Steve Blank is a serial entrepreneur and best known for his experience in high tech companies and management. Teaching entrepreneurship at both Stanford and UC Berkeley, Blank has shared some of his best strategies and tips in his books. Here is a look at some of the most notable Steve Blank quotes to familiarize yourself with.
“A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next week.”
“A startup is not a smaller version of a large company. A startup is a temporary organization in search of a scalable, repeatable, profitable business model.”
“All new companies and new products begin with an almost mythological vision—a hope of what could be, with a goal few others can see.”
“Attempting to impose precise order on how a project in a department is accomplished stifles creativity and leads to a formulistic approach to business problems.”
“Being a great entrepreneur means finding the path through the fog, confusion and myriad of choices.”
“Customer Development is damn hard work. You can’t fake it. You can’t just do the slides or “do” the process in a weekend. It’s a full-time, full-body-contact sport.”
“Facts live outside the building, where future customers live and work.”
“Half-life of a startup VP of Sales is about nine months”
My day at MIT pic.twitter.com/9RWK89VqWy
— steve blank (@sgblank) May 20, 2015
“Imagine you were able to help customers justify the ROI for your product. That would be pretty powerful, wouldn’t it?”
“In a startup no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.”
“In short, in big companies, the product spec is market-driven; in startups, the marketing is product-driven.”
“In the early stages of a startup, focusing on “execution” will put you out of business. Instead, you need a “learning and discovery” process so you can get the company to the point where you know what to execute.”
“In tougher times, when dollars are tighter, the next round of funding may never come.”
“My advice was to start a policy of making reversible decisions before anyone left the meeting or the office. In a startup, it doesn’t matter if you’re 100 percent right 100 percent of the time.”
“One of the mistakes entrepreneurs make in this step is confusing motion with action.”
“Positioning your product against the slew of existing competitors is accomplished by adroitly picking the correct product features where you are better.”
Thanks to the @UCB_EECS teaching team for a great Berkeley class pic.twitter.com/f7mmBbSXyA
— steve blank (@sgblank) December 3, 2015
“Reduce startup infant mortality by making everything you do less wasteful and more cash-efficient.”
“Remember, the goal of customer discovery is to refine a business model enough to test it on a larger scale in the next step, customer validation.”
“Rule No. 5: No Business Plan Survives First Contact with Customers So Use a Business Model Canvas”
“Startups demand execs who are comfortable with uncertainty, chaos and change—with presentations and offers changing daily.”
“Technology is adopted in phases by distinct groups: technology enthusiasts, visionaries, pragmatists, conservatives, and skeptics.”
“The first customer ship date does not mean the company understands its customers or how to market or sell to them.”
“The first product in a startup, your initial purpose in meeting customers is not to gather feature requests so you can change the product; it is to find customers for the product you are already building.”
What do you mean we might be wrong? Is there a location none pic.twitter.com/KVoNWWtfB7
— steve blank (@sgblank) April 8, 2015
“The goal of Customer Development is not to avoid spending money but to preserve cash while searching for the repeatable and scalable business model. Once found, then spend like there’s no tomorrow.”
“The greatest risk—and hence the greatest cause of failure—in startups is not in the development of the new product but in the development of customers and markets.”
“The processes used to organize and implement the search for the business model are Customer Development and Agile Development.”
“Turn those hypotheses into facts by getting out of the building and testing them in front of customers.”
“Ultimately, only one answer matters: can we generate enough revenue, profits and growth to make this business worth our time and energy?”
“Understanding what an advertiser is willing to pay to reach your startup’s audience is vital to the business model.”
“Using the Product Development Waterfall diagram for Customer Development activities is like using a clock to tell the temperature. They both measure something, but not the thing you wanted”
“Very few marketers or advertisers will be interested in small audiences, even if the product or site is destined for huge audiences down the road.”
“What’s the difference between positioning the product and positioning the company?”
“Winners throw out the traditional product management and introduction processes they learned at existing companies.”
Here is one speech given by the founder of Epiphany, Steve Blank as he discusses decision making and startups. As the creator of Customer Development methodology and the author of ‘Four Steps to the Epiphany,’ Blank knows a bit about making your idea become a reality.
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