Steve Blank Quotes

Progress and stability are mutually exclusive.

The #1 change in Silicon Valley is information density. If you think about it, 30 years ago the only way you got info was during one-on-one meetings. You knew very little and the world knew very little. We just know a lot more now.

Mentorship is a two-way street. While I was learning from them [brilliant mentors] - and their years of experience and expertise - what I was giving back was equally important. I brought fresh insights and new perspectives to their thinking.

Relentless execution without knowing what to execute is a crime.

Startups demand comfort with chaos, uncertainty and change.

Market type influences everything a company does.

Only a few generations have been granted the role of determining whether a revolution in communication will allow our better angels – or our darker angels – to win. You leave here with incredible opportunity, but also with immense responsibility.

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.

The Silicon Valley entrepreneurial culture used to be limited to a few entrepreneurial clusters. Now the Internet has spread that culture everywhere.

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

No business plan survives its first contact with customers.

In a startup, founders define the product vision and then use customer discovery to find customers and a market for that vision.

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

A startup is in reality a 'faith-based enterprise' on day one. To turn the vision into reality and the faith into facts (and a profitable company), a startup must test those guesses, or hypotheses, and find out which are correct.

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