Steve Blank famous quotes

03-24-2025

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

#Graduation #Running #Careers
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

#Years #Ideas #Next
The world is run by those who show up not those who wait to be asked,
-- Steve Blank

#Inspirational #Graduation #Running
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

#Mistake #Believe #Optimism
Greatest risk is not development of new product, but development of customers and markets
-- Steve Blank

#Risk #Development
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

#Reality #Ideas #Healthy
You need to ask yourself, â€˜Where do you want to work: startups, mid-size or large companies?â€™ If you find yourself debating the â€˜startup versus large companyâ€™ choice youâ€™ve already chosen the big company. Entrepreneurship isnâ€™t a career choice itâ€™s a passion and obsession.
-- Steve Blank

#Passion #Careers #Choices
A startup is aÂ temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model.
-- Steve Blank

#Organization #Models #Temporary
A business model describes how your company creates, delivers and capturesÂ value.
-- Steve Blank

#Capture #Company #Models
Build and they will comeâ€™ is not a strategy, itâ€™s a prayer.
-- Steve Blank

#Prayer #Strategy
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

#Waste #Wasting Time #Ends
In a startup no facts exist inside the building, only opinions.
-- Steve Blank

#Facts #Opinion #Building
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

#Father #Balance #Gone
Essentials of how to do a startup do not include writing a business plan
-- Steve Blank

#Writing #Essentials #Plans
Unless you have tested the assumptions in your business model first, outside the building, your business plan is just creative writing.
-- Steve Blank

#Writing #Creative #Firsts
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

#Trust #Development #Waterfalls
My advice was to start a policy of making reversible decisions before anyone left the meeting or the office. In a startup, it doesn't matter if you're 100 percent right 100 percent of the time. What matters is having forward momentum and a tight fact-based data/metrics feedback loop to help you quickly recognize and reverse any incorrect decisions. That's why startups are agile. By the time a big company gets the committee to organize the subcommittee to pick a meeting date, your startup could have made 20 decisions, reversed five of them and implemented the fifteen that worked.
-- Steve Blank

#Business #Data #What Matters
Startups donâ€™t fail because they lack a product; they fail because they lack customers and a profitable business model.
-- Steve Blank

#Failing #Profitable Business #Models
No Plan Survives First Contact With Customers
-- Steve Blank

#Firsts #Contact #Plans
There are no facts inside the building so get the hell outside.
-- Steve Blank

#Facts #Hell #Building
At the end of the day, you can decide whether you want to be an employee with a great attendance record, getting promoted to ever better titles and working on interesting projects - or whether you want to attempt to do something spectacular - this be or do should be a question you never stop asking yourself - for the next 20 years, and beyond.
-- Steve Blank

#Years #Interesting #The End Of The Day
Disruption on the first day always looks like a toyâ€¦
-- Steve Blank

#Firsts #Toys #Looks
Business plans are the tool existing companies use for execution. They are the wrong tool toÂ searchÂ for a business model.
-- Steve Blank

#Execution #Tools #Use
Startups are painful, stressful and at times demoralizing. You need to be a true believer in the vision of what you are doing. You need to passionate about it and love what youâ€™re doing.Â If you donâ€™t, there is no way you can sustain the hours, stress and disappointment. Thereâ€™s no way youâ€™re going to be able to convince investors, customers and most importantly recruit a world-class team if you not building something you think is going to change the world.
-- Steve Blank

#Disappointment #Stress #Team

You may also like:

Ben Horowitz
Businessman
Brad Feld
Chris Guillebeau
Author
Clayton Christensen
Professor
Dave McClure
Entrepreneur
David Heinemeier Hansson
Programmer
Eric Ries
Entrepreneur
Fred Wilson
Venture capitalist
Geoffrey Moore
Manager
Guy Kawasaki
Author
James C. Collins
Author
Jeffrey Sachs
Economist
Marc Andreessen
Entrepreneur
Mark Suster
Entrepreneur
Patrick Vlaskovits
Author
Peter Diamandis
Physician
Reid Hoffman
Entrepreneur
Seth Godin
Author
Tim Ferriss
Author
Will Harvey
Entrepreneur