Steve Blank

Blank was born to immigrant parents who ran a grocery in the Chelsea neighborhood in New York City.[10] He grew up with a sister who was 12 years older than him and both siblings were raised by his mother after his father left home when he was aged 6.[10] He attended the University of Michigan, but dropped out after one semester.[10][11]

His military career took him to Thailand during the Vietnam War, where he was managing a team of 15 electronics technicians within a year and a half.[10][11] After leaving the military, Blank moved to Palo Alto.[11]

Steve Blank arrived in Silicon Valley at the start of the business boom in 1978.[12][9] His first job in the region was with ESL, a startup that was a pioneering company for National Reconnaissance.[13] The company helped the government understand the Soviets' technological and arms developments during the Cold War.[13]

Some of his ventures include Zilog and MIPS Computers, Convergent Technologies, Ardent, SuperMac Technologies, ESL and Rocket Science Games.[5][14] In the case of Rocket Science games, he raised $35 million in venture capital, but the company spent it all without producing a viable product. Despite his investors losing out on their returns, they were willing to provide him with an additional $12 million to begin his next startup. Blank believes that the investors are probably glad they stuck with him, as he ultimately put over $1 billion back into their pockets throughout his many startup ventures. [15]

Blank co-founded his 8th and last startup, the Customer Relationship Management provider E.piphany, in 1996 and retired the day before its IPO in September 1999.[16]

Blank began teaching entrepreneurship in 2002 at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and has since taught entrepreneurship to both undergraduate and graduate students. He currently teaches at Stanford, the University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business, New York University and Columbia.[5][6][23] His Lean LaunchPad curricula uses the customer development methodology and lean startup methods he developed throughout his career as a serial entrepreneur and academic.[10]

In January 2011, Blank created the Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford University, Columbia Business School[24] and UC Berkeley. The class is a method for teaching entrepreneurship that combines experiential learning with the three building blocks of a successful lean startup: Alexander Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas,[25][26] Blank's customer development model,[27] and agile engineering.

The Lean LaunchPad changed the way entrepreneurship is taught.[28] Instead of relying on the traditional business school practice of teaching students how to write a standard corporate business plan, or simply build a product, the course provides hands-on experience in what it takes to start a company.

Students propose and immediately test business hypotheses. They get out of the building to talk to 10–15 prospective customers, partners and others each week. They use the customer feedback acquired in these interviews to refine their product or service by building a new minimal viable product weekly; ensure their product or service meets a customer need or solves a customer problem; and validate that they have created a repeatable, scalable business model.

Since its inception, Blank's course has been adopted by more than 100 universities worldwide, and more than 300,000 people have taken a free online version of the class at Udacity.[29]

In July 2011 the National Science Foundation asked Blank to adapt his Lean LaunchPad class for its Innovation Corps (I-Corps), which develops and nurtures a national innovation ecosystem by helping discoveries from fundamental research to become new companies.

The course is now the standard for science commercialization, serving as the syllabus of the National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (I-Corps) that is taught in 53 universities and has been adopted by the other federal research agencies (NIH, DOE, HHS, NSA);[30] and is helping to drive innovation within the U.S. government, particularly within the defense and intelligence community.

Following a successful pilot, the I-Corps program quickly expanded. A version of the I-Corps program specifically dedicated to biomedical research, called The I-Corps at NIH, was devised in 2014. As of January 2017, I-Corps has a National Innovation Network of more than 190 colleges and universities, and more than 800 teams of scientists and engineers have gone through the program.[1][12][3][30]

Blank was a past Chairman of Audubon California and[14] has also served on the board of the Peninsula Open Space Trust[54] and was a trustee of U.C. Santa Cruz foundation and served on the board of the California League of Conservation Voters.[55] In 2007 he was appointed to the California Coastal Commission.[56] He has made philanthropic gifts to preserve the California Coast and has contributed funds to support the visitors' center at Año Nuevo State Reserve and to the Peninsula Open Space Trust.[12][54]

Blank served as a member of the Defense Business Board until December 2020, when he resigned in protest due to "[t]he abrupt termination of more than half of the Defense Business Board and their replacement with political partisans."[57]

Blank is known amongst entrepreneurs and students as one of "The Godfathers of Silicon Valley".[50] His books, blog, and interviews are often referred to or featured in world news publications such as Reuters, the New York Times, Forbes, Inc, TechCrunch and The Wall Street Journal.[1][2][51][10][50][58] Blank has hosted numerous sold-out speaking events and conferences about entrepreneurship and the customer development methodology.[59][60][61][62]

Wikiquote has quotations related to: Steve Blank

• Steve Blank's Website
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