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" The food replacement category is what it sounds like - companies are substituting plants or food grown in a lab to replace meat, fish, eggs, milk - or, like Soylent, to package nutritionally complete meals into a drink. "

Steve Blank

Drink

Food

Fish

Related Quotes:

" Part of Customer Development is understanding which customers make sense for your business. "

" Persuading employees to let go of old values and beliefs and adopt new ones can be challenging. "

" History has shown that time and market forces provide equilibrium in balancing interests, whether the new technology is a video recorder, a personal computer, an MP3 player, or now the Net. "

" Market type determines the startup's customer feedback and acquisition activities and spending. It changes customer needs, adoption rates, product features, and positioning as well as its launch strategies, channels and activities. "

" Very often, if a founder is waiting around for someone else to tell him what to do, the company is near death. "

" Founding a company is a sheer act of will and tenacity in the face of immense skepticism from everyone - investors, customers, friends, family, and employees, to name a few. "

" You can get a good handle on a company's culture before you even get inside the building. For example, when companies say, 'We value our employees' but have reserved parking spots, a private cafeteria, and over-the-top offices for the executives, that tells you more than any PR spin. "

" In a web/mobile startup, coding is not an outsourced activity. It's an integral part of the company's DNA. "

" On Day One, a start-up is a faith-based initiative built on guesses. "

" Once you establish what activities your company needs to do, the next question is, 'How do these activities get accomplished?' i.e. what resources do I need to make the activities happen? "

" Entrepreneurial education in grades K-12, if it exists at all, still focuses on teaching potential entrepreneurs small business entrepreneurship - the equivalent of 'how to run a lemonade stand.' "

" The business model is both the starting point and the scorecard for Customer Development progress. "

" Founders have continually struggled with and adapted the 'big business' tools, rules, and processes taught in business schools when startups failed to execute 'the plan,' never admitting to the entrepreneurs that no startup executes to its business plan. "

" In the past, when venture-funded startups told their investors they'd found a profitable business model, the first thing VCs would do is to start looking for an 'operating exec' - usually an MBA who would act as the designated 'adult' and take over the transition from Search to Build. "

Steve Blank

Past

Looking

" Schools reward their students for a combination of intelligence, perseverance, and hard work - in the classroom and on the playing fields. But these metrics don't help kids understand that great grades are not a pass for a great life. "

" VCs like acquisitions as much as IPOs because the acquiring companies often can rationalize paying large multiples over the current valuation of the startup. "

" As an entrepreneur, my problem was that I had too many ideas. "

" For Customer Development to succeed, everyone on the team - from investor or parent company to engineers, marketers and founders - needs to understand and agree that the Customer Development process is different to its core. "

" Visionary CEOs don't need someone else to demo the company's key products for them. They deeply understand products, and they have their own coherent and consistent vision of where the industry/business models and customers are today, and where they need to take the company. "

" I have to think my success in the VC business was due in no small part to seeing Larry Ellison in action back in the day. "

" My imagination ran 24/7, and to me, every problem was a challenge to solve and new product to create. It wasn't until I started teaching that I realized that not everyone's head worked the same way. "

" Visionary CEOs are not 'just' great at assuring world-class execution of a tested and successful business model: they are also world-class innovators. "

" Creating a vertically oriented regional ecosystem is a pretty amazing accomplishment for any country or industry. "

" Products are sold because they solve a problem or fill a need. Understanding problems and needs involves understanding customers and what makes them tick. "

" Founders, presuming they know their customers, assume they know all the features customers need. "

" What's been missing from regions outside of Silicon Valley is a 'playbook.' In American football, a playbook contains a sports team's strategies and plays. It struck me that every region needs its own industry playbook on how to compete globally. "

Steve Blank

American

Football

" If you think the job of a CEO is to increase sales, then Ballmer did a spectacular job. "

" Great VCs do everything they can to make you successful. But just like your bank, credit card company, mortgage holder, etc. they are not confused where their long-term loyalty lies. "

" The convergence of digital trends, along with the rise of China and globalization, has upended the rules for almost every business in every corner of the globe. "

" Any dispassionate observer would recognize that on Day One, a start-up has no customers, and unless the founder is a true domain expert, he or she can only guess about the customer, problem, and business model. "