Steve Blank Quotes

Founders go wrong when they start to believe their business plan will materialize as written. I advise entrepreneurs to burn their business plan - it's simply too dangerous to the health of your business.

Most entrepreneurs are merely technicians with an entrepreneurial seizure. Most entrepreneurs fail because you are working IN your business rather than ON your business.

Most small-business owners have no financial education when they started. They weren't trained to be entrepreneurs.

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.

For over forty years, I've been one of the most passionate believers in entrepreneurs. From day one, I've learned that too many small businesses are predicated on business models that the owner barely understands, and then, those same men and women are baffled when their business dreams are overwhelmed with struggles they never foresaw.

As a serial investor who has raised hundreds of millions of dollars for startups, I know that the business plans coming out of incubators tend to be vetted and more thoroughly validated. The incubator's input into your business plan will make you look far more polished and experienced - even if you have never run a business before.

Most entrepreneurs think capital is the biggest problem they have - but it's not. You can have all the capital you want, but if the market fit and ability to adjust are not present, your startup will likely not succeed.

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.

Access to capital is one of the most important first steps entrepreneurs take when starting a business, and it is also one of the biggest difficulties, especially for our veterans.

Often, entrepreneurs don't build a board until they are forced to by their VCs when they raise their first financing round. This is dumb, as you are missing the opportunity to add at least one person to the team who - as a board member - can help you navigate the early process of building your company and raising that first round.

Every entrepreneur, whether man or woman, should start with a robust business structure.

Traditional companies have to start looking into themselves to offer more opportunities in their companies by starting new subsidiaries and joint ventures.

I've never been a business person, nor have I ever pretended to understand the first thing about it.

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.

We need to be focused in corporate America on the long term.

I like to tell small business owners and entrepreneurs, 'I get it. I have your back on this. I understand about regulation. I understand how taxes are taxing. I understand what it is like not to be able to borrow money when you need it.'

Lots of entrepreneurs don't want to be hassled by a board of directors early on. The entrepreneurs want to control the company, don't want to be responsible to a board, or don't want to waste time communicating with board members. This is a classic error of thinking about the early stage board incorrectly.

Many entrepreneurs do not realize that many of the problems their businesses face today began yesterday, long before there was a business.

Entrepreneurs can benefit a lot from the right help and advice, and you can avoid costly mistakes. You can get incredible leverage in hiring people who wouldn't even talk to you if you have the right help. An investor isn't about money - it's about the help and advice you can get.

Most entrepreneurs come up with a product, or they come up with an idea and they think they can be successful with it. But if they don't know the financial side of their business and understand credit and working capital and what it takes money-wise, you can't be successful. The product is just a product.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, I was an entrepreneur-in-residence at the Kauffman Foundation working with Jana Matthews on 'learning programs for high growth entrepreneurs.'

You don't think, when you start a company as the founding CEO, that if your venture actually works, you end up with three jobs: founder, CEO, and chair of the board. The first eight years at Bonobos, I have learned a lot about the tension between the first two. It didn't even occur to me that I had the third job until much later.

Business books are generally read and written by people who aren't good at business.

I really have become very interested at working with and helping entrepreneurs at the early stages of their growth.

I got an album concept called 'Exit Strategy,' that might be one of my last ones. It's a term they use in business when you build companies. You create an exit strategy as you make a company. You don't wait till you're five years in it; you create a exit strategy as you make the company.