Conversation with Steve Blank, serial entrepreneur, professor and author

In this episode, Paul talks with Steve Blank about the founding of Silicon Valley, and the reasons behind the region's continued success; they also touched on Blank's thoughts on lean startups, and how to teach entrepreneurship.

Blank is a retired serial entrepreneur and has been a founder or participant in eight Silicon Valley startups since 1978, including two semiconductor companies, Zilog and MIPS Computers; a workstation company, Convergent Technologies; a consulting stint for a graphics hardware/software spinout Pixar; a supercomputer firm, Ardent; a computer peripheral supplier, SuperMac; a military intelligence systems supplier, ESL; and a video game company, Rocket Science Games. He co-founded his last company, E.piphany, in his living room in 1996.

After he retired in 1999, he wrote Four Steps to the Epiphany, a book about building early stage companies. He has taught entrepreneurship to both undergraduate and graduate students at U.C. Berkeley, Stanford University and the Columbia University/Berkeley Joint Executive MBA program. The "Customer Development" model that he developed in his book is one of the core themes for these classes. In 2009 he was awarded the Stanford University Undergraduate Teaching Award in the department of Management Science and Engineering. The same year, the San Jose Mercury News listed hin as one of the 10 Influencers in Silicon Valley. In 2010, he was awarded the Earl F. Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award at U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business.

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