Steve Blank

Following a successful pilot, the I-Corps program quickly expanded. A version of the I-Corps program specifically dedicated to biomedical research, called The I-Corps at NIH, was devised in 2014. As of January 2017, I-Corps has a National Innovation Network of more than 190 colleges and universities, and more than 800 teams of scientists and engineers have gone through the program.

Blank released Holding a Cat by the Tail in 2014. The book is updated version of Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost, featuring additional lessons learned from his life as an entrepreneur.

Students propose and immediately test business hypotheses. They get out of the building to talk to 10–15 prospective customers, partners and others each week. They use the customer feedback acquired in these interviews to refine their product or service by building a new minimal viable product weekly; ensure their product or service meets a customer need or solves a customer problem; and validate that they have created a repeatable, scalable business model.

Steve Blank and Bob Dorf co-authored The Startup Owner's Manual, which was released in March 2012. The 608-page reference manual details a scientific approach to entrepreneurship and emphasizes the importance of "rigorous and repeated testing." The work draws on ideas from Business Model Generation and The Four Steps to the Epiphany. According to Blank, the book was designed to be used as an "encyclopedia and a blueprint" for startups.

Blank authors a blog about entrepreneurship. In 2012, his blog was ranked one of the "10 Must-Read Blogs for Any Lean Startup" by Welovelean.com. The blog is considered a must-read for entrepreneurs and is often syndicated by UC Berkeley, VentureBeat, Huffington Post, Forbes, Inc.com and NikkeiBP in Japan. It is available as an audio podcast (produced by Clearshore and featuring the voice of HP Lewis) on the blog itself or through SoundCloud, and translated into Spanish (by Alberto Peralta).

In January 2011, Blank created the Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford University, Columbia Business School and UC Berkeley. The class is a method for teaching entrepreneurship that combines experiential learning with the three building blocks of a successful lean startup: Alexander Osterwalder's Business Model Canvas, Blank's customer development model, and agile engineering.

In July 2011 the National Science Foundation asked Blank to adapt his Lean LaunchPad class for its Innovation Corps (I-Corps), which develops and nurtures a national innovation ecosystem by helping discoveries from fundamental research to become new companies.

Blank released a second book in 2010, Not All Those Who Wander Are Lost which relates stories from his life as an entrepreneur. The collection of material develops a narrative about how to live life amid the fast-paced world of Silicon Valley startups.

Blank was a past Chairman of Audubon California and has also served on the board of the Peninsula Open Space Trust and was a trustee of U.C. Santa Cruz foundation and served on the board of the California League of Conservation Voters. In 2007 he was appointed to the California Coastal Commission. He has made philanthropic gifts to preserve the California Coast and has contributed funds to support the visitors' center at Año Nuevo State Reserve and to the Peninsula Open Space Trust.

In 2005, Blank published The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win, (K&S Ranch Press) which details his approach to the Customer Development process. In the book, Blank outlines his views about how entrepreneurship is a practice that can be actively managed rather than an art which must be passively experienced. The book is viewed in entrepreneurship circles as the definitive source on the customer development methodology.

Blank's customer development methodology is a cornerstone of the lean startup movement, popularized by Eric Ries whom Blank states was "the best student I ever had." The lean startup approach relies on validated learning, scientific experimentation, and iterative product releases to shorten product development cycles, measure progress, and gain valuable customer feedback. Blank and Ries developed the ideas beginning around 2004 when Blank was an investor and advisor to the company, IMVU, that Ries co-founded. The lean startup has been adopted by entrepreneurs worldwide as a constructive way to try out ideas and gain customers. Ries has integrated the customer development methodology into the lean startup practices and considers it to be one of the lean startup movement's pillars.

Blank began teaching entrepreneurship in 2002 at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and has since taught entrepreneurship to both undergraduate and graduate students. He currently teaches at Stanford, the University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business, New York University and Columbia. His Lean LaunchPad curricula uses the customer development methodology and lean startup methods he developed throughout his career as a serial entrepreneur and academic.

Blank co-founded his 8th and last startup, the Customer Relationship Management provider E.piphany, in 1996 and retired the day before its IPO in September 1999.

Blank created the customer development methodology in the mid 1990s. The concept details a scientific approach that can be applied by startups and entrepreneurs to improve their products success by developing a better understanding of customers' problems/needs as well as the other hypotheses necessary to build a commercial successful company.

Steve Blank arrived in Silicon Valley at the start of the business boom in 1978. His first job in the region was with ESL, a startup that was a pioneering company for National Reconnaissance. The company helped the government understand the Soviets' technological and arms developments during the Cold War.

Steve Blank (born 1953) is a Silicon Valley entrepreneur based in Pescadero, California.