Steve Blank is a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley with more than 20 years of experience in companies delving in high technology before he retired in 1999. His last company, E.piphany, was idealized in his living room back in 1996. Other start-ups under Blank's name include the semiconductor companies MIPS Computers and Zilog, the workstation company Convergent Technologies, the supercomputer firm Ardent, military intelligence systems supplier ESL, computer components supplier SuperMac, and video game company Rocket Science Games. Retirement gave the man time to think and reflect and with that time he wrote a book on the creation of early-stage companies known as Four Steps to the Epiphany, which was also considered to be the book that helped move the Lean Startup movement along.
After retiring from the entrepreneurial world, Blank ventured into the academe teaching entrepreneurship to undergraduate and graduate classes in Columbia University, UCSF, Caltech, Stanford University, and UC Berkeley. As the center of the Lean Startup movement, the "Customer Development" model that he developed in his book became the core themes in many of Blank's classes. In 2009, Blank was given the Stanford University Undergraduate Teaching Award by the department of Management Science and Engineering and was recognized as one of the 10 Influencers in Silicon Valley by the San Jose Mercury News. The following year, he received the Earl F. Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award at the Haas School of Business in UC Berkeley.
Blank's work in Silicon Valley proved remarkable as he received recognition year after year. In 2012, he was listed as one of the "Masters of Innovation" by the Harvard Business Review, while he was ranked one of the 30 most influential people in Tech by Forbes in 2013. Blank also served on the California Coastal Commission, the Audubon National Board, and the Peninsula Open Space Land Trust.
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