Steve Blank Podcast

Laura Thomas is a former CIA operations officer. Reading how she moved in 2021 from CIA ops into a quantum technology company offered insightful career transition advice for those leaving her agency. Most of her lessons were applicable to any government employee venturing out to the private sector. This is the first of her three-part series.

In the early stages of a startup your hypotheses about all the parts of your business model are your profound beliefs. Think of profound beliefs as “strong opinions loosely held.” You can’t be an effective founder or in the C-suite of a startup if you don’t hold any. Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development.

I just saw the movie Oppenheimer. A wonderful movie on multiple levels. But the Atomic Bomb story that starts at Los Alamos with Oppenheimer and General Grove misses the fact that from mid-1940 to mid-1942 it was Vannevar Bush (and his number 2, James Conant, the president of Harvard) who ran the U.S. atomic bomb program and laid the groundwork that made the Manhattan Project possible. Here’s the story.

I just spent a month and a half at Imperial College London co-teaching a “Wicked” Entrepreneurship class. In this case Wicked doesn’t mean morally evil, but refers to really complex problems, ones with multiple moving parts, where the solution isn’t obvious. (Understanding and solving homelessness, disinformation, climate change mitigation or an insurgency are examples of wicked problems. Companies also face Wicked problems. In contrast, designing AI-driven enterprise software or building dating apps are comparatively simple problems.)

Today, the U.S. is supporting a proxy war with Russia while simultaneously attempting to deter a China cross-strait invasion of Taiwan. Both are wakeup calls that victory and deterrence in modern war will be determined by a state’s ability to both use traditional weapons systems and simultaneously rapidly acquire, deploy, and integrate commercial technologies (drones, satellites, targeting software, et al) into operations at every level.

Artificial Intelligence has been the technology right around the corner for at least 50 years. Last year a set of specific AI apps caught everyone’s attention as AI finally crossed from the era of niche applications to the delivery of transformative and useful tools – Dall-E for creating images from text prompts, Github Copilot as a pair programming assistant, AlphaFold to calculate the shape of proteins, and ChatGPT 3.5 as an intelligent chatbot. These applications were seen as the beginning of what most assumed would be domain-specific tools. Most people (including me) believed that the next versions of these and other AI applications and tools would be incremental improvements. We were very, very wrong.

Data shows that pre-seed and seed startups with employees showing up in a physical office have 3½ times higher revenue growth than those that are solely remote. Let the discussion begin. During the pandemic, companies engaged in one of the largest unintended experiments in how to organize office work – remotely, in offices, or a hybrid of the two. Post-pandemic, startups are still struggling to manage the best way to manage return-to-office issues – i.e. employee’s expectations of continuing to work remotely versus the best path to build and grow a profitable company.

Three types of organizations – Incubators, Accelerators and Venture Studios – have emerged to reduce the risk of early-stage startup failure by helping teams find product/market fit and raise initial capital. Venture Studios are an “idea factory” with their own employees searching for product/market fit and a repeatable and scalable business model. They do the most to de-risk the early stages of a startup.

A CEO running a B-to-B startup in needs to live in the city where their business is – or else they’ll never scale.

We just wrapped up the second year of our Technology, Innovation, and Great Power Competition class – now part of our Stanford Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation. Joe Felter, Raj Shah and I designed the class to 1) give our students an appreciation of the challenges and opportunities for the United States in its enduring strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China, Russia and other rivals, and 2) offer insights on how commercial technology (AI, machine learning, autonomy, cyber, quantum, semiconductors, access to space, biotech, hypersonics, and others) are radically changing how we will compete across all the elements of national power e.g. diplomatic, informational, military, economic, financial, intelligence and law enforcement (our influence and footprint on the world stage).

In the past, headlines about the Pentagon failing its financial audit again would never have caught my attention. But having been in the middle of this conversation when I served on one of the Defense Department’s advisory boards, I understand why the Pentagon can’t count. The experience taught me a valuable lesson about innovation and imagination in large organizations, and the difference visionary leadership – or the lack of it – can make.

Join Jerry Engel, Pete Newell, and Steve Weinstein for the sixth edition of the Lean Innovation Educators Summit December 14, 1-4 pm Eastern Time, 10 am-1 pm Pacific Time. This virtual gathering will bring together entrepreneurship educators from around the world who are putting Lean Innovation to work in their classrooms, accelerators, venture studios, and student-driven ventures.

My good friend Alexander Osterwalder, the inventor of the business model canvas (one of foundations of the Lean Methodology) has written a playbook (along with his associate partner Tendayi Viki,) From Innovation Theater to Growth Engine to explain how to build and implement repeatable innovation processes inside a company. Here’s their introduction to the key concepts inside the playbook.

I spent last week at a global Fortune 50 company offsite watching them grapple with disruption. This 100+-year-old company has seven major product divisions, each with hundreds of products. Currently a market leader, they’re watching a new and relentless competitor with more money, more people and more advanced technology appear seemingly out of nowhere, attempting to grab customers and gain market share.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step - Lǎozi 老子 I just had lunch with Shenwei, one of my ex-students who had just taken a job in a mid-sized consulting firm. After a bit of catching up I offered he was looking a bit lost. “I just got handed a project to help our firm enter a new industry – semiconductors. They want me to map out the space so we can figure out where we can add value.

Last month the U.S. passed the CHIPS and Science Act, one of the first pieces of national industrial policy – government planning and intervention in a specific industry — in the last 50 years, in this case for semiconductors. After the celebratory champagne has been drunk and the confetti floats to the ground it’s helpful to put the CHIPS Act in context and understand the work that government and private capital have left to do.

How does a newly hired Chief Technology Officer (CTO) find and grow the islands of innovation inside a large company? How not to waste your first six months as a new CTO thinking you’re making progress when the status quo is working to keep you at bay?

Hundreds of billions in public and private capital is being invested in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning companies. The number of patents filed in 2021 is more than 30 times higher than in 2015 as companies and countries across the world have realized that AI and Machine Learning will be a major disruptor and potentially change the balance of military power.

Looking at a satellite image of Ukraine online I realized it was from Capella Space – one of our Hacking for Defense student teams who now has 7 satellites in orbit. National Security is Now Dependent on Commercial Technology They’re not the only startup in this fight. An entire wave of new startups and scaleups are providing satellite imagery and analysis, satellite communications, and unmanned aerial vehicles supporting the struggle.

Cram downs are back – and I’m keeping a list. At the turn of the century after the dotcom crash, startup valuations plummeted, burn rates were unsustainable, and startups were quickly running out of cash. Most existing investors (those still in business) hoarded their money and stopped doing follow-on rounds until the rubble had cleared.