Steve Blank Quotes

#1. When you're gone would you rather have your gravestone say, 'He never missed a meeting.' Or one that said, 'He was a great father.'

Steve Blank

#2. Startups don't fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model.

Steve Blank

#3. Build and they will come' is not a strategy, it's a prayer.

Steve Blank

#4. Disruption on the first day always looks like a toy ...

Steve Blank

#5. We now know that something between 85 and 90 percent of most software product features are unwanted and unneeded by customers. That is an enourmous ammount of waste of time and money that ends up on the floor.

Steve Blank

#6. People talk about getting lucky breaks in their careers. I'm living proof that the 'lucky breaks' theory is simply wrong. You get to make your own luck ... The world is run by those who show up ... not those who wait to be asked.

Steve Blank

#7. A business model describes how your company creates, delivers and captures value.

Steve Blank

#8. Using the Product Development Waterfall diagram for Customer Development activities is like using a clock to tell the temperature. They both measure something, but not the thing you wanted.

Steve Blank

#9. A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.

Steve Blank

#10. The core tenant of what I teach is there are no facts inside the building. When we come up with a new idea, we tend to slide into our own reality distortion field to convince ourselves and others. And that's not healthy.

Steve Blank

#11. The company that consistently makes and implements decisions rapidly gains a tremendous, often decisive, competitive advantage.

Steve Blank

#12. Unless you have tested the assumptions in your business model first, outside the building, your business plan is just creative writing.

Steve Blank

#13. There are no facts inside the building so get the hell outside.

Steve Blank

#14. Essentials of how to do a startup do not include writing a business plan

Steve Blank

#15. Greatest risk is not development of new product, but development of customers and markets

Steve Blank

#16. Business plans are the tool existing companies use for execution. They are the wrong tool to search for a business model.

Steve Blank

#17. In a startup no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.

Steve Blank

#18. For students to understand what the future of journalism is going to be, they're going to have to invent it. It's a big idea. We don't know what journalism is going to look like in the next three years, let alone the next 10 years.

Steve Blank

#19. One of the mistakes we'll make because we're human beings is to believe that your vision is a fact. That's the natural optimism of human beings.

Steve Blank