Steve Blank Quotes (52 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

Steve Blank: 52 quotes 3 likes

Famous Steve Blank Quotes

“There are no facts inside the building, so get the hell outside.”

Steve Blank

Forbes "Try 'Walking The Path' To Solve Your Startup Problems" http://www.forbes.com/sites/theyec/2015/10/27/try-walking-the-path-to-solve-your-startup-problems/#6cb0ab3a5c64. October 27, 2015.

“The Silicon Valley culture is "I can win and you can win" - it isn't a sum-zero game.”

Steve Blank

Interview with Steve Blank (2013)

“Strategy Is not a to-do list.”

Steve Blank

Entrepreneur "Strategy is Not a To-do List" https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/238513 October 16, 2014.

“Winners understand why customers buy.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 124.

“On Day One, a startup is a faith-based enterprise.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 8

“Your brains have been rewired to process all this Net-based information. Your brains are dealing with the world in a different way than humans ever have. That kind of profound shift has occurred only six times in the entire 200,000-year history of Homo Sapiens. And you, here today, are the vanguard of the seventh wave”

Steve Blank

Discussing the seven waves (the invention of speech, the written word, the printing press, newspapers, radio, television, and Internet)
Dalhousie University Commencement Speech (2017)

Steve Blank Quotes about the world

“80% of success in your career will come from just showing up. The world is run by those who show up…not those who wait to be asked.”

Steve Blank

Philadelphia University Commencement speech NPR: "The Best Commencement Speeches, Ever" http://apps.npr.org/commencement/speech/steve-blank-philadelphia-university-2011/. May 14, 2011.

“Light a path for the better angels. The world is counting on you.”

Steve Blank

Dalhousie University Commencement Speech (2017)

“Founders fit the definition of a composer: they see something no one else does. And to help them create it from nothing, they surround themselves with world-class performers.”

Steve Blank

Forbes "Entrepreneurship is an Art Not a Job" http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveblank/2013/03/29/entrepreneurship-is-an-art-not-a-job/#754e53231d5b. March 29, 2013.

“The #1 change in Silicon Valley is information density. If you think about it, 30 years ago the only way you got info was during one-on-one meetings. You knew very little and the world knew very little. We just know a lot more now.”

Steve Blank

Interview with Steve Blank (2013)

Steve Blank Quotes about business

“No business plan survives its first contact with customers.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 53.

“Customers don't ask to see your business plan.”

Steve Blank

Not All Who Wander Are Lost, K&S Ranch, 2010, p. 40.

“Young entrepreneurs tend to be fearless and have no respect for the status quo, and that’s exactly what you need in an environment where the status quo is going to put you out of business.”

Steve Blank

Forbes "Lean And Meaningful: What Founders Still Need To Fix In The 21st Century" https://www.forbes.com/sites/emilyinverso/2016/02/10/lean-and-meaningful-what-founders-still-need-to-fix-in-the-21st-century/#1a89897a2389. February 29, 2016 issue.

“Money is the lifeblood of startups. You stay in business until you run out of it.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Four Steps to the Epiphany (2013), p. 297

“A startup is a temporary organization in search of a scalable, repeatable, profitable business model.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. xvii.

Steve Blank: Trending quotes

“To predict the future, 1/3 of your team needs to be crazy.”

Steve Blank

VentureBeat "‘Blank’s Rule’: To predict the future, 1/3 of your team needs to be crazy" https://venturebeat.com/2015/12/19/blanks-rule-to-predict-the-future-13-of-your-team-needs-to-be-crazy/. December 19, 2015.

Future

“In Silicon Valley, we have a special word for a failed entrepreneur – it’s called experienced.”

Steve Blank

University of Minnesota commencement speech, FounderLY http://www.founderly.com/2013/05/university-of-minnesota-commencement-speech. May 06, 2013.

“Number one is "Do you have curiosity?" Number two is "Does it translate to imagination?" But number three is "Did it translate to action?" That’s the difference between someone with an idea and someone who is an entrepreneur.”

Steve Blank

Interview with Harvard Business Review, https://hbr.org/ideacast/2017/08/when-startups-scrapped-the-business-plan.html.3 August 2017

Imagination , Idea

Steve Blank Quotes

“Building your product is easy. The hard part is getting customers.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 147.

Parting

“Innovation comes from those who see things that other don’t.”

Steve Blank

Philadelphia University Commencement speech NPR: "The Best Commencement Speeches, Ever" http://apps.npr.org/commencement/speech/steve-blank-philadelphia-university-2011/. May 14, 2011.

“Progress and stability are mutually exclusive.”

Steve Blank

Tweet https://twitter.com/sgblank/status/792843860506320897 at twitter.com/sgblank, 30 Oct. 2016, 10:41 PM

“If you're afraid to fail in a startup, you're destined to do so.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 33.

“Entrepreneurs are artists and I mean “artists” in the true sense of the word: they see something no one else does.”

Steve Blank

Steve Blank in interview with Jake Cook, "Steve Blank: Lessons From 35 Years of Making Startups Fail Less" http://99u.com/articles/7256/steve-blank-lessons-from-35-years-of-making-startups-fail-less, U99 website, 2013.

Sense

“While there is an occasional bad apple, the public market rewards companies with revenue growth and sustainable profits.”

Steve Blank

Steve Blank, Not All Who Wander Are Lost, K&S Ranch, 2010, p. 54.

“The best startups discover a situation where customers have tried to build a solution themselves.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 86.

“A startup is in reality a 'faith-based enterprise' on day one. To turn the vision into reality and the faith into facts (and a profitable company), a startup must test those guesses, or hypotheses, and find out which are correct.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Four Steps to the Epiphany (2013), p. 83

Faith , Reality

“Customer Development says “Glad you have these hypotheses about your startup. All of them are probably wrong.””

Steve Blank

Startup Grind "70,000 tests later, Steve Blank knows how your startup can fail" https://medium.com/startup-grind/70-000-tests-later-steve-blank-knows-how-your-startup-can-fail-81e316baecca#.niap677nt. June 15, 2016.

“I’ve watched how, in a blink of an eye, technology went from products used by the very few, to ending up in the pockets of billions, bringing social change and corporate disruption.”

Steve Blank

Dalhousie University Commencement Speech (2017)

Change

“The Silicon Valley entrepreneurial culture used to be limited to a few entrepreneurial clusters. Now the Internet has spread that culture everywhere.”

Steve Blank

Interview with Steve Blank (2013)

“Build it and they will come” is not a strategy; it’s a prayer.”

Steve Blank

Forbes "How To Test The Assumption That People Actually Want Your Product" https://www.forbes.com/sites/groupthink/2016/06/14/how-to-test-the-assumption-that-people-actually-want-your-product/#420ab8f74217. June 14, 2016.

“Market type influences everything a company does.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 39.

“Customer Discovery is damn hard work. You can't fake it.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Four Steps to the Epiphany (2013), p. 50.

“A startup is not a smaller version of a large company.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. xvii.

“Relentless execution without knowing what to execute is a crime.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 11.

“Startups demand comfort with chaos, uncertainty and change.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 44.

Change

“The question is whether you'll tell your children that this decade was the beginning of a new dark age, or whether it was the time of something new and wonderful.”

Steve Blank

Dalhousie University Commencement Speech (2017)

Children , Age , Question , Time

“There are several generations of Silicon Valley CEOs who "pay-it-forward." It’s an understood, underground thing you don’t talk about. You give back to younger founders and entrepreneurs without asking for anything. The goal is to pass on what we learned to make our startup ecosystem better.”

Steve Blank

Interview with Steve Blank (2013)

Learning

“Only a few generations have been granted the role of determining whether a revolution in communication will allow our better angels – or our darker angels – to win. You leave here with incredible opportunity, but also with immense responsibility.”

Steve Blank

Dalhousie University Commencement Speech (2017)

Angels , Communication

“Don't believe your own b. s. It's real easy to confuse funding with success.”

Steve Blank

Success

“The answers are easy. Asking the right questions is hard.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 91.

Question

“Great entrepreneurs are revolutionaries. They speak truth to power. They change the status quo. They rebel against what exists. If you want to see what country will create the next Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, see how they treat their dissidents.”

Steve Blank

Interview with Steve Blank (2013)

Truth , Change , Country

“Change engenders resistance, and resistance creates saboteurs.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 345.

Change

“Founders are truly artists – they see something no one else does.”

Steve Blank

Fortune "Entrepreneurs as dissidents" http://fortune.com/2012/11/06/entrepreneurs-as-dissidents/. November 6, 2012.

“We used to pivot by firing people. Now we fire the hypotheses.”

Steve Blank

People

“When I was young, I learned a quote in Sunday school that has stayed with me throughout my life. It said, 'teach us to number our days that we gain a heart of wisdom.' * Most of us will wake up 28,762 days- and then one day - we won’t. That means you have about 21,000 days left - and about 14,000 of them for your career. So herein lies the urgency.”

Steve Blank

NYU Commencement Speech, Blank to Millennials: 'Make the Days of Your Life Matter'" https://www.inc.com/zoe-henry/steve-blank-2016-commencement-speech-steve-jobs.html,"Steve, May 23, 2016.

Life , Wisdom , School , Quotes

“Mentorship is a two-way street. While I was learning from them [brilliant mentors] - and their years of experience and expertise - what I was giving back was equally important. I brought fresh insights and new perspectives to their thinking.”

Steve Blank

" Speech at New York University's Tandon School of Engineering http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-blank/nyu-commencement-speech-2_b_10114910.html," at huffingtonpost.com, posted 05/24/2016.

Way , Thinking , Learning

“Entrepreneurship is an art, not a job.”

Steve Blank

Forbes "Entrepreneurship is an Art Not a Job" http://www.forbes.com/sites/steveblank/2013/03/29/entrepreneurship-is-an-art-not-a-job/#754e53231d5b. March 29, 2013.

Art

“Only because earlyvangelists are buying into your total vision will they spend money for an incomplete, buggy, barely functions first product.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 77.

Money

“In a startup, founders define the product vision and then use customer discovery to find customers and a market for that vision.”

Steve Blank

Source: The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012), p. 25.

“Will you let darker angels win as you add fire to the flame, or will you seek out and spread real news?”

Steve Blank

Dalhousie University Commencement Speech (2017)

Angels

“Confusing testosterone with strategy is a bad idea.”

Steve Blank

Business Insider "You're Better Off Being A Fast Follower Than An Originator" http://www.businessinsider.com/youre-better-off-being-a-fast-follower-than-an-originator-2010-10, October 5, 2010.

Idea

“A founder's skill is knowing how to recognize new patterns and to pivot on a dime. At times the pattern is noise, and the vision turns out to be a hallucination.”

Steve Blank

" Vision vs. Hallucination https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/224301/", Entrepreneur.com, 30 Aug 2012.

Time