Steve Blank Quotes

I can't understand the conditions of a corporate product being designed and getting millions. I admire it, it's great, but I don't know how to do that. I have to have the wheel.

I want to create an environment where I can create technology, get it into the hands of someone to market it, and move on to other technologies so I can keep innovating. I want to be a serial entrepreneur: Incubate an idea, get it to a good state, and make that an enabler to get to the next state. It's every researcher's fantasy.

The biggest problem I see with early-stage entrepreneurs is they get the idea in their head, and they leave it in their head. And they begin embellishing it in their head, making it more ornate. They add on the second story to their dream house - then add the tennis court and the turrets and the gargoyles.

I always knew I wanted to start my own line. Nights and weekends, I would work on my business plan.

One of the banes of successful innovation is that companies may be so committed to innovation that they will give the innovators a lot of money to spend.

I think running a business, doing what I've done for the last - since 1996, has taught me so many things because I started from just an idea and then had to figure out how to make it, market it, every single thing from soup to nuts on how to get a product done and out there.

The only way anyone's going to succeed is to build the product.

It turns out that no undergrad class prepares you to start a startup - you learn most of it as you do it.

No matter what, once the doors are open for business, the entrepreneur has no choice but to be directing multiple attacks at once - raising money, writing software, prototyping, selling, collecting, training, and marketing.

Working on a startup is a balancing act: being crazy enough to believe your idea can take off but not crazy enough to miss the signs when it's clearly not going to.

I don't invest in ideas because ideas are a dime a dozen. I could steal the idea pretty quickly.

If you're doing business, not that simple to only buy. You have to create something. You have to create something that never exist for the future.

Entrepreneurs create value; I wanted to create ideas that became machines for making value.

I understand the highs and lows of building a global business from the ground and taking that initial product idea all the way to the market.

Coming up with novel ideas and converting them into real products has always been as natural as breathing for me.

I told myself the next time I had a good idea, I would bring it to market.

As an entrepreneur, I am focused on my business.

Ideas are of themselves extraordinarily valuable, but an idea is just an idea. Almost anyone can think up an idea. The thing that counts is developing it into a practical product.

I probably have traveled and walked into more variety stores than anybody in America. I am just trying to get ideas, any kind of ideas that will help our company. Most of us don't invent ideas. We take the best ideas from someone else.

Start-up success is not a consequence of good genes or being in the right place at the right time. Success can be engineered by following the right process, which means it can be learned, which means it can be taught.

In the movies, you want a good story and characters that are honest, but you are also looking for a good director who can lead the ship. That's how we look at business. Everybody has a great idea for a start-up, and so do their relatives, and they tell me, 'You gotta build it.' I say, 'I have to believe in it.'

Our greatest lack is not money for any undertaking, but rather ideas, If the ideas are good, cash will somehow flow to where it is needed.

In a startup, in the early days, it can be hard to explain what you do.

For me, the winning strategy in any start-up business is, 'Think big but start small.'

Entrepreneurs must be practical experts. They needn't set out to be subject matter experts in what they do; they must set out to solve a problem or pursue some cause or purpose greater than themselves.