Steve Blank is an Adjunct Professor at Stanford and co-founder of the Gordian Knot Centre for National Security Innovation. He has been described as the Father of Modern Entrepreneurship.
Credited with launching the Lean Startup movement and聽the curriculums for the聽National Science Foundation聽Innovation Corps听补苍诲听Hacking for Defense and Diplomacy,聽he鈥檚 changed how startups are built; how entrepreneurship is taught; how science is commercialised, and how companies and the government innovate.
Steve is the author of聽The Four Steps to the Epiphany听补苍诲听The Startup Owner鈥檚 Manual which revolutionised how startups were built. His Harvard Business Review cover story redefined how large companies can innovate at speed.
If You Had One Piece of Advice For A Small Startup, What Would It Be?
Don鈥檛 confuse your passion with the facts outside the building
All you have on Day 1 is a series of untested assumptions —聽a 20-dollar word is “hypotheses” — about all the pieces聽that turn an idea into a company. We call these parts聽a company’s聽business model:聽This includes: Who are your customers? What鈥檚 your distribution channel? How do we price and position the product? How do we create end user demand? Who are our partners? Where/how do we build the product? How do we finance the company, etc.
The odds are that one or more of your hypotheses will be wrong. So you need to get out of the building and test them.
It鈥檚 very simple to do.聽I tell my students, “Humor me. Do the 10-person test: Find 10 people and talk to them. Does your product solve a problem they have? Will they write you a check?”
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What Should Startup Founders Do To Keep Their Companies ‘Lean’?
I found that startups that are successful raising money always spend that amount plus a dollar. You should be thinking about the minimum viable company as well as your minimum viable project (MVP).
Consider how early you need to layer on all the accoutrements of a large organisation and focus on the most important parts: 聽product-market fit, building a product that scales, and building a repeatable business model.
Everything else is noise 鈥揼etting a fancy building before you have customers or revenue, thinking you need to look the part. The burn rate will kill you.
What 3 books do you think should be on every founder’s shelf?
The Innovator鈥檚 Dilemma聽by Clayton Christensen
My first book,聽The Four Steps to the Epiphany
Business Model Generation聽by Alexander Osterwalder
Any Final Thoughts?
If you aren鈥檛 playing with new AI tools at least every month 鈥� either personally or getting demos of them — you鈥檙e going to be left behind and miss a huge opportunity.
