Steve Blank On Startup Culture In Ann Arbor
Steve Blank talks about startup culture in Ann Arbor.
Steve Blank is an experienced expert on entrepreneurship, whose excellent blog I have been reading for a long while. He summarizes each post with a set of points under "Lessons Learned". He concludes his Ann Arbor article the same way:
One of the major premises of his blog is that a startup is not a company. A company is what follows a startup. It executes a known business model. But a startup is an organization whose purpose is to search for a business model. This means it keeps changing until it gets consistently stable profit growth, then disbands, hands the reigns over to managers, and becomes a company. Until then, the startup keeps abandoning their business hypothesis and forming a new, altered one. Scientifically, you are expected to start off with a hypothesis that is wrong.
Silicon Valley calls this a pivot. Elsewhere it is called a failure, and you are embarrassed to have been wrong.
One difference in cultures is respect for failure. In Silicon Valley, you're proud to have made many attempts. It's "What did you learn from your first three startups?" In Michigan, it's "Why don't you get a job?"
Steve Blank is an experienced expert on entrepreneurship, whose excellent blog I have been reading for a long while. He summarizes each post with a set of points under "Lessons Learned". He concludes his Ann Arbor article the same way:
- U of M has a College of Engineering dean who “gets it”
- He’s turned the school into an outward facing school, fostering an entrepreneurial and innovation culture
- The Center for Entrepreneurship is on board with passionate faculty, innovative curriculum and excited students
- The area has almost no experienced angel, super-angel or venture capital (as we know it in Silicon Valley) for Web/mobile apps, hardware and software
- The lack of experienced risk capital means a lack of experienced mentors, coaches, and infrastructure.
One of the major premises of his blog is that a startup is not a company. A company is what follows a startup. It executes a known business model. But a startup is an organization whose purpose is to search for a business model. This means it keeps changing until it gets consistently stable profit growth, then disbands, hands the reigns over to managers, and becomes a company. Until then, the startup keeps abandoning their business hypothesis and forming a new, altered one. Scientifically, you are expected to start off with a hypothesis that is wrong.
Silicon Valley calls this a pivot. Elsewhere it is called a failure, and you are embarrassed to have been wrong.
One difference in cultures is respect for failure. In Silicon Valley, you're proud to have made many attempts. It's "What did you learn from your first three startups?" In Michigan, it's "Why don't you get a job?"