Steve Blank Quotes

Every successful business, even Google, Facebook, Twitter, started with a combination of manual improvements and friends of the founders using the site.

A lot of entrepreneurs hate big companies. But if you hate them so much, why are you trying to build a new one? The truth is, as soon as a startup has any kind of success whatsoever, it will face big company problems.

The United States is a huge market, and once you get rolling, you can replicate that model over and over pretty easily. Your supply lines are taken care of. You don't have technicians to deal with. You've got your customer base.

When I think of revenue growth, I think of the words 'mix' and 'shift.'

As you start the company, you start spending spending spending ahead of revenue but then you come out of it and very quickly you should become a company that spends less than it makes. And what I mean by very quickly, is that window of time should be in that 6 to 8 year time frame. And the reason is because if you build your business model correctly it's almost unavoidable.

If you have a great idea that can translate elsewhere, then that's where the scalability comes in - and that's where you can actually start to make real money.

Companies buy customers when they cannot win new business on their own. They merge when their executives do not have a better idea of what to do.

Companies that grow for the sake of growth or that expand into areas outside their core business strategy often stumble. On the other hand, companies that build scale for the benefit of their customers and shareholders more often succeed over time.

Most entrepreneurs don't need as many customers as they think. A lot of people think 10 is too few for a sample. But if all 10 refused a product, why is that not enough? If you want 100, 1,000 or a million customers, you first have to get 10.

I'm really inspired to build a billion-dollar company. The hardest part is building the vehicle to get you there.

The way to build billion dollar companies is to first build something people love. There isn't really a shortcut there.

If you look historically, what creates growth and wealth is innovation and investment, and increase in scale - more customers.

What I tell founders is not to sweat the business model too much at first. The most important task at first is to build something people want. If you don't do that, it won't matter how clever your business model is.

One of the things we urge Y-Combinator companies to do is to have profitability in grasp. If you need to get profitable before your A round of money, you ought to be able to do that.

When most people ask about a business growing, what they really mean is growing revenue, not just growing the number of people using a service. Traditional businesses would view people using your service that you don't make money from as a cost.

AOL has a great collection of brands, and the question is, 'Can they innovate and scale their business?' And those are very challenging things to do. But I think they are well positioned to grow.

India is a large market where our focus will be to grow faster than the market and add few percentage points to our market share every year.

Solving problems for users at scale ultimately results in monetization opportunities.

If you are planning to start a business, and if you want that business to have a hope of succeeding, be sure you are approaching your venture from a true Entrepreneurial Perspective.

I love using a targeted acquisition approach in conjunction with a business that has a clear strategy and strong organic growth.

We've continued to expand the overall footprint of Ulta Beauty both physically and digitally in so many ways.

We often say if you have traction, lead with traction. Talk about specific customers, usage numbers, revenue metrics - anything like that that really is clearly explicit and factual. Get that out in front early.

Companies with significant revenue (more than $100 million) have, by definition, significant traction. They have proven out their thesis and can scale up or down as investment capital becomes available.

Every new startup business creates new opportunities. It doesn't matter whether you have a new app for college students or a home medical device for senior citizens; there are other multibillion noncompetitive corporations that are spending millions of dollars trying to market their goods and services to your same audience.

I don't understand how you can have product-market fit and not a lot of people wanting your product. The two go hand-in-hand.