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Steve Blank Quotes

born 1953 United States

Steve Blank (born 1953) is a Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur and academician who developed the Customer Development methodology that launched the Lean Startup movement. He authored The Four Steps to the Epiphany and The Startup Owner’s Manual to describe how to build a successful company.

United States
Academics
Businesspeople

Random Steve Blank quote

58 quotes

To predict the future, 1/3 of your team needs to be crazy.

Product/market fit is the holy grail for entrepreneurs.

Customers don't ask to see your business plan.

Entrepreneurs are artists and I mean “artists” in the true sense of the word: they see something no one else does.

Founders fit the definition of a composer: they see something no one else does. And to help them create it from nothing, they surround themselves with world-class performers.

Change the external culture and environment, and entrepreneurship can bloom regardless of its source—nature or nurture.

On Day One, a startup is a faith-based enterprise.

The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012)

Young entrepreneurs tend to be fearless and have no respect for the status quo, and that’s exactly what you need in an environment where the status quo is going to put you out of business.

Money is the lifeblood of startups. You stay in business until you run out of it.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany (2013)

Don't believe your own b.s. It's real easy to confuse funding with success.

Building your product is easy. The hard part is getting customers.

The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012)

The answers are easy. Asking the right questions is hard.

The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012)

Customer Discovery is damn hard work. You can't fake it.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany (2013)

Don’t execute other peoples advice if you can’t explain why you’re doing it.

A startup is not a smaller version of a large company.

The Startup Owner’s Manual (2012)

Progress and stability are mutually exclusive.

A founder's skill is knowing how to recognize new patterns and to pivot on a dime. At times the pattern is noise, and the vision turns out to be a hallucination.

Normal people expect to be recognized for what they do. Entrepreneurs make their own recognition and create their own reality.

80% of success in your career will come from just showing up. The world is run by those who show up…not those who wait to be asked.

We used to pivot by firing people. Now we fire the hypotheses.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Steve Blank (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.