Steve Blank Quotes

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

Steve Blank

#2. More and more believers are tasting the same despair the world lives in because they have chosen to "walk ... as other Gentiles walk, in the [emptiness] of their mind."8

Jim Berg

#3. It was more like the final piece in a puzzle: Even if it's missing, one can know its shape from the blank space it's meant to fill.

Steve Hockensmith

#4. Those fighting for free enterprise and free competition do not defend the interests of those rich today. They want a free hand left to unknown men who will be the entrepreneurs of tomorrow ...

Ludwig Von Mises

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

Steve Blank

#6. It is not just for a few states to sit and veto global approvals.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

#7. The absence of dissent does not necessarily imply acceptance; just tolerance.

Lakshmy Menon Chatterjee

#8. Legislation that names a specific private organization to defund (rather than all organizations that engage in a particular activity) is improper and arguably unconstitutional.

Justin Amash

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

Steve Blank

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

Steve Blank

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

Steve Blank

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

Steve Blank

#13. Rejection slips, or form letters, however tactfully phrased, are lacerations of the soul, if not quite inventions of the devil-but there is no way around them.

Isaac Asimov

#14. I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.

Steve Martin

#15. 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

#16. Ecclesiastes shows that man without God is in total ignorance and inevitable misery.

Blaise Pascal

#17. 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

#18. 3) Saturday night is the official meeting night of Penny Lane's Lonely Hearts Club. Attendance is mandatory. Exceptions are for family emergencies and bad hair days only.

Elizabeth Eulberg

#19. 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

#20. We at The Web Standards Project turned everything on its head. We said browsers should support the same standards instead of competing to invent new tags and scripting languages. We said designers, developers, and content folks should create one site that was accessible to everyone.

Jeffrey Zeldman

#21. We are not makers of history. We are made by history.

Martin Luther King Jr.

#22. We've hit the hot guy mother lode," I whispered reverently when they were about five feet from our table. "Welcome to my nightmare," Elvira muttered.

Kristen Ashley

#23. 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

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

Steve Blank

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

Steve Blank

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

Steve Blank

#27. The Bible, undoubtedly, is a mixed bag. I don't see myself coming back to the Church. I do like the tradition. If you come from a strong culture, you can decide what you agree with and what you don't agree with. If you're given a blank canvas, it's almost harder in life.

Steve Coogan

#28. It's like painting the same blank canvas over and over and over and over and over. Once the concept is known, you don't need to see two. And that was in the back of my head, that I was really done artistically with what I had created or pastiched.

Steve Martin

#29. 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

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

Steve Blank

#31. 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

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

Steve Blank

#33. 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

#34. She was the royal princess. She had to start acting like one. She had to stop talking about being trapped, about being handed over from one man to another. She had to start acting.
She had to start being the hero.

Liz Braswell

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

Steve Blank

#36. Happiness is so rare that our mind can turn somersaults to protect it.

David Henry Hwang