Billion-dollar mind trick; How Instagram...

The photo-sharing site is conversant in psychology as much as technology

by Nir Eyal - April 23, 2012
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Why Facebook is killing Silicon Valley

by Steve Blank, May 23, 2012 | Comments

	The Facebook IPO has reinforced the new calculus for investors We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one ...
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The Darwinian evolution of start-up hubs

by Fred Wilson, May 21, 2012 | Comments

The first tree in Silicon Valley was Fairchild Semiconductor, founded in 1957

(Fred Wilson is a VC at Union Square Ventures, based in NY. In this opinion piece, he writes about how Silicon Valley became the innovation center of the world and how NYC is emerging as another hotbed for start-ups.) This past weekend finds NYC in between Internet Week (which I largely missed because of my London trip) and Disrupt NYC (which I will ...

Spotting the next Facebook

by Nir Eyal, May 18, 2012 | Comments

	Why emotions are big business Facebook will sell shares Friday in one of the biggest tech IPOs in history. New investors will gobble up the stock to get a piece of the global phenomenon famously started in Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room in 2004. But while owning the stock will have quantifiable value when it trades on the open market, few buyers will be able to say truthfully ...
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Cloud-based solutions that work for small businesses

by Eric Remer, May 15, 2012 | Comments

Eliminate overhead costs and get back to your passion

Approximately two-thirds of small business owners started their business to pursue a personal passion, according to Intuit. In the beginning, many small business owners think getting their doors open for business is the most challenging aspect. Often times it isn’t until after they start getting clients through the door that they realize all of the time-consuming, administrative work it takes ...

Five days to change the world

by Steve Blank, May 14, 2012 | Comments

The Columbia Lean LaunchPad Class

We’ve taught our Lean LaunchPad entrepreneurship class at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and the National Science Foundation in 8 week, 10 week and 12 week versions. We decided to find out what was the Minimum Viable Product for our Lean LaunchPad class. Could students get value out of a 5-day version of the class? The SetupAt the invitation of Murray Low at the Entrepreneurship Center in the Columbia ...

Strange sex habits of Silicon Valley

by Nir Eyal, May 6, 2012 | Comments

Screen-shot-2012-05-04-at-3.48.26-pm-300x201

Fully a third of Americans would rather give up sex than lose their cell phones

My wife put our daughter to bed, brushed her teeth, and freshened up before bed. Slipping under the covers, we exchanged glances and knew it was time to do what comes naturally for a couple on a warm night in Silicon Valley. We began to lovingly caress--but not each other, of course. She began to fondle her cell phone, while ...

Michael Wu's gamification deck at Vator Spark

by Kristin Karaoglu, May 4, 2012 | Comments

Lithium's chief scientist on the science of gamification

2012 05-01 vator tv -science of gamification v01b-slideshare View more presentations from Michael Wu PhD The first keynote speaker of the morning at the inaugural Vator Spark event was Michael Wu, chief scientist, from Lithium.com. Lithium is a business helping companies engage their social customers to be the best advocates they can. Also read Krystal Peak's write-up on Wu's presentation, Gamification is not alone a ...

How to build a billion-dollar start-up

by Steve Blank, April 20, 2012 | Comments

Value propositions solve a problem or fulfill a human social need

The quickest way to create a billion-dollar company is to take basic human social needs and figure out how to mediate them online. (Look at the first wave of the Web/mobile/cloud start-ups that have done just that: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Match.com, Pandora, Zynga, WordPress, LinkedIn.) It’s your turn. Hard-wired This week I’m in New York teaching a 5-day version of my Lean LaunchPad class at Columbia ...

The tough decision of changing business models

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, April 13, 2012 | Comments

UTest founder and CEO Doron Reuveni on ditching one model for another

In this "Lessons learned" interview, uTest founder and CEO Doron Reuveni, talks about how the company changed business models since its launch in 2007. Boston-based uTest has about 50,000 engineers conducting crowd-sourced testing for companies. When the company first started, the payment model was a pay-per-bug model, said Reuveni. The market rejected the model. And, the company soon embraced a project-based as ...

Filetrek CEO Dale Quayle on repositioning a start-up

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, April 12, 2012 | Comments

How this cloud-based file-sharing service evolved into its business

Filetrek, which recently raised $10 million in funding earlier this year, recently pivoted to enter the market for file-sharing services in the cloud. In this "Lessons learned" interview, Dale Quayle, the newly-appointed CEO of FileTrek, talks about the company's lessons and challenges making those changes. Quayle also talks about the tax benefits of having an outsourced engineering team in Canada.

Start-ups need teams that can run fast, and change

by Bambi Francisco Roizen, April 6, 2012 | Comments

Bambi Francisco interviews Scott Button, founder and CEO of Unruly on his lessons learned

Scott Button became a first-time entrepreneur when he founded Unruly in 2006. He's since done a pretty good job at his first go at it. Unruly just raised $25 million in venture financing in January, thanks to revenue that tripled last year. Here's some lessons he's learned as a start-up founder for the last six years. Here's some highlights (slightly ...

Stanford 2012 Lean LaunchPad presentations

by Steve Blank, March 14, 2012 | Comments

Part 2 of 2

Today, the second half of the Stanford Engineering Lean LaunchPad Class gave their final presentations. Here are the final four (the first five are here.) Team ParkPoint CapitalThis team spoke face-to-face with 326 customers. As often happens, this team came into class convinced that their market research proved that their business was providing credit to underbanked customers. 8 weeks later they ended up ...

Search versus execute

by Steve Blank, March 12, 2012 | Comments

A startup's goal is to find a repeatable/scalable model, and then execute

One of the confusing things to entrepreneurs, investors and educators is the relationship between customer development and business model design and business planning and execution. When does a new venture focus on customer development and business models? And when do business planning and execution come into play? Here’s an attempt to put this all in context. Don’t throw the tomatoesI was in Washington ...

Stanford 2012 Lean LaunchPad Presentations

by Steve Blank, March 7, 2012 | Comments

	Part 1 of 2 Today, the first half of the Stanford Engineering Lean LaunchPad Class gave their final presentations. Here are the first five. It Feels Like 20 Years Ago TodayIt’s hard to believe it’s only been a year since we taught the first 10 teams in the Stanford Lean LaunchPad class. To share what we learned, we blogged each of those class sessions, (all the slides can be ...
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