Steven Gary Blank

Steven Gary Blank, usually known as just Steve Blank (b. 1953?), is a retired serial entrepreneur, founding and/or part of 8 startup companies in California’s Silicon Valley. Today he is best known as a teacher at multiple universities. He is also the author of the Customer Development model for early stage companies. This model attempts to view entrepreneurship as a practice that can be managed rather than just purely an art form to be experienced.

Business career

He started his career at 3M/Interactive Systems in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Moving to Silicon Valley in 1978 he worked at ESL, Zilog, Convergent Technologies, MIPS Computers (now MIPS Technologies), Ardent Computer, and SuperMac Technologies and was founder/CEO of Rocket Science Games [cite journal | last = Snider | first = Burr | title = Rocket Science | journal = Wired Magazine | volume = 2.11 | date = November 1994 | url = http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.11/rocket.science.html | accessdate = 2008-06-28 ] and a founder at E.piphany.

After "becoming a billionare" at Epiphany, Blank went on to fund EthnicGrocer.com and Design Within Reach [cite journal | last = Hawn | first = Carleen | title = Fear and Posing | journal = Forbes | date = 25 March 2002 | url = http://www.forbes.com/asap/2002/0325/022_print.html | accessdate = 2008-06-28 ] .

Teaching

Blank teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford University Graduate School of EngineeringFact|date=June 2008, U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School [ [http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/faculty/blank.html UC Berkeley: Steve Blank's homepage] ] and a joint MBA class with Columbia Business School and HaasFact|date=June 2008.

Blank has collected an informal history of Silicon Valley, which was presented as a Google TechTalk called YouTube|hFSPHfZQpIQ|The Secret History of Silicon Valley [ [http://www.tgdaily.com/content/view/35695/113/ TG Daily: Secret military history of Silicon Valley gave rise to modern tech giants] ] .

Public Service

Blank is the Chairman of Audubon California [ [http://ca.audubon.org/board.htm California Audubon: List of board members (including Steve Blank)] ] . He is on the board of Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST)Fact|date=June 2008 He was appointed to the California Coastal Commission [ [http://www.coastal.ca.gov/bios.html California Coastal Commission: Bio of Steve Blank] ] , and has personally donated $500,000 to a visitors center at Año Nuevo State Reserve [cite journal | author = Paul Rogers | date = 03 June 2008 | title = An epiphany for Año Nuevo | journal = San Jose Mercury News | url = http://origin.mercurynews.com/news/ci_9462625 | accessdate = 2008-06-28 ] [ [http://www.calparks.org/programs/resources/ano-nuevo.html California State Parks Foundation: Año Nuevo Marine Education Center] ] .

Books

References

External links

* [http://edcorner.stanford.edu/authorMaterialInfo.html?author=282 Steve Blank speaking at Stanford University]