Steve Blank Quotes

Small businesses, you can give them capital, but what they often need as much is mentoring, advice and help with their business plan.

I think the mistake people make most often when they invest in other kinds of startups is they say, 'This is totally different.' And so the things that matter, like making a product that people desperately want, like talking to customers, they throw this out the window. That is a recipe for heartache and tears.

A lot of people want to start a business, and they're like, 'I wanna start a business, give me some money to invest.' Where is your business plan? Are you investing money yourself into your own business? How is this going to work? People think that they can just come to you with an idea and have money.

While 'The Owner's Manual' is not a formula for guaranteed success by any means, we're confident it will help reduce the failure rate of most startups that use our Customer Development process.

I think a lot of entrepreneurs think they need money to build the business faster when they actually haven't figured out the business equation yet.

When you're starting your own business it's really important to think through your plan: what's the idea, why is it relevant to the market, how much money you are going to invest, how are you going to tell people about it.

If you want to build a startup that has a good chance of succeeding, don't listen to me. Listen to Paul Graham and others who are applying tons of data to the idea of startup success. That will maximize your chance of being successful.

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.

If opening your own business is the dream, then it must start with a Dream - not only to understand what it is that you want to do, but also, how you are going to build something better than the same chaotic environment you just left.

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

Whenever you start a new business, the sheer number of variables at hand makes failure a constant possibility.

It's important for founders to think about how they would build their company from scratch - again.

Successful entrepreneurship takes complete dedication and careful strategizing along with market analysis. Plus, successful startups provide countless benefits to a healthy economy and consumers in need.

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

Well, I think that there's a very thin dividing line between success and failure. And I think if you start a business without financial backing, you're likely to go the wrong side of that dividing line.

To be a designer today is to be an entrepreneur. Whether you're a two-man operation in Shoreditch or a 3,000-person, vertically integrated brand, you need to have the wherewithal to run your business through investment, considering everything from start-up funds to your exit plan or what it takes to go public.

There's always something happening in the world that creates an opportunity to try to fix a business and build a business.

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.'

Most people end up owning a business by accident. Therefore, they don't usually have a thought process and a strategic plan in place.

Young entrepreneurs should spend an awful lot of time thinking about what they want to go into.

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.

For a startup, you need to stay small so the others don't attack, or you aim to be one of the big guys. If you don't do it right, you might lose everything.

I don't think you should ever start a business and move in a direction where you can't see it becoming a business.

Start small; get to know the landscape. We take risks but not major risks. We always started with small capital - €4m in Holland, $10m in Russia - and as we get to know the landscape of a country, we think about other businesses.