Steve Blank is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur based in Pescadero, California. Blank is recognized for developing the customer development method that launched the lean startup movement, a methodology which recognized that startups are not smaller versions of large companies, but require their own set of processes and tools to be successful. His Lean Launchpad class has become the standard for commercialization for all federal research. Blank writes and teaches about customer development and the lean startup method. He is an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at Stanford; lectures at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, and is a senior fellow at Columbia University. He has written four books: The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost, The Startup Owner's Manual, and Holding a Cat by the Tail.
Early life
Blank was born to immigrant parents who ran a grocery in the Chelsea neighborhood in New York City. He grew up with a sister who was 12 years older than him and both siblings were raised by his mother after his father left home when he was aged 6. He attended the University of Michigan, but dropped out after one semester. His military career took him to Thailand during the Vietnam War, where he was managing a team of 15 electronics technicians within a year and a half. After leaving the military, Blank moved to Palo Alto.
Startup career
Steve Blank arrived in Silicon Valley at the start of the business boom in 1978. His first job in the region was with ESL, a startup that was a pioneering company for National Reconnaissance. The company helped the government understand the Soviets' technological and arms developments during the Cold War. Some of his ventures include Zilog and MIPS Computers, Convergent Technologies, Ardent, SuperMac Technologies, ESL and Rocket Science Games. In the case of Rocket Science games, he raised $35 million in venture capital, but the company spent it all without producing a viable product. Despite his investors losing out on their returns, they were willing to provide him with an additional $12 million to begin his next startup. Blank believes that the investors are probably glad they stuck with him, as he ultimately put over $1 billion back into their pockets throughout his many startup ventures. Blank co-founded his 8th and last startup, the Customer Relationship Management provider E.piphany, in 1996 and retired the day before its IPO in September 1999.
Customer development methodology
Blank created the customer development methodology in the mid 1990s. The concept details a scientific approach that can be applied by startups and entrepreneurs to improve their products success by developing a better understanding of customers' problems/needs as well as the other hypotheses necessary to build a commercial successful company.
Lean startup movement
Blank's customer development methodology is a cornerstone of the lean startup movement, popularized by Eric Ries whom Blank states was "the best student I ever had." The lean startup approach relies on validated learning, scientific experimentation, and iterative product releases to shorten product development cycles, measure progress, and gain valuable customer feedback. Blank and Ries developed the ideas beginning around 2004 when Blank was an investor and advisor to the company, IMVU, that Ries co-founded. The lean startup has been adopted by entrepreneurs worldwide as a constructive way to try out ideas and gain customers. Ries has integrated the customer development methodology into the lean startup practices and considers it to be one of the lean startup movement's pillars.
Academic teaching career
Blank began teaching entrepreneurship in 2002 at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and has since taught entrepreneurship to both undergraduate and graduate students. He currently teaches at Stanford, the University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business, New York University and Columbia. His Lean LaunchPad curricula uses the customer development methodology and lean startup methods he developed throughout his career as a serial entrepreneur and academic.
Lean LaunchPad
In January 2011, Blank created the Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford University, Columbia Business School and UC Berkeley. The class is a method for teaching entrepreneurship that combines experiential learning with the three building blocks of a successful lean startup: Alexander Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas, Blank's customer development model, and agile engineering. The Lean LaunchPad changed the way entrepreneurship is taught. Instead of relying on the traditional business school practice of teaching students how to write a standard corporate business plan, or simply build a product, the course provides hands-on experience in what it takes to start a company. Students propose and immediately test business hypotheses. They get out of the building to talk to 10–15 prospective customers, partners and others each week. They use the customer feedback acquired in these interviews to refine their product or service by building a new minimal viable product weekly; ensure their product or service meets a customer need or solves a customer problem; and validate that they have created a repeatable, scalable business model. Since its inception, Blank's course has been adopted by more than 100 universities worldwide, and more than 300,000 people have taken a free online version of the class at Udacity.
In July 2011 the National Science Foundation asked Blank to adapt his Lean LaunchPad class for its Innovation Corps, which develops and nurtures a national innovation ecosystem by helping discoveries from fundamental research to become new companies. The course is now the standard for science commercialization, serving as the syllabus of the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps that is taught in 53 universities and has been adopted by the other federal research agencies ; and is helping to drive innovation within the U.S. government, particularly within the defense and intelligence community. Following a successful pilot, the I-Corps program quickly expanded. A version of the I-Corps program specifically dedicated to biomedical research, called The I-Corps at NIH, was devised in 2014. As of January 2017, I-Corps has a National Innovation Network of more than 190 colleges and universities, and more than 800 teams of scientists and engineers have gone through the program.
In 2005, Blank published The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win, which details his approach to the Customer Development process. In the book, Blank outlines his views about how entrepreneurship is a practice that can be actively managed rather than an art which must be passively experienced. The book is viewed in entrepreneurship circles as the definitive source on the customer development methodology.
''Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost''
Blank released a second book in 2010, Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost which relates stories from his life as an entrepreneur. The collection of material develops a narrative about how to live life amid the fast-paced world of Silicon Valley startups.
''The Startup Owner's Manual''
Steve Blank and Bob Dorf co-authored The Startup Owner's Manual, which was released in March 2012. The 608-page reference manual details a scientific approach to entrepreneurship and emphasizes the importance of "rigorous and repeated testing." The work draws on ideas from Business Model Generation and The Four Steps to the Epiphany. According to Blank, the book was designed to be used as an "encyclopedia and a blueprint" for startups.
''Holding a Cat by the Tail''
Blank released Holding a Cat by the Tail in 2014. The book is updated version of Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost, featuring additional lessons learned from his life as an entrepreneur.
Blog
Blank authors a blog about entrepreneurship. In 2012, his blog was ranked one of the "10 Must-Read Blogs for Any Lean Startup" by Welovelean.com. The blog is considered a must-read for entrepreneurs and is often syndicated by UC Berkeley, VentureBeat, Huffington Post, Forbes, Inc.com and NikkeiBP in Japan. It is available as an audio podcast on the blog itself or through SoundCloud, and translated into Spanish.
Blank is known amongst entrepreneurs and students as one of "The Godfathers of Silicon Valley". His books, blog, and interviews are often referred to or featured in world news publications such as Reuters, the New York Times, Forbes, Inc, TechCrunch and The Wall Street Journal. Blank has hosted numerous sold-out speaking events and conferences about entrepreneurship and the customer development methodology.
