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.
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 and a founder at E.piphany. After retiring from E.piphany the day before its IPO in September 1999, Blank served on two public boards (Macrovision and Immersion) and several private companies. He continues to selectively advise Silicon Valley startups.
Blank teaches entrepreneurship at Stanford University Graduate School of Engineering, U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School and a joint MBA class with Columbia Business School and Haas.
Blank has collected an informal history of Silicon Valley, which was presented as a Google TechTalk called The Secret History of Silicon Valley at YouTube.
Blank is the Chairman of Audubon California. He is on the board of Peninsula Open Space Trust (POST). He was appointed to the California Coastal Commission, and has made major gifts to preserve the California Coast, including funding the visitors center at Año Nuevo State Reserve.
The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Startegies for Products that Win 3rd Ed.