be strategic, rather than serendipitous. Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is deeply against media coverage for a fledgeling start-up, as too many factors are variable in the early stages of a growing business.
Silicon Valley lore includes anecdotes of company founders being thrown out of their own companies. But starting a company and growing a company are two different skill sets, says serial entrepreneur Steve Blank. Investors are often frightened away by world class entrepreneurs who know how to build, but not deepen and enrich, a later stage enterprise. The tragedy, says Blank, is that the largest, best-known tech companies are still run by their founders - think Microsoft, Oracle, or Apple. The gap in this insight, says Blank, is of theatrical proportion.
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.
Why is it a bad idea to be the first and only player in a market? Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank outlines a host of reasons, including limited market opportunity, the expense of defining new markets, and the positioning risk involved in setting the market standard. Blank cautions that it may not be wise to be break new ground, and that safer terrain can be found in the footholds of the "first fast follower."
The most radical thing a new company can do is sell their product, says serial entrepreneur Steve Blank. He believes that the company founders - not the sales team - should be the first to try to turn a profit, as they will learn firsthand about their product's shortcomings and usability. Great engineers directly understand what their customers need.
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.
Female Stanford students of entrepreneurship ask serial entrepreneur Steve Blank: "How can one balance family life with the demands of the start-up?" Blank advises single people to stay single, and suggests that those with family ties set strict schedules to insure time together. Start-ups can easily take over one's life, he says, and one must be equally diligent in taking time off as working.
No matter what business vertical you're entering, serial entrepreneur Steve Blank outlines a few points of necessary focus for the emerging business start-up, including market opportunity, market regulations and distribution, competitors and complimentors, and technology breakthroughs. He notes that the customer is not always the same thing as the payer, and that this bifurcation is creating interesting new business models.
Market risk is the concern that you'll find your customers before you run out of funding. A technical risk asks if the innovation is in place to bring your start-up idea to market successfully. Both of these concerns are paramount for an entrepreneurial venture, says serial entrepreneur Steve Blank, and both have the potential to cause a young business to shutter. 
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. 
Any assumption that an entrepreneur makes about their customers and markets is nothing but a guess, says serial entrepreneur Steve Blank. But how can one prove a working hypothesis? It goes beyond soliciting friends for feedback in the dorm room. Successful ventures locate real customers in the field, solicit their feedback, and deeply analyze the customers whose problems they hope to solve.
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.
The odds of success in Silicon Valley are about 1,000:1. How can so many good ideas fail to find their place in the market? Too many start-ups burn too many resources on sales and marketing too soon, says serial entrepreneur Steve Blank. Less than ten percent of start-ups fail because of faulty technology or engineering, whereas most allude success because they don't pinpoint the right market or the right customer.
Business model innovator Alexander Osterwalder lays out reasons to map a product or service's value proposition with the actual pains customers face. Using building blocks from his business model canvas framework, Osterwalder maps the relationship and discusses, with interviewer Steve Blank, how value is created.
Author Alexander Osterwalder and serial entrepreneur Steve Blank discuss the importance blending a strong, clear story with the building blocks of the business model canvas to out perform competitors. Osterwalder also elaborates on the power of pattern recognition in developing new models.
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. 
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. 
The canonical product development model - concept, develop, alpha, beta, first customer, ship - is how Silicon Valley grew strong. But why does this process to build a business only succeed part of the time? And how can early stage ventures reduce their overall risk? Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank points out that most founding partners strongly focus on product and ship. But too often, startups confuse engineering's accomplishments with marketing and sales success, and they pop the champagne corks too soon.