2025-09-17 21:00:43
伟大的创始人会在危机中发光。
我刚刚和一家电动自行车公司的两位联合创始人喝了一杯咖啡，他们正在指导我们的一支学生团队。很快我就意识到他们是非常优秀的创始人——富有创造力、敏捷且仍然享受着公司建设的乐趣。与其他电动自行车租赁公司不同，他们的商业模式独特，提供免费的租赁时间以换取用户观看广告。我们进行了一次很棒的对话，他们谈论了各种话题，唯独没有提到“桌上的死麋鹿”。
桌上的死麋鹿
在我们见面之前，我读到他们刚刚输给了另外三家电动自行车公司（包括Uber）争夺在另一座主要城市的经营权。这意味着他们接下来四年都将被排除在该市场之外。在三家公司中排名第四是痛苦的，但优秀的CEO会从失败中学习，并确保这些教训被应用到未来，以避免再次发生。 (如果不行，他们的董事会就会敲他们的头，直到他们做到。) 但在交谈中，我了解到这些创始人并非如此。
他们随意地提到，他们再次在争夺在一座主要城市的经营权，这次就是我所在的城市。
我问了一些在我看来显而易见的问题，首先是：“你们从上次的失败中学到了什么？你们做了哪些改变以确保不会再发生？”对我而言，更重要的是：“如果你们失去了这座城市，你们的估值和业务会受到什么影响？”他们的回答很模糊，如果我是他们的董事会成员，这会让我感到犹豫。 (这是我对他们所说内容的委婉描述。)
被忽视的危机
虽然创始人还在谈论新产品、品牌合作和客户获取计划，但他们似乎还没有真正理解上次失败的含义，也没有意识到如果这次再失去这座城市可能带来的后果。更不用说他们现在正陷入一场关乎公司生死存亡的斗争。如果不是为了生存，至少也是为了在估值上获得一个数量级或两个数量级的差异。
这位CEO显然没有意识到如果失去这次城市经营权选择的紧迫性。鉴于我之前见过类似的情况，我建议他们应该把这场竞争当作一场四警报的火灾来对待。这是一场危机，但他们却像对待日常琐事一样处理。
识别非日常事务
初创公司本质上就是混乱的。创始人不断面对各种决策、需求和干扰。但他们必须识别哪些事件或结果会对公司产生数量级或生死攸关的影响。当危机发生时，CEO需要调动所有资源，以不同于处理其他日常“燃眉之急”的方式来应对。而不是将这次事件视为“又一次消防演习”，作为第一步，初创公司CEO需要阐明为什么这会是公司生存的生死攸关的问题。我发现最好的方法是起草一份一页纸的备忘录，说明以下几点：
除非公司大楼正在燃烧，否则应向一些值得信赖的顾问测试这份备忘录（而不是你的高管团队或董事会成员）。
然后，CEO需要亲自领导应对措施：
经验教训
- 有能力的创始人能够识别危机，而不是日常事务。
- 优秀的创始人知道如何培养新技能和能力来应对危机。
- 伟大的创始人已经准备好了B计划。
- 在危机中，如果你无法管理混乱和不确定性，如果你无法倾向于采取行动，而是在等待别人告诉你该怎么做，那么你的投资者和竞争对手将替你做决定，或者你将耗尽资金，公司最终会倒闭。
Great founders shine in a crisis.
Ordinary ones watch their companies burn down.
I just had coffee with two co-founders of an e-bike company who were mentoring one of our student teams. In short order I realized they were great founders – creative, agile and still having fun building their company. Unlike other e-bike rental companies, their business model was unique, offering riders free rental time in exchange for looking at ads. We had a great conversation, and they talked about everything – except the dead moose on the table.
The Dead Moose
Before we met, I read they had just lost out to three other e-bike companies (including Uber) to operate in another major city. This meant they were now shut out of that market for the next four years. Being fourth in a group of three is painful, but good CEOs learn from failure and ensure that those lessons get baked in going forward so they never happen again. (And if not, their board hits them on the head until they do.) As we talked, I learned that wasn’t the case with these founders.
They casually mentioned they were again competing for the rights to operate in a major city, this time the one I was in.
I asked what I thought were obvious questions, starting with, “What did you learn from the loss? What did you change to ensure it won’t happen again?” And to me, most important, “What happens to your valuation and business if you lose this city?” The answers were vague, and if I had been on their board would have given me pause. (That’s a polite description of what I would have said.)
A Crisis – Ignored
While the founders were still talking about new product offerings, brand partnerships, and customer acquisition programs, they hadn’t processed what their past loss meant, and the potential consequences of losing this next city. Let alone that they were now in a life-and-death struggle for the survival of their company. If not for survival, at least in a fight for one- or two-orders of magnitude difference in their valuation.
The CEO just didn’t have the urgency of what would happen if they lost this next city selection. Having seen this movie before, I suggested that they needed to treat this competition as a four-alarm fire. This was a crisis, and they were treating it like any other day-to-day issue.
Recognize When It’s Not Business As Usual
Startups are inherently chaotic. Founders face a constant barrage of decisions, demands, and distractions. But they need to recognize when an event/outcome can have an order of magnitude/life or death impact on their company. When a crisis happens the CEO needs to marshal all resources and organize to deal with them differently than the multitude of other day-to-day “hair on fire” issues in a startup. Rather than making this “one more fire drill,” as a first step startup CEOs need to articulate why this is an existential threat to the survival of the company. I found the best way to do this is to draft a one-page memo laying out:
What’s changed
Why it matters
Why our current “business as usual” organization/process/product is insufficient as a response
And unless the building is on fire, test the memo with some trusted advisors (not your exec staff or board.)
Then, the CEO needs to personally lead the response:
With a team focused 100% on the problem
The CEO and team need a “War Room” – with a wall covered by visual representation of how the problem is being worked and progress to date
Move to the city/location to get the deal/fix the problem
Identify and remove all obstacles
Create a new strategy for sales, marketing, influence, roadmap, etc.
Finally, as I suggested to the e-bike company, you need new people of a different caliber, experienced in whatever issue is on fire who have a track record of success.
This was the hardest point to get across. Replacing or augmenting people who thought they were doing a good job but don’t see the need for change, is painful.
Lessons Learned
A competent founder can recognize when it’s a crisis, not business as usual.
A good founder knows how to build new skills and capacity to manage a crisis.
A great founder already has a plan B in place.
In a crisis if you can’t manage chaos and uncertainty, if you can’t bias yourself for action and if instead you wait around for someone else to tell you what to do, then your investors and competitors will make your decisions for you and/or you will run out of money and your company will die.
2025-09-10 21:00:06
宣布发布2025版的DoW PEO目录。在线查看 此处。
将此PEO目录视为一部“谁在政府中采购”的电话簿。
在国防部找到产品的客户非常困难：你应该联系谁？如何引起他们的注意？正确的市场进入策略是什么？什么是PEO，我为什么需要关心？
自从我与他人共同创立了 Hacking for Defense 以来，我的学生总是问：“我们应该联系国防部的谁来告知他们我们解决了什么问题？如何向他们展示我们构建的解决方案？”在近几年里，这个问题不断出现，来自新的国防初创公司及其投资者。
同时，我也收到新一波国防投资者的问题：“我们初创公司最好的市场进入（GTM）策略是什么？”
PEO、PM、PIA、PoR、联盟、SBIR、OTA、CSO、FAR、CUI、SAM、CRADAs、Prime、中层集成商、部落/原住民公司（ANC）、直接面向操作者、直接面向作战单位、实验室、DD-254……对于初创公司来说，这是一整套全新的语言、新术语、新合作伙伴和新规则，需要全新的“市场进入（GTM）”策略。
（注意：2025年，向国防部销售可能将发生变化——向更好的方向发展。）
向国防部销售需要时间，但一个精心制定的国防策略可以带来数十亿美元的合同、持续的收入和国家级的技术影响。现有的国防承包商知道这些国防部组织是谁，并有团队跟踪预算和合同。他们了解如何获得国防部的订单。但初创公司呢？
为什么要编写PEO目录？
大多数初创公司对从哪里开始毫无头绪。而向国防部销售与任何企业或B2B销售流程都截然不同，创始人和投资者可能并不熟悉。与商业世界相比，语言不同，机构不同，风险承担（在采购中）的文化也不同，最重要的是市场进入策略完全不同。
令人惊讶的是，在去年首次发布PEO目录之前，没有一个面向初创公司的国防部电话簿可供使用，以识别应该联系的国防部人员。在那个时代，国防部及其供应商是一个紧密联系的群体，彼此熟悉，技术革新以几十年为周期缓慢进行。（还假设我们的对手无法访问我们的国防部网页、LinkedIn和ChatGPT。）
这已经不再是事实。鉴于国防部外的技术革新速度加快，以及新的无人机、反无人机、自主、人工智能、量子、生物科技等供应商的出现，这种信息不透明已成为实现国家层面创新交付的障碍。
（这种信息缺失甚至延伸到国防部内部。我开始收到多个作战司令部工作人员的请求，要求访问PEO目录。为什么？因为“将PEO数据库与我们的需求、差距和跟踪技术数据库链接起来，会很有帮助。”）
这是一个典型的信息不对称案例，这对国防部日益紧迫的需求和新兴的国防初创生态系统都不健康。
我们的对手已经拥有几十年的国家层面创新交付机制。这是我们帮助国防部竞争的贡献。
2025版PEO目录说明
该文件的第一版最初只是一个PEO目录。其重点在于（并且仍然是）初创公司尽早与PEO沟通的价值，以获取关于作战人员问题的信号，以及国防部是否会现在或将来购买其产品。这些早期对话回答了“是否有需求？”和“是否有市场？”的问题。
（这不是美国政府的官方出版物）
（不要依赖此文件的准确性、完整性或商业建议）
（所有数据均来自国防部网站和公开信息）
感谢今年的合作伙伴协助维护和托管目录： 斯坦福国家安全创新 Gordian Knot 中心、America’s Frontier Fund 和 BMNT。
本版PEO目录在线发布，以便随着最新变化的出现进行更新。
发送更新和更正至 [email protected]
Announcing the 2025 edition of the DoW PEO Directory. Online here.
Think of this PEO Directory as a “Who buys in the government?” phone book.
Finding a customer for your product in the Department of War is hard: Who should you talk to? How do you get their attention? What is the right Go-To-Market Strategy? What is a PEO and why should I care?
Ever since I co-founded Hacking for Defense, my students would ask, “Who should we call in the DoW to let them know what problem we solved? How can we show them the solution we built?” In the last few years that question kept coming, from new defense startups and their investors.
At the same time, I’d get questions from the new wave of Defense Investors asking, “What’s the best “Go-To-Market (GTM)” strategy for our startups?
PEOs, PMs, PIAs, PoRs, Consortia, SBIRs, OTAs, CSOs, FAR, CUI, SAM, CRADAs, Primes, Mid-tier Integrators, Tribal/ANC Firms, Direct-to-Operator, Direct-to-Field Units, Labs, DD-254… For a startup it’s an entirely new language, new buzzwords, new partners, new rules and it requires a new “Go-To-Market (GTM)” strategy.
How to Work With the DoW
Below are simplified diagrams of two of the many paths for how a startup can get funding and revenue from the Department of War. The first example, the Patient Capital Path, illustrates a startup without a working product. They travel the traditional new company journey through the DoW processes.
The second example, the Impatient Capital Path, illustrates a startup with an MVP and/or working product. They ignore the traditional journey through the DoW process and go directly to the warfighter in the field. With the rise of Defense Venture Capital, this “swing-for-the fences” full-speed ahead approach is a Lean Startup approach to become a next generation Prime.
(Note that in 2025 selling to the DoW is likely to change – for the better.)
Selling to the DoW takes time, but a well-executed defense strategy can lead to billion-dollar contracts, sustained revenue, and technological impact at a national scale. Existing defense contractors know who these DoW organizations are and have teams of people tracking budgets and contracts. They know the path to getting an order from the Department of War. But startups?
Why Write the PEO Directory?
Most startups don’t have a clue where to start. And selling to the Department of War is unlike any enterprise or B-to-B sales process founders and their investors may be familiar with. Compared to the commercial world, the language is different, the organizations are different, the culture of risk taking (in acquisition) is different, and most importantly the go-to-market strategy is completely different.
Amazingly, until last year’s first edition of the PEO directory there wasn’t a DoW-wide phone book available to startups to identify who to call in the War Department. This lack of information made sense in a world where the DoW and its suppliers were a closely knit group who knew each other and technology innovation was happening at a sedate decades-long pace. (And assumed our adversaries didn’t have access to our DoW web pages, LinkedIn and ChatGPT.)
That’s no longer true. Given the rapid pace of innovation outside the DoW, and new vendors in UAS, counter UAS, autonomy, AI, quantum, biotech, et al, this lack of transparency is now an obstacle to a whole-of-nation approach to delivering innovation to the warfighter.
(This lack of information even extends internally to the DoW. I’ve started receiving requests from staff at multiple Combatant Commands for access to the PEO Directory. Why? Because “…it would be powerful to include a database of PEOs to link to our database of Requirements, Gaps, and Tracked Technologies to specific PEOs to call.”)
This is a classic case of information asymmetry, and it’s not healthy for either the increasingly urgent needs of the Department of War or the nascent startup defense ecosystem.
Our adversaries have had a whole-of-nation approach to delivering innovation to the warfighter in place for decades. This is our contribution to help the DoW compete.
2025 PEO Directory Edition Notes
The first edition of this document started solely as a PEO directory. Its emphasis was (and is) the value of a startup talking to PEOs early is to get signals on what warfighter problems to solve and whether the DoW will buy their product now or in the future. Those early conversations answer the questions of “Is there a need?” and “Is there a market?”
This 2025 edition of the PEO Directory attempts to capture the major changes that are occurring in the DoW – in organizations, in processes and in people. (For example, the PEO offices of the three largest new defense acquisition programs — Golden Dome, Sentinel and Columbia – will report directly to the Deputy Secretary of War, rather than to their respective Services. And the SecWar killed the cumbersome JCIDIS requirements process.)
What this means is that in 2025 the DoW will develop a new requirements and acquisition process that will identify the most urgent operational problems facing the U.S. military, work with industry earlier in the process, then rapidly turn those into fielded solutions. (That also means the Go-to-market description, people and organizations in this document will be out of date, and why we plan to update it regularly.)
What’s New?
This 2025 edition now includes as an introduction, a 30-page tutorial for startups on how the DoW buys and the various acquisition and funding processes and programs that exist for startups. It provides details on how to sell to the DoW and where the Program Executive Offices (PEOs) fit into that process.
The Directory now also includes information about the parts of the government and the regulations that influence how the DoW buys – the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB), and the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR). It added new offices such as Golden Dome Direct Reporting Program, DIU, AFRL, DARPA, MDA, CDAO, OSC, IQT, Army Transformation and Training Command, SOCOM, and others.
To help startups understand the DoW, for each service we added links to the organization, structure, and language, as well as a list of each Service’s General Officers/Flag Officers.
Appendix B has a linked spreadsheet with the names in this document.
Appendix C has a list of Venture Capital firms, Corporate Investors, Private Equity firms and Government agencies who invest in Defense. In addition, the Appendix includes details about the various DoW SBIR programs, a list of OTA Consortia, Partnership Intermediary Agreement (PIA) Organizations, and Tribal/Alaska Native Corporation (ANC) Companies.
Appendix D now lists and links to the military and state FFRDC test centers where startups can conduct demos and test equipment.
Appendix E added a list and links of Defense Publications and Defense Trade Shows.
Appendix F has a list of all Army system contractors.
A few reminders:
This is not an official publication of the U.S. government
Do not depend on this document for accuracy, completeness or business advice.
All data is from DoW websites and publicly available information.
Thanks to this year’s partners helping to maintain and host the Directory: Stanford Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, America’s Frontier Fund and BMNT.
This edition of the PEO Directory is on-line so it can be updated as the latest changes become available.
Send updates and corrections to [email protected]
You can access and download the full document here.
2025-07-08 21:00:00
“你是如何破产的？”
“有两种方式：逐渐地，然后突然地。”
欧内斯特·海明威，《太阳照常升起》
自火和轮子出现以来，每一种颠覆性技术都迫使领导者适应或消亡。这篇文章讲述的是当4000家公司面临一种颠覆性技术时发生了什么，以及为何只有1家公司得以幸存。
在20世纪初，美国拥有超过4000家马车和运货车制造商。它们是交通的支柱，也是汽车的前身，用于个人交通、货物运输、军事后勤、公共交通等。这些公司雇佣了数万名工人，并构成了由铁匠、轮轴匠、马鞍匠、马厩和饲料供应商组成的一个生态系统。
而在短短二十年内，这些公司都消失了。只有1家马车和运货车制造商转向了汽车。
今天，这个故事显得异常熟悉。正如马车行业观察到汽车从好奇到主导地位的演变，现代的SaaS、媒体、软件、物流、国防和教育行业的公司正在观察AI从新颖到存在性威胁的演变。
一个舒适的行业错失了转折点
1900年，美国是全球最大的马车制造国。印第安纳州南本德、密歇根州弗林特和俄亥俄州辛辛那提等地充满了生产马车、轻便马车和运货车的工厂。高端马车制造商制作了精美的车辆，主要由木材和皮革制成，由工匠手工打造。其他公司则制造更基础的运货车用于运输货物。
当早期汽车在1890年代开始出现——首先是蒸汽动力，然后是电力，最后是汽油动力——大多数马车和运货车制造商都忽视了它们。为什么？第一辆汽车：
噪音大且不可靠
价格昂贵且难以维修
在一个没有加油站的世界里燃料短缺
不适合美国乡村的泥泞道路
早期的汽车在大多数对客户重要的关键维度上都比不上马车。克莱顿·克里斯滕森的《创新者的窘境》完美地描述了这一点——颠覆始于被现有企业不重视的次级产品。但在这忽视背后，还有更深层的东西：身份认同和自大。马车制造商认为自己不是交通运输公司，而是优雅马车的工匠。汽车不是进化的产物，而是异端。因此，他们等待、观察，最终慢慢消亡，然后突然地消亡。
早期汽车是小众且实验性的（1890年代–1905年）
最初的汽车（蒸汽、电力和早期汽油动力）价格昂贵、不可靠且速度慢。它们由19世纪的机械爱好者制造。少数销售出去的汽车被视为其他爱好者的玩具和富人的奢侈品。（卡尔·本茨于1886年获得了第一台内燃机的专利。1893年，弗兰克·杜里厄驾驶了第一辆在美国行驶的汽车。）
这些早期汽车与庞大的马匹经济共存。马匹拉动马车、运输货物、驱动有轨电车和载人。早期汽车制造商只使用他们所知道的设计：马车。驾驶员坐在高处，就像在马车上那样，以便能看见马匹。
在最初的15年里，马车制造商、马车夫和马厩主人并未看到立即的威胁。就像今天的AI一样：汽车强大、新奇、有缺陷、不可靠，但尚未成为主流。
颠覆开始（1905–1910年）
在它们首次出现的十年后，汽油汽车变得更实用，拥有更好的发动机、橡胶轮胎，市政部门也开始铺设道路。从1903年到1908年，福特推出了9种不同的车型，他们正在实验今天所谓的最小可行产品。福特（以及通用汽车）摆脱了马车的遗产，开始从第一性原理设计汽车，优化速度、安全、大规模生产以及现代材料。这就是汽车成为独立物种的时刻。在此之前，它仍然是带有发动机的马车。城市精英为了地位和速度从马车转向汽车，出租车、货运车队和富裕的通勤者在大城市采用汽车。
即使有证据摆在眼前，马车公司仍然没有转向，认为汽车只是短暂的潮流。对于马车公司来说，这是颠覆的“否认与漂移”阶段。
转折点：福特Model T和大规模生产（1908–1925年）
1908年推出的福特Model T价格实惠（1920年代降至825美元至260美元），耐用且易于维修，并采用装配线大规模生产。在15年内，数千万美国人拥有汽车。与马车相关的行业——不仅马车制造商，还包括整个铁匠、马厩和饲料供应商生态系统——开始崩溃。城市禁止马匹进入市中心，因为垃圾、疾病和拥堵。这就像谷歌、iPhone或ChatGPT的出现：一次范式转变。
旧生态系统的崩溃（1920年代–1930年代）
1900年至1930年间，美国马匹数量从2100万降至1000万，马车和轻便马车的生产急剧下降。新基础设施——道路、加油站、驾驶员执照、交通法规——围绕汽车而非马匹建立。
早期汽车制造商大量借鉴了马车设计（1885–1910年）。汽车在马车主导的世界中出现，并继承了马车制造商的材料和机械设计。
- 钢板弹簧是19世纪马车的主要悬挂系统。早期汽车也使用了同样的系统。
- 马车没有减震器，早期汽车也没有。它们都依赖钢板弹簧减震，使得在高速行驶时变得颠簸和不稳定。为什么？道路状况糟糕，速度低。马车制造商知道如何制造能适应鹅卵石和泥地的马车。
- 马车使用实心钢或木制车轴；早期汽车也使用了同样的。
车身结构和设计借鉴了马车
- 汽车车身采用木制框架和钢或铝制外壳，就像马车一样。
- 软装、皮革工艺和装饰也沿用了马车的设计。
- “跑车”、“轻便马车”、“敞篷车”和“豪华马车”等术语直接继承自马车类型。
- 高坐位和窄轮距：早期汽车有高轮和高离地间隙，像马车和轻便马车一样，因为早期道路是凹陷和泥泞的。
结果：早期汽车看起来像没有马的马车，因为它们在功能和结构上，都是带有发动机的马车。
随着时间的推移发生了什么变化
随着速度的提升和道路的改善，木制马车设计无法承受更快、更重的汽车的扭转应力。钢板弹簧悬挂系统对于速度和操控来说过于粗糙。汽车制造商开始使用冲压钢车身（费舍尔车身的突破），独立前悬挂（在1930年代引入），最终将车身和底盘整合为一个统一的结构，而不是单独的车身和框架（在1930年代–1940年代）。
斯图德贝克：从马匹到马力
在所有4000家马车制造商中，唯一没有破产并转型为汽车公司的就是斯图德贝克。斯图德贝克于1852年在印第安纳州南本德创立，最初为农民和向西开拓者制造马车。他们在美国内战期间为联邦军提供马车，并在19世纪末成为全球最大的马车制造商。但与其他同行不同，斯图德贝克在一系列早期战略上进行了投资。
1902年，他们开始生产电动车——一种谨慎但有远见的举措。两年后，1904年，他们进入汽油车行业，最初通过外包发动机和底盘。最终，他们开始自己制造整辆汽车。
斯图德贝克理解了其他4000家马车公司忽视的两点：
未来不会是马车。
公司的核心能力不在马车，而在交通。
斯图德贝克进行了痛苦的生产转型，重新调整了工厂，重新培训了员工。到20世纪10年代，他们已成为一家真正的汽车公司。
斯图德贝克在汽车时代存活了很长时间——比大多数早期汽车制造商更久，并且直到1966年才停止生产汽车。
费舍尔车身：机器时代的马车制造商
虽然斯图德贝克直接从马车转型为汽车，但可以认为费舍尔车身是其衍生公司。费舍尔兄弟于1908年在底特律创立费舍尔车身公司，此前曾在一家马车公司工作。他们专注于制造汽车车身，而不是整辆汽车。他们的关键创新是制造封闭式钢制车身，这比开放的马车和木制框架有了重大改进。到1919年，费舍尔公司如此成功，以至于通用汽车收购了其控股权，并于1926年完全收购了费舍尔公司。数十年来，“Body by Fisher”被印在数百万辆通用汽车上。
杜兰特-多特：通用汽车的起源
虽然杜兰特-多特马车公司从未自己制造汽车，但其共同创始人威廉·C.（比利）杜兰特看到了其他人看不到的东西。详见此处和此处的博客文章。
杜兰特利用他在马车行业赚取的财富投资于蓬勃发展的汽车行业。他于1904年创立了别克，并于1908年建立了通用汽车公司。他像硅谷的疯狂企业家一样，迅速收购了奥兹莫比尔、凯迪拉克和其他11家汽车公司，以及10家零部件/配件公司，创建了第一家汽车集团。（1910年，杜兰特被董事会解雇。但杜兰特并未气馁，他创立了雪佛兰，将其上市，并于1916年对通用汽车进行了敌意收购并解雇了董事会。他再次被新董事会解雇，并在管理一家保龄球馆时无钱可花。）
虽然他的财务过度扩张最终导致他失去对通用汽车的控制，但他的愿景重塑了美国制造业。通用汽车成为20世纪最大的汽车公司。
为何其他3999家马车制造商未能成功
大多数马车制造商没有威廉·杜兰特、费舍尔兄弟或斯图德贝克这样的董事会成员。他们失败的原因如下：
技术断层
马车由木材、皮革和铁制成；汽车需要钢铁、发动机和电气系统。这些技能难以轻易转移。
资本需求
转向汽车需要巨大的投资。大多数中小型马车公司没有资金，或无法及时筹集资金。
商业模式惯性
马车制造商销售的是低产量、高利润的产品。汽车行业，尤其是福特Model T之后，是关于高产量、低利润规模的。
文化认同
马车制造商不认为自己是工程师或工业家，而是工匠。汽车是嘈杂、肮脏的机器——在他们之下。
管理者与远见卓识的创始人
在每一家成功转型的公司中，都是创始人而非聘请的CEO推动了转变。
低估了采用曲线
早期的汽车很糟糕。但技术S曲线迅速弯曲。到1910年代，汽车明显更好。到1920年代，马车已经过时。
“你是如何破产的？”
“有两种方式：逐渐地，然后突然地。”
到1925年，从1900年左右运营的4000多家马车公司中，几乎全部都消失了。
马车时代的悲剧与今天的启示
20世纪初的颠覆性事件与AI和当今公司的关系有多大？很多。这些教训是永恒的，并且对当今CEO和董事会具有现实意义。
不仅仅是马车公司未能转型。他们有时间、有客户，却仍然错过了。同样的模式发生在每一次颠覆性转变中；他们由CEO领导，而这些CEO无法想象一个不同于他们所精通的世界。（当公司必须掌握互联网、移动和社交媒体时，这种情况曾发生，现在又在AI领域重复。）
马车公司总裁们与销售和收入增长紧密相连。来自汽车的威胁似乎远在将来。这种情况持续了二十年，直到汽车的迅速采用导致他们的市场崩溃，福特Model T的推出标志着转折点。如今，CEO的薪酬与季度收益挂钩，而非长期创新。大多数董事会由风险规避的受托人组成，而非建设者或技术专家。他们奖励股票回购，而非AI的雄心壮志。真正的问题不在于企业看不到未来，而在于它们在结构上缺乏动力去行动。同时，颠覆不会等待董事会的批准。
如果你是CEO，你不仅仅是管理一个利润表。你决定你的公司会成为斯图德贝克，还是其他3999家中的一个。
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How did you go bankrupt?”
Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Every disruptive technology since the fire and the wheel have forced leaders to adapt or die. This post tells the story of what happened when 4,000 companies faced a disruptive technology and why only one survived.
In the early 20th century, the United States was home to more than 4,000 carriage and wagon manufacturers. They were the backbone of mobility and the precursors of automobiles, used for personal transportation, goods delivery, military logistics, public transit, and more. These companies employed tens of thousands of workers and formed the heart of an ecosystem of blacksmiths, wheelwrights, saddle makers, stables, and feed suppliers.
And within two decades, they were gone. Only 1 company out of 4,000 carriage and wagon makers pivoted to automobiles.
Today, this story feels uncannily familiar. Just as the carriage industry watched the automobile evolve from curiosity to dominance, modern companies in SaaS, media, software, logistics, defense and education are watching AI emerge from novelty into existential threat.
A Comfortable Industry Misses the Turn
In 1900, the U.S. was the global leader in building carriages. South Bend, IN; Flint, MI; and Cincinnati, Ohio, were full of factories producing carriages, buggies, and wagons. On the high-end these companies made beautifully crafted vehicles, largely from wood and leather, hand-built by artisans. Others were more basic wagons for hauling goods.
When early automobiles began appearing in the 1890’s — first steam-powered, then electric, then gasoline –most carriage and wagon makers dismissed them. Why wouldn’t they? The first cars were:
Loud and unreliable
Expensive and hard to repair
Starved for fuel in a world with no gas stations
Unsuitable for the dirt roads of rural America
Early autos were worse on most key dimensions that mattered to customers. Clayton Christensen’s “Innovator’s Dilemma” described this perfectly – disruption begins with inferior products that incumbents don’t take seriously. But beneath that dismissiveness was something deeper: identity and hubris. Carriage manufacturers saw themselves not as transportation companies, but as craftsmen of elegant, horse-drawn vehicles. Cars weren’t an evolution—they were heresy. And so, they waited. And watched. And went out of business slowly and then all of a sudden.
Early Autos Were Niche and Experimental (1890s–1905) The first cars (steam, electric, and early gas) were expensive, unreliable, and slow. They were built by 19th century mechanical nerds. And the few that were sold were considered toys for other nerds and the rich. (Carl Benz patented the first internal combustion engine in 1886. In 1893 Frank Duryea drove the first car in the U.S.)
These early cars coexisted with a massive horse-powered economy. Horses pulled wagons, delivered goods, powered streetcars, and people. The first automakers used the only design they knew: the carriage. Drivers sat up high like they did in a carriage when they had to see over the horses.
For the first 15 years carriage makers, teamsters, and stable owners saw no immediate threat. Like AI today: autos were powerful, new, buggy, unreliable and not yet mainstream.
Disruption Begins (1905–1910) 10 years after their first appearance, gasoline cars became more practical, they had better engines, rubber tires, and municipalities had begun to pave roads. From 1903 to 1908 Ford shipped 9 different models of cars as they experimented with what we would call today minimum viable products. Ford (and General Motors) broke away from their carriage legacies and began designing cars from first principles, optimized for speed, safety, mass production, and modern materials. That’s the moment the car became its own species. Until then, it was still mostly a carriage with a motor. Urban elites switched from carriages to autos for status and speed, and taxis, delivery fleets, and wealthy commuters adopted cars in major cities.
Even with evidence staring them in the face, carriage companies still did not pivot, assuming cars were a fad. For carriage companies this was the “denial and drift” phase of disruption.
The Tipping Point: Ford’s Model T and Mass Production (1908–1925) The Ford Model T introduced in 1908 was affordable ($825 to as little as $260 by the 1920s), durable and easy to repair, and made using assembly line mass production. Within 15 years tens of millions of Americans owned cars. Horse-related businesses — not only the carriage makers, but the entire ecosystem of blacksmiths, stables, and feed suppliers — began collapsing. Cities banned horses from downtown areas due to waste, disease, and congestion. This was like the arrival of Google, the iPhone or ChatGPT: a phase shift.
Collapse of the Old Ecosystem (1920s–1930s) Between 1900 and 1930 U.S. horse population fell from 21 million to 10 million and the carriage and buggy production plummeted. New infrastructure—roads, gas stations, driver licensing, traffic laws—was built around the car, not the horse.
Early automakers borrowed heavily from carriage design (1885–1910). Cars emerged in a world dominated by horse-drawn vehicles and they inherited the materials and mechanical designs from the coach builders.
– Leaf springs were the dominant suspension in 19th-century carriages. Early cars used the same.
– There were no shock absorbers in carriages, and early autos. They both relied on leaf spring damping, making them bouncy and unstable at speed. Why? Roads were terrible. Speeds were low. Coachbuilders understood how to make wagons survive cobblestones and dirt.
– Carriages used solid steel or wooden axles; early cars did the same.
Body Construction and Design Borrowed from Carriages
– Car bodies were wood framed with steel or aluminum sheathing, like a carriage.
– Upholstery, leatherwork, and ornamentation were also carried over.
– Terms like roadster, phaeton, landaulet, and brougham are directly inherited from carriage types.
– High seating and narrow track: Early cars had tall wheels and high ground clearance, like buggies and carriages, since early roads were rutted and muddy.
Result: Early automobiles looked like carriages without the horse, because they were, functionally and structurally, carriages with engines bolted on.
What Changed Over Time
As speeds increased and roads improved, wood carriage design couldn’t handle the torsional stress of faster, heavier cars. Leaf-spring suspensions were too crude for speed and handling. Car builders began using pressed steel bodies (Fisher Body’s breakthrough), independent front suspension (introduced in the 1930s), finally integrating the car body and chassis into a single, unified structure, rather than having a separate body and frame (in the 1930s–40s).
Studebaker: From Horses to Horsepower
The one carriage maker who did not go out of business and became an automobile company was Studebaker. Founded in 1852 in South Bend, IN, Studebaker began by building wagons for farmers and pioneers heading west. They supplied wagons to the Union Army during the Civil War and became the largest wagon manufacturer in the world by the late 19th century. But unlike its peers, Studebaker made a series of early, strategic bets on the future.
In 1902, they began producing electric vehicles—a cautious but forward-thinking move. Two years later, in 1904, they entered the gasoline car business, at first by contracting out the engine and chassis. Eventually, they began making the entire car themselves.
Studebaker understood two things the other 4,000 carriage companies ignored:
The future wouldn’t be horse-drawn.
The company’s core capability wasn’t in carriages—it was in mobility.
Studebaker made the painful shift in manufacturing, retooled their factories, and retrained their workforce. By the 1910s, they were a full-fledged car company.
Studebaker survived long into the auto age—longer than most of the early automakers—and only stopped making cars in 1966.
Fisher Body: A Coach Builder for the Machine Age
While Studebaker made a direct pivot of their entire company from carriage to cars, a case can be made that Fisher Body was a spinoff. Founded in 1908 in Detroit by brothers Fred and Charles Fisher, the Fishers had worked at a carriage firm before starting their own auto-body business. They specialized in producing the car bodies, not an entire car. Their key innovation was making closed steel car bodies which was a major improvement over open carriages and wood frames. By 1919, Fisher was so successful that General Motors bought a controlling stake and in 1926, GM acquired them entirely. For decades, “Body by Fisher” was stamped into millions of GM cars.
Durant-Dort: The Origin of General Motors
While the Durant-Dort Carriage Company never made cars itself, its co-founder William C. (Billy) Durant saw what others didn’t. See the blog posts on Durant’s adventures here and here.
Durant used the fortune he made in carriages to invest in the burgeoning auto industry. He founded Buick in 1904 and in 1908 set up General Motors. Acting like one of Silicon Valley’s crazy entrepreneurs, he rapidly acquired Oldsmobile, Cadillac, and 11 other car companies and 10 parts/accessory companies, creating the first auto conglomerate. (In 1910 Durant would be fired by his board. Undeterred, Durant founded Chevrolet, took it public and in 1916 did a hostile takeover of GM and fired the board. He got thrown out again by his new board in 1920 and died penniless managing a bowling alley.)
While his financial overreach eventually cost him control of GM, his vision reshaped American manufacturing. General Motors became the largest car company in the 20th century.
Why the Other 3,999 Carriage makers Didn’t Make It
Most carriage makers didn’t have a William Durant, a Fisher brother, or a Studebaker in the boardroom. Here’s why they failed:
Technological Discontinuity
Carriages were made of wood, leather, and iron; cars required steel, engines, electrical systems. The skills didn’t transfer easily.
Capital Requirements
Retooling for cars required huge investment. Most small and midsize carriage firms didn’t have the money—or couldn’t raise it in time.
Business Model Inertia
Carriage makers sold low-volume, high-margin products. The car business, especially after Ford’s Model T, was about high-volume, low-margin scale.
Cultural Identity
Carriage builders didn’t see themselves as engineers or industrialists. They were artisans. Cars were noisy, dirty machines—beneath them.
Managers versus visionary founders
In each of the three companies that survived, it was the founders, not hired CEOs that drove the transition.
Underestimating the adoption curve
Early cars were bad. But technological S-curves bend quickly. By the 1910s, cars were clearly better. And by the 1920s, the carriage was obsolete.
How did you go bankrupt? “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.”
By 1925, out of the 4,000+ carriage companies in operation around 1900, nearly all were gone.
The tragedy of the carriage era and lessons for today
What does an early 20th century disruption have to do with AI and today’s companies? Plenty. The lessons are timeless and relevant for today’s CEOs and boards.
It wasn’t just that carriage companies failed to pivot. It’s that they had time and customers—and still missed it. That same pattern happens at every disruptive transition; they were led by CEOs who simply couldn’t imagine a different world than the one they had mastered. (This happened when companies had to master the web, mobile and social media, and is repeating today with AI.)
Carriage company Presidents were tied to sales and increasing revenue. The threat to their business from cars seemed far in the future. That was true for two decades until the bottom dropped out of their market with the rapid adoption of autos, with the introduction of the Ford Model T. Today, CEO compensation is tied to quarterly earnings, not long-term reinvention. Most boards are packed with risk-averse fiduciaries, not builders or technologists. They reward share buybacks, not AI moonshots. The real problem isn’t that companies can’t see the future. It’s that they are structurally disincentivized to act on it. Meanwhile, disruption doesn’t wait for board approval.
If you’re a CEO, you’re not just managing a P&L. You are deciding whether your company will be the Studebaker—or one of the other 3,999.
2025-07-01 21:00:38
创始人常常对无法筹集资金感到沮丧，尤其是那些拥有成功企业的创始人。 这是为什么。
我经常和很多沮丧的创始人（我的学生和其他人）一起喝咖啡，他们抱怨大多数风投（VC）除非在融资提案中包含人工智能（AI）相关内容，否则根本不会见他们。而他们看到的AI初创公司获得的估值看起来毫无意义。这些对话让我回想起2000年左右的“点对点泡沫”（Dot Com bubble），当时如果你的提案中没有互联网相关内容，就很难获得资金。 Dot Com bubble 
我意识到，这些创始人大多只是困惑，认为一个“好”的企业会受到VC的青睐。实际上，VC们寻找的是能够产生非凡回报的“非凡”企业。
在美国，从风投那里筹集资金的初创公司是推动多轮创新的重要引擎——从硅芯片、生命科学、互联网，到如今的人工智能。然而，对于那些已有付费客户的创始人来说，最令人沮丧的是看到那些没有收入或技术存疑的公司却能从VC那里获得巨额资金。
为什么会出现这种情况？简短回答是，大多数风投公司的商业模式并不是去打造盈利企业，也不是去打造符合国家利益的企业。他们的商业模式和财务激励是投资那些能为投资者带来最多收益的公司和市场。（如果他们偶然做到了前者，那只是附带效应，而非目标。）有时，这会让他们投资那些无法产生实际产品或可能造成危害但能带来巨大回报的公司（例如Juul，有人认为社交媒体也属于此类）。
希望向VC寻求投资的创始人需要理解影响VC投资方式和方向的四个因素：
1）VC如何赚钱，2）“羊群效应”，3）当前经济形势，4）二级市场。
VC如何赚钱
简要回顾一下风投的一些基础知识。风投只是另一种 金融资产类别 – 风险更高的投资可能带来更高的回报。少数风投投资会带来10到100倍的回报，以弥补其他投资的损失或较小回报。关键理念是，大多数VC寻找的是潜在的“大满贯”投资，而不是小规模（成功？）的企业。
风投公司由普通合伙人（General Partners）管理，他们从有限合伙人（Limited Partners，如养老基金、捐赠基金、主权财富基金、高净值个人）那里筹集资金。这些有限合伙人期望在10年内获得投资资本的3倍净倍数（MOIC），这相当于20-30%的净内部收益率（IRR）。经过75年的风投投资，VC公司仍然无法判断哪家公司会成功，因此他们投资于一系列初创公司组成的“投资组合”。
VC们在相信“获取”热门交易（比如十年前的社交媒体，如今的人工智能）与相信“发现”非显而易见的赢家（如亚马逊、Airbnb、SpaceX、Palantir）之间摇摆。 
VC投资的最终目标是实现成功的“退出”，如首次公开募股（IPO）或被收购，或者如今在二级市场出售股份以获得显著利润。因此，他们对初创公司的衡量标准是创造尽可能高的市值。目标是让初创公司成为“独角兽”，即市值超过10亿美元。
羊群效应
VC们通常以“群体”方式进行投资。一旦某个知名VC投资某个领域，其他VC往往会跟进。他们是否真的同时看到了颠覆性机会，还是因为害怕错过（FOMO）？（在我公司Rocket Science Games倒闭多年后，我的两位投资者才承认他们投资是因为需要在投资组合中加入多媒体游戏公司。）20世纪初，VC投资的重点是燃料电池、气候、食品配送、滑板车、社交媒体、加密货币等。当某个领域热度上升时，资本涌入，而当热度消退或出现重大失败时，资本则迅速撤离。
当前经济形势
在20世纪，VC投资初创公司的主要流动性路径是让公司“上市”（通过美国股票交易所的首次公开募股（IPO））。当时，承销商要求公司有增加收入和利润的记录，并且在接下来的一年有可预见的路径。在IPO前将公司出售是一种快速退出的策略，但通常是在无法上市时的最后手段，以极低的价格进行“火 sale”。
从1995年Netscape的IPO开始，到2000年，公开市场开始对没有收入或利润的互联网初创公司产生兴趣。这些公司承诺下一轮颠覆。该领域的关注点从收入转向了眼球和点击量。大多数这些公司在2001-2003年的互联网泡沫破裂和“核冬天”中倒闭，但那些在IPO或不久后出售的VC获得了收益。
过去二十年，IPO窗口偶尔为那些没有实际收入、利润甚至可交付产品的初创公司（如核聚变、量子计算等）短暂开启。然而，借助公司和投资者的公关、炒作以及公众对深科技的天真认知，这些公司获得了资金，投资者在高点退出，而公众则被留下持有价值不断下降的股票。
如今，公开市场对初创公司的IPO几乎关闭。这意味着风投公司资金被锁定在流动性差的初创公司中。他们必须考虑其他方式从初创公司投资中收回资金。
二级市场
由于IPO路径对VC的流动性而言已基本关闭，二级市场已成为风投公司及其有限合伙人获取收益的新方式。
二级市场允许现有投资者（及员工）出售他们已拥有的股份——通常以高于购买价格的价格出售。这些不是新股份，也不会稀释现有投资者的权益。（某些风投基金如果想要提前退出，可以出售其整个基金的股份。）二级市场为风投基金提供了一种从投资中抽身并减少风险的方式。
这里的规则是，初创公司和其投资者需要不断炒作/宣传他们的公司，以提高公司的感知价值。新投资者——后期基金、成长型股权公司、对冲基金或专门的二级基金——现在也需要这样做，以在他们购买的二级股份上获利。
这些因素对创始人意味着什么？
- 大多数VC对其投资的行业充满热情。如果他们投资你，他们会尽一切努力帮助你的公司成功。
- 然而，你需要记住 他们的公司是一个商业实体。
- 虽然他们可能喜欢你，认为你极其有才华，但他们给你资金是为了为自己和投资者赚取更多利润（他们的有限合伙人）。
- 请参阅我痛苦的教训 这里，了解VC喜欢你与他们对赚钱的职责之间的区别。
- 一旦你从某人那里获得资金，他们的商业模式就变成了你的。
- 如果你不了解VC公司所采用的财务工程模式，你就会成为前CEO。
- 你需要理解他们所追求的回报的时间范围、规模和数量。
- 有些公司，尽管是好企业，可能无法获得风投资金。
- 你的公司能带来10到100倍的回报吗？它是否在（或能创造）一个价值10亿美元的市场？
- 风投基金通常追求7-10年的回报。
- 你的团队是否非凡且可被指导？
- VC们通常要么是追随热门交易和领域，要么是寻找尚未发现的大型想法。
- 了解你正在与哪种类型的投资者交谈。有些基金有稳定的战略；在另一些基金中，可能有不同的合伙人持有相反的观点。
- 讲故事很重要。不仅重要，而且是风投游戏的重要组成部分。
- 如果你无法讲述一个可信的、符合风投规模投资标准的故事，你就不适合成为风投支持的CEO。
- 如果你有幸拥有AI背景，就赶紧抓住“金鹅”（golden goose）。它不会永远存在。
Founders with great businesses are often frustrated that they can’t raise money.
Here’s why.
I’ve been having coffee with lots of frustrated founders (my students and others) bemoaning most VCs won’t even meet with them unless they have AI in their fundraising pitch. And the AI startups they see are getting valuations that appear nonsensical. These conversations brought back a sense of Déjà vu from the Dot Com bubble (at the turn of this century), when if you didn’t have internet as part of your pitch you weren’t getting funded.
I realized that most of these founders were simply confused, thinking that a good business was of interest to VCs. When in fact VCs are looking for extraordinary businesses that can generate extraordinary returns.
In the U.S., startups raising money from venture capitalists are one of the engines that has driven multiple waves of innovation – from silicon, to life sciences, to the internet, and now to AI. However, one of the most frustrating things for founders who have companies with paying customers to see is other companies with no revenue or questionable technology raise enormous sums of cash from VCs.
Why is that? The short answer is that the business model for most venture capital firms is not to build profitable companies, nor is it to build companies in the national interest. VCs’ business model and financial incentives are to invest in companies and markets that will make the most money for their investors. (If they happen to do the former that’s a byproduct, not the goal.) At times that has them investing in companies and sectors that won’t produce useful products or may cause harm but will generate awesome returns (e.g. Juul, and some can argue social media.)
Founders looking to approach VCs for investment need to understand the four forces that influence how and where VCs invest:
How VCs Make Money
Just a reminder of some of the basics of venture capital. Venture is a just another financial asset class – with riskier investments that potentially offer much greater returns. A small number of a VC investments will generate 10x to 100x return to make up for the losses or smaller returns from other companies. The key idea is that most VCs are looking for potential homeruns, not small (successful?) businesses.
Venture capital firms are run by general partners who raise money from limited partners (pension funds, endowments, sovereign wealth funds, high-net-worth individuals.) These limited partners expect a 3x net multiple on invested capital (MOIC) over 10 years, which translates to a 20–30% net internal rate of return (IRR). After 75 years of venture investing VC firms still can’t pick which individual company will succeed so they invest in a portfolio of startups.
VCs seesaw between believing that a winning investment strategy is access to the hottest deals (think social media a decade ago, AI today), versus others believing in the skill of finding and investing in non-obvious winners (Amazon, Airbnb, SpaceX, Palantir.) The ultimate goal of a VC investment is to achieve a successful “exit,” such as an Initial Public Offering (IPO) or acquisition, or today on a secondary, where they can sell their shares at a significant profit. Therefore, the metrics for their startups was to create the highest possible market cap(italization). A goal was to have a startup become a “unicorn” having a market cap of $1billion or more.
The Lemming Effect
VCs most often invest as a pack. Once a “brand-name” VC invests in a sector others tend to follow. Do they somehow all see a disruptive opportunity at the same time, or is it Fear Of Missing Out (FOMO)? (It was years after my company Rocket Science Games folded that my two investors admitted that they invested because they needed a multi-media game company in their portfolio.) Earlier in this century the VC play was fuel cells, climate, food delivery, scooters, social media, crypto, et al. Today, it’s defense and AI startups. Capital floods in when the sector is hot and dries up when the hype fades or a big failure occurs.
The current economic climate
In the 20th century the primary path for liquidity for a VC investment in a startup (the way they turned their stock ownership in a startup into dollars) meant having the company “go public” via an initial public offering (IPO) on a U.S. stock exchange. Back then underwriters required that the company had a track record of increasing revenue and profit, and a foreseeable path to do so in the next year. Having your company bought just before the IPO was a tactic for a quick exit but was most often the last resort at a fire sale price if an IPO wasn’t possible.
Beginning with the Netscape IPO in 1995 and through 2000, the public markets began to have an appetite for Internet startups with no revenue or profits. These promised the next wave of disruption. The focus in this area became eyeballs and clicks versus revenue. Most of these companies crashed and burned in the dotcom crash and nuclear winter of 2001-2003, but VC who sold at the IPO or shortly after made money.
For the last two decades IPO windows have briefly opened (although intermittently) for startups with no hope for meaningful revenue, profit or even deliverable products (fusion, quantum, etc. heavy, infrastructure-scale moonshots that require decades to fruition). Yet with company and investor PR, hype and the public’s naivete about deep technology these companies raised money, their investors sold out and the public was left hanging with stock of decreasing value.
Today, the public markets are mostly closed for startup IPOs. That means that venture capital firms have money tied up in startups that are illiquid. They have to think about other ways to get their money from their startup investments.
Secondaries
Today with the Initial Public Offering path for liquidity for VCs mostly closed, secondaries have emerged as a new way for venture firms and their limited partners to make money.
Secondaries allow existing investors (and employees) to sell stock they already own – almost always at a higher price than their purchase price. These are not new shares and don’t dilute the existing investors. (Some VC funds can sell a stake in their entire fund if they want an early exit.) Secondaries offer VC funds a way to take money off the table and reduce their exposure.
The game here is that startups and their investors need to continually hype/promote their startup to increase the company’s perceived value. The new investors – later stage funds, growth equity firms, hedge funds or dedicated secondary funds, now have to do the same to make money on the secondary shares they’ve purchased.
What Do These Forces Mean For Founders?
Most VCs care passionately about the industry they invest in. And if they invest in you they will do anything to help your company succeed.
However, you need to remember their firm is a business.
While they might like you, think you are extraordinarily talented, they are giving you money to make a lot more money for themselves and their investors (their limited partners.)
See my painful lesson here when I learned the difference between VC’s liking you, versus their fiduciary duty to make money.
The minute you take money from someone their business model becomes yours.
If you don’t understand the financial engineering model a VC firm is operating under, you’re going to be an ex CEO.
You need to understand the time horizon, size, scale of the returns they are looking for.
Some companies, while great businesses may not be venture fundable.
Can yours provide a 10 to 100x return? Is it in (or can it create) a large $1B market?
VC funds tend to look for a return in 7-10 years.
Is your team extraordinary and coachable?
VCs tend to be either followers into hot deals and sectors or are looking for undiscovered big ideas.
Understand which type of investor you are talking to. Some firms have a consistent strategy; in others there may be different partners with contrary opinions.
Storytelling matters. Not only does it matter, but it’s an integral part of the venture capital game.
If you cannot tell a great credible story that matches the criteria for a venture scale investment you’re not ready to be a venture funded CEO.
If you’re lucky enough to have an AI background, grab the golden ring. It won’t be there forever.
2025-06-24 21:00:26
本帖中嵌入的PowerPoint最佳在steveblank.com上查看。
我们刚刚结束了在斯坦福大学的第15届年度精益创业课程。该课程变得如此受欢迎，以至于在2021年我们开始在冬季和春季学期同时授课。
在2025年春季学期，八支团队接触了935名潜在客户、受益者和监管者。大多数学生每周在课程上投入15-20小时，大约是普通课程的两倍。
本课程引发了创业教学的革命
本课程旨在打破“如何撰写商业计划”作为创业教育的顶点。商业计划假设所有初创企业只需撰写计划、筹集资金然后执行计划。我们通过指出，虽然现有组织执行商业模式，初创企业则在寻找它们，以及初创企业是一个临时组织，旨在寻找可复制且可扩展的商业模式，从而推翻了这一传统观念。本课程旨在教授初创企业如何寻找商业模式。
多个政府资助的项目已大规模采用本课程。第一个是在2011年，我们将此课程大纲转化为美国国家科学基金会I-Corps的课程。当时美国国家科学基金会商业化负责人Errol Arkilic采用该课程并表示：“你们为初创企业开发了科学方法，使用商业模式画布作为实验记录本。”
以下是2025年春季学期精益创业课程的课程收获展示。
Team Cowmeter – 通过生物监测牛奶实现奶牛感染的早期检测。
如果你能看到Team Cowmeter的展示，请点击此处
美国国家卫生研究院的I-Corps
2013年，我与旧金山大学（UCSF）和美国国家卫生研究院（NIH）合作，推出了针对生命科学和医疗（治疗、诊断、设备和数字健康）的精益创业课程。2014年，我与NIH合作，将UCSF的课程大纲发展并启动了I-Corps @ NIH项目。
Team NowPilot – 人工智能副驾驶，用于增强专注力和执行功能。
如果你看不到Team NowPilot的展示，请点击此处
大规模实施的I-Corps
I-Corps现在在100所大学提供，并已培训了超过9500名科学家和工程师；在NSF（美国国家科学基金会）的I-Corps中，有2546个团队，7800名参与者；在NIH的I-Corps中，有317个团队，950名参与者；在能源I-Corps（美国能源部DOE）中，有188个团队，580名参与者。日本已有15所大学教授此课程。
Team Godela – 人工智能物理引擎，首个颠覆性市场在包装领域。
如果你看不到Team Godela的展示，请点击此处
40亿美元的风险资本用于I-Corps团队
NSF I-Corps的1380个团队启动了初创企业，筹集了31.66亿美元资金。NIH的I-Corps团队有超过300个，累计筹集了6.34亿美元。能源I-Corps团队额外筹集了1.51亿美元资金。
Team ProspectAI – 为精益销售团队设计的人工智能销售开发代理。
如果你看不到Team ProspectAI的展示，请点击此处
以使命为导向的创业
2016年，我在斯坦福大学与Pete Newell和Joe Felter共同创建了“为国防而黑客”课程，以及与Jeremy Weinstein共同创建了“为外交而黑客”课程。2022年，Steve Weinstein创建了“为气候与可持续性而黑客”课程。2024年，Jennifer Carolan在斯坦福大学启动了“为教育而黑客”课程。
Team VLAB – 利用人工智能对数据的编排加速临床试验。
如果你看不到Team VLAB的展示，请点击此处
本课程的设计
虽然精益创业课程的学生体验起来似乎是一门完全实践性的课程，但实际上这是一个精心设计的幻觉。事实上，课程结构非常严谨。课程大纲的设计旨在为学生提供持续的隐性指导、结构和重复。这是我们课程与开放式实践课程之间的重要区别。指导、方向和结构 –
例如，学生以自己的初始指导开始课程，他们相信自己有一个产品或服务的想法（精益创业/I-Corps）或已被赋予一个明确的现实问题（为国防而黑客）。进入课程时，学生认为他们的目标是验证其商业化或部署假设。 (教学团队知道，在课程过程中，学生会发现他们的初始假设大多不正确。)
Team Blix – IRB临床试验合规性 / 为金融服务的人工智能治理控制层。
如果你看不到Team Blix的展示，请点击此处
商业模式画布
商业模式/使命画布为学生提供指导、明确的方向和结构。首先，画布为学生提供了一条完整的视觉路线图，涵盖整个课程中需要测试的所有假设。其次，画布通过可视化理想终点的样子，帮助学生实现目标，即找到产品/市场契合点。最后，画布为学生提供了一周一周的学习地图，通过客户发现工作。我无法过分强调画布的重要作用。与没有框架的孵化器或加速器不同，画布充当了学生的连接组织——框架——当他们迷失或困惑时可以依靠。它使我们能够每周逐步教授如何将想法、需求或问题转化为商业实践的理论。
Team Plotline – 作者书籍发布的智能营销日历。
如果你看不到Team Plotline的展示，请点击此处
精益创业课程工具
客户发现工具（视频、样本实验等）为学生提供指导和结构，使他们能够在课堂外工作。每周进行10-15次客户访谈的明确目标以及构建一系列最小可行产品的要求，提供了跟踪团队进展的指标。与教师的强制性办公时间和导师的支持提供了额外的指导和结构。
Team Eluna/Driftnet – 数据中心数据聚合和能源优化软件。
如果你看不到Team Eluna/Driftnet的展示，请点击此处
人工智能嵌入课程
这是首次所有团队都使用人工智能来帮助创建商业模式画布，构建可在几小时内运行的MVP，生成客户问题，分析并总结访谈。
单靠一个人的力量是不够的
虽然我撰写了这篇博客文章，但本课程是一个团队项目。斯坦福大学精益创业课程的成功秘诀在于一群杰出的志愿者在许多关键方面支持我们的学生。
本教学团队由我本人和以下人员组成：
Steve Weinstein，美国前沿基金合伙人，硅谷科技公司和好莱坞媒体公司30年的资深人士。Steve曾担任MovieLabs的CEO，这是所有主要电影制片厂的联合研发实验室。
Lee Redden – Blue River Technology（现被John Deere收购）的首席技术官和联合创始人，他就是14年前参加第一期精益创业课程的学生！
Jennifer Carolan，Reach Capital合伙人，领先的教育风险投资公司，也是“为教育而黑客”课程的作者。
今年我们的教学助教是Arthur C. Campello、Anil Yildiz、Abu B. Rogers和Tireni Ajilore。
导师帮助团队了解他们的解决方案是否可以成为商业成功的业务。感谢Jillian Manus、Dave Epstein、Robert Feldman、Bobby Mukherjee、Kevin Ray、Deirdre Clute、Robert Locke、Doug Biehn和John Danner。来自杰出职业研究院的Martin Saywell加入了Blix团队。导师团队由Todd Basche领导。
总结
虽然精益创业/I-Corps课程大纲是与过去的一次革命性突破，但它并不是终点。在过去十年中，出现了许多变体。我们在斯坦福大学教授的课程仍在不断发展。其他人会推出更好的版本。人工智能已经对客户发现和验证产生了重大影响，我们要求每个团队列出他们使用的AI工具。终有一天，另一次革命性突破将带我们进入下一个层次。
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The PowerPoints embedded in this post are best viewed on steveblank.com
We just finished the 15th<>annual Lean LaunchPad class at Stanford. The class had gotten so popular that in 2021 we started teaching it in both the winter and spring sessions.
During the 2025 spring quarter the eight teams spoke to 935 potential customers, beneficiaries and regulators. Most students spent 15-20 hours a week on the class, about double that of a normal class.
This Class Launched a Revolution in Teaching Entreprenurship
This class was designed to break out of the “how to write a business plan” as the capstone of entrepreneurial education. A business plan assumed that all startups needed to was to write a plan, raise money and then execute the plan. We overturned that orthodoxy when we pointed out that while existing organizations execute business models, startups are searching for them. And that a startup was a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scaleable business model. This class was designed to teach startups how to search for a business model.
Several government-funded programs have adopted this class at scale. The first was in 2011 when we turned this syllabus into the curriculum for the National Science Foundation I-Corps. Errol Arkilic, the then head of commercialization at the National Science Foundation, adopted the class saying, “You’ve developed the scientific method for startups, using the Business Model Canvas as the laboratory notebook.”
Below are the Lessons Learned presentations from the spring 2025 Lean LaunchPad.
Team Cowmeter – early detection of cow infections through biological monitoring of milk.
If you can see the Team Cowmeter presentation click here
I-Corps at the National Institute of Health
In 2013 I partnered with UCSF and the National Institute of Health to offer the Lean LaunchPad class for Life Science and Healthcare (therapeutics, diagnostics, devices and digital health.) In 2014, in conjunction with the National Institute of Health, I took the UCSF curriculum and developed and launched the I-Corps @ NIH program.
Team NowPilot – AI copilot for enhancing focus and executive function.
If you can’t see the Team NowPilot presentation click here
I-Corps at Scale
I-Corps is now offered in 100 universities and has trained over 9,500 scientists and engineers; 7,800 participants in 2,546 teams at I-Corps at NSF (National Science Foundation), 950 participants in 317 teams at I-Corps at NIH, and 580 participants in 188 teams at Energy I-Corps (at the DOE). 15 universities in Japan now teach the class.
Team Godela – AI physics engine – with a first disruptive market in packaging.
If you can’t see the Team Godela presentation click here
$4 billion in Venture Capital For I-Corps Teams
1,380 of the NSF I-Corps teams launched startups raising $3.166 billion. Over 300 I-Corps at NIH teams have collectively raised $634 million. Energy I-Corps teams raised $151 million in additional funding.
Team ProspectAI – An AI sales development agent for lean sales teams.
If you can’t see the Team ProspectAI presentation click here
Mission Driven Entreprenurship
In 2016, I co-created both the Hacking for Defense course with Pete Newell and Joe Felter as well as the Hacking for Diplomacy course with Jeremy Weinstein at Stanford. In 2022, Steve Weinstein created Hacking for Climate and Sustainability. In 2024 Jennifer Carolan launched Hacking for Education at Stanford.
Team VLAB – accelerating clinical trials with AI orchestration of data.
If you can’t see the team VLAB presentation click here
Design of This Class
While the Lean LaunchPad students are experiencing what appears to them to be a fully hands-on, experiential class, it’s a carefully designed illusion. In fact, it’s highly structured. The syllabus has been designed so that we are offering continual implicit guidance, structure, and repetition. This is a critical distinction between our class and an open-ended experiential class. Guidance, Direction and Structure –
For example, students start the class with their own initial guidance – they believe they have an idea for a product or service (Lean LaunchPad/I-Corps) or have been given a clear real-world problem (Hacking for Defense). Coming into the class, students believe their goal is to validate their commercialization or deployment hypotheses. (The teaching team knows that over the course of the class, students will discover that most of their initial hypotheses are incorrect.)
Team Blix – IRB clinical trial compliance / A control layer for AI governance for financial services.
If you can’t see the team Blix presentation click here
The Business Model Canvas
The business model / mission model canvas offers students guidance, explicit direction, and structure. First, the canvas offers a complete, visual roadmap of all the hypotheses they will need to test over the entire class. Second, the canvas helps the students goal-seek by visualizing what an optimal endpoint would look like – finding product/market fit. Finally, the canvas provides students with a map of what they learn week-to-week through their customer discovery work. I can’t overemphasize the important role of the canvas. Unlike an incubator or accelerator with no frame, the canvas acts as the connective tissue – the frame – that students can fall back on if they get lost or confused. It allows us to teach the theory of how to turn an idea, need, or problem into commercial practice, week by week a piece at a time.
Team Plotline – A smart marketing calendar for author’s book launch.
If you can’t see the team Plotline presentation click here
Lean LaunchPad Tools
The tools for customer discovery (videos, sample experiments, etc.) offer guidance and structure for students to work outside the classroom. The explicit goal of 10-15 customer interviews a week along with the requirement for building a continual series of minimal viable products provides metrics that track the team’s progress. The mandatory office hours with the instructors and support from mentors provide additional guidance and structure.
Team Eluna/Driftnet – Data Center data aggregation and energy optimization software.
If you can’t see the team Eluna/Driftnet presentation click here
AI Embedded in the Class
This was the first year where all teams used AI to help create their business model canvas, build working MVPs in hours, generate customer questions, analyze and summarizing interviews.
It Takes A Village
While I authored this blog post, this class is a team project. The secret sauce of the success of the Lean LaunchPad at Stanford is the extraordinary group of dedicated volunteers supporting our students in so many critical ways.
The teaching team consisted of myself and:
Steve Weinstein, partner at America’s Frontier Fund, 30-year veteran of Silicon Valley technology companies and Hollywood media companies. Steve was CEO of MovieLabs, the joint R&D lab of all the major motion picture studios.
Lee Redden – CTO and co-founder of Blue River Technology (acquired by John Deere) who was a student in the first Lean LaunchPad class 14 years ago!
Jennifer Carolan, Co-Founder, Partner at Reach Capital the leading education VC and author of the Hacking for Education class.
Our teaching assistants this year were Arthur C. Campello, Anil Yildiz, Abu B. Rogers and Tireni Ajilore.
Mentors helped the teams understand if their solutions could be a commercially successful business. Thanks to Jillian Manus, Dave Epstein, Robert Feldman, Bobby Mukherjee, Kevin Ray, Deirdre Clute, Robert Locke, Doug Biehn, and John Danner. Martin Saywell from the Distinguished Careers Institute joined the Blix team. The mentor team was led by Todd Basche.
Summary
While the Lean LaunchPad/I-Corps curriculum was a revolutionary break with the past, it’s not the end. In the last decade enumerable variants have emerged. The class we teach at Stanford has continued to evolve. Better versions from others will appear. AI is already having a major impact on customer discovery and validation and we had each team list the AI tools they used. And one day another revolutionary break will take us to the next level.
2025-06-17 21:00:04
课程概述
斯坦福大学的“Hacking for Defense”（国防黑客）课程已连续举办10年，现扩展至70所大学。该课程旨在让学生团队通过实践解决国家安全问题，涵盖美国陆军、海军、中央司令部、太空部队、FBI、IQT及国家地理空间情报局等机构提出的挑战。学生需在10周内完成对受益者、利益相关方、需求撰写者等的访谈，并开发最小可行产品（MVP）及部署路径。
课程特色
项目亮点
课程理念
“使命驱动型创业”（Mission-Driven Entrepreneurship）是课程的核心，鼓励学生聚焦社会问题（如国防、外交、气候等），而非仅关注商业机会。通过Lean LaunchPad/I-Corps方法论，学生学习如何快速发现真实需求并转化为解决方案，同时为国防部门提供创新方法。
课程起源与扩展
课程起源于2011年斯坦福的Lean LaunchPad课堂，后被美国国家科学基金会（NSF）采纳为I-Corps项目，成为科学商业化标准。目前，课程已扩展至美国、英国（Hacking for the MOD）及澳大利亚，并由Common Mission Project、国防创新单元（DIU）及海军研究办公室（ONR）等机构支持。合作企业包括波音、洛克希德·马丁等。
课程目标
未来展望
今年有7支团队申请国防创新单元（DIU）的加速器项目，全部被接受，进一步验证了该课程作为“预加速器”的作用，帮助学生从课堂过渡到实际部署。课程还计划扩展至更多领域，如教育、海洋与气候等。
支持团队
结语
“Hacking for Defense”不仅是一门课程，更成为一种推动国防创新的运动，通过跨学科合作与使命驱动，为学生和机构创造价值。
本帖中嵌入的视频和PowerPoint最佳在 steveblank.com 上观看
我们刚刚完成了第10届 斯坦福大学“为国防而黑客”课程。
这一年真是难忘。
“为国防而黑客”课程目前已在70所大学开展，学生们组成团队，致力于理解和解决国家安全问题。在斯坦福大学本学期，41名学生组成的8个团队共访谈了 1106 名受益者、利益相关方、需求撰写者、项目管理者、行业合作伙伴等，同时还在构建一系列最小可行产品并开发部署路径。
今年的问题来自美国陆军、美国海军、中央司令部、太空部队/国防创新单位、FBI、IQT以及国家地理空间情报局。
“经验总结”展示
在学期结束时，每个团队都会进行一次“经验总结”展示，并附上2分钟的视频以提供其问题的背景信息。与传统的演示日或鲨鱼坦克（“展示我的聪明才智，这不是一个很棒的产品吗？请给我投资”）不同，“经验总结”展示讲述的是每个团队10周的旅程和他们通过实践获得的宝贵经验和发现。对所有团队而言，这都是一段充满起伏的叙述，描述了当他们发现最初认为正确的所有假设都错误时，如何最终找到正确的解决方案。
团队HydraStrike – 将蜂群技术引入海上领域。
如果无法观看HydraStrike团队的总结视频，请点击 此处。
如果无法观看HydraStrike的展示，请点击 此处
“为国防而黑客”的目标
我们这门课的主要目标是让学生在参与国家公共服务的同时学习精益创新方法。
在课程中，我们看到学生能够通过与国防部和情报界创新者合作，了解国家的威胁和安全挑战。同时，这种经历也能向这些创新者（即国防部和情报界的利益相关方）介绍一种方法，帮助他们更好地理解和应对快速变化的威胁。我们希望展示，如果能让团队通过精益方法迅速发现真实问题，并在真正理解问题后提出解决方案，国防采购项目就能以速度和紧迫性运作，并及时交付所需解决方案。
团队NeoLens – 为军事机械师提供基于AI的故障排查。
如果无法观看NeoLens团队的视频，请点击 此处
如果无法观看NeoLens的展示，请点击 此处
面向70所大学的使命驱动创业
从一门课程开始，它已经演变成一种运动。
自我们斯坦福大学的课程开始以来，“为国防而黑客”现在已在全美70多所大学开设，同时在英国作为 “为英国国防部而黑客” 课程，以及在澳大利亚提供。在美国，该课程已成为正式项目，并获得国会支持，由 Common Mission Project、国防创新单位（DIU）和 海军研究办公室（ONR）共同资助。企业合作伙伴包括波音公司、诺斯罗普·格鲁曼公司和洛克希德·马丁公司。
史蒂夫·魏恩施泰因（Steve Weinstein）在加州大学伯克利分校开设了 “为影响而黑客”（非营利组织）和 “为本地而黑客”（奥克兰）课程，以及在 斯克里普斯 和 加州大学圣克鲁兹分校 开设的“为海洋而黑客”课程，以及在斯坦福大学开设的“为气候与可持续发展而黑客”课程。 詹妮弗·卡罗兰 在斯坦福大学开设了“为教育而黑客”课程。
团队Strom – 简化关键矿产价值链。
如果无法观看Strom团队的视频，请点击 此处
如果无法观看Strom的展示，请点击 此处
这些团队的未来展望
当他们毕业时，这些团队的斯坦福学生将拥有在初创公司、企业及咨询公司中选择工作的机会。今年，我们有七个团队申请了 国防创新单位加速器 – DIU国防创新暑期研究员计划的商业化路径。七个团队被接受。这进一步强化了我们的观点，即“为国防而黑客”已演变为一个 预加速器，为学生从课堂学习过渡到实际部署做准备。
观看团队现场展示，请点击 此处
众人拾柴火焰高
虽然我撰写了这篇博客文章，但本课程是一个团队项目。斯坦福大学“为国防而黑客”课程的成功秘诀在于一群杰出的志愿者，他们在许多关键方面支持我们的学生。
我们的教学团队包括我自己以及：
今年我们的助教是Joel Johnson、Rachel Wu、Evan Twarog、Faith Zehfuss和Ethan Hellman。
31位赞助商、国家安全导师和商业导师
团队得到了其问题的提出者（即赞助商）的帮助。
感谢所有参与者！
The videos and PowerPoints embedded in this post are best viewed on steveblank.com
We just finished our 10th annual Hacking for Defense class at Stanford.
What a year.
Hacking for Defense, now in 70 universities, has teams of students working to understand and help solve national security problems. At Stanford this quarter the 8 teams of 41 students collectively interviewed 1106 beneficiaries, stakeholders, requirements writers, program managers, industry partners, etc. – while simultaneously building a series of minimal viable products and developing a path to deployment.
This year’s problems came from the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, CENTCOM, Space Force/Defense Innovation Unit, the FBI, IQT, and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.
We opened this year’s final presentations session with inspiring remarks by Joe Lonsdale on the state of defense technology innovation and a call to action for our students. During the quarter guest speakers in the class included former National Security advisor H.R. McMaster, Jim Mattis ex Secretary of Defense, John Cogbill Deputy Commander 18th Airborne Corps, Michael Sulmeyer former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Policy, and John Gallagher Managing Director of Cerberus Capital.
“Lessons Learned” Presentations
At the end of the quarter, each of the eight teams gave a final “Lessons Learned” presentation along with a 2-minute video to provide context about their problem. Unlike traditional demo days or Shark Tanks which are, “Here’s how smart I am, and isn’t this a great product, please give me money,” the Lessons Learned presentations tell the story of each team’s 10-week journey and hard-won learning and discovery. For all of them it’s a roller coaster narrative describing what happens when you discover that everything you thought you knew on day one was wrong and how they eventually got it right.
While all the teams used the Mission Model Canvas, Customer Development and Agile Engineering to build Minimal Viable Products, each of their journeys was unique.
This year we had the teams add two new slides at the end of their presentation: 1) tell us which AI tools they used, and 2) their estimate of progress on the Technology Readiness Level and Investment Readiness Level.
Here’s how they did it and what they delivered.
Team Omnyra – improving visibility into AI-generated bioengineering threats.
If you can’t see the team Omnyra summary video click here
If you can’t see the Omnyra presentation click here
These are “Wicked” Problems
Wicked problems refer to really complex problems, ones with multiple moving parts, where the solution isn’t obvious and lacks a definitive formula. The types of problems our Hacking For Defense students work on fall into this category. They are often ambiguous. They start with a problem from a sponsor, and not only is the solution unclear but figuring out how to acquire and deploy it is also complex. Most often students find that in hindsight the problem was a symptom of a more interesting and complex problem – and that Acquisition of solutions in the Dept of Defense is unlike anything in the commercial world. And the stakeholders and institutions often have different relationships with each other – some are collaborative, some have pieces of the problem or solution, and others might have conflicting values and interests.
The figure shows the types of problems Hacking for Defense students encounter, with the most common ones shaded.
Team HydraStrike – bringing swarm technology to the maritime domain.
If you can’t see the HydraStrike summary video click here.
If you can’t see the HydraStrike presentation click here
Mission-Driven Entrepreneurship
This class is part of a bigger idea – Mission-Driven Entrepreneurship. Instead of students or faculty coming in with their own ideas, we ask them to work on societal problems, whether they’re problems for the State Department or the Department of Defense or non-profits/NGOs or the Oceans and Climate or for anything the students are passionate about. The trick is we use the same Lean LaunchPad / I-Corps curriculum — and the same class structure – experiential, hands-on– driven this time by a mission-model not a business model. (The National Science Foundation and the Common Mission Project have helped promote the expansion of the methodology worldwide.)
Mission-driven entrepreneurship is the answer to students who say, “I want to give back. I want to make my community, country or world a better place, while being challenged to solve some of the toughest problems.”
Team HyperWatch – tracking hypersonic threats.
If you can’t see the HyperWatch video click here
If you can’t see the HyperWatch presentation click here
It Started With An Idea
Hacking for Defense has its origins in the Lean LaunchPad class I first taught at Stanford in 2011. I observed that teaching case studies and/or how to write a business plan as a capstone entrepreneurship class didn’t match the hands-on chaos of a startup. Furthermore, there was no entrepreneurship class that combined experiential learning with the Lean methodology. Our goal was to teach both theory and practice. The same year we started the class, it was adopted by the National Science Foundation to train Principal Investigators who wanted to get a federal grant for commercializing their science (an SBIR grant.) The NSF observed, “The class is the scientific method for entrepreneurship. Scientists understand hypothesis testing” and relabeled the class as the NSF I-Corps (Innovation Corps). I-Corps became the standard for science commercialization for the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy, to date training 3,051 teams and launching 1,300+ startups.
Team ChipForce – Securing U.S. dominance in critical minerals.
If you can’t see the ChipForce video click here
If you can’t see the ChipForce presentation click here
Note: After briefing the Department of Commerce, the Chipforce was offered jobs with the department.
Origins Of Hacking For Defense
In 2016, brainstorming with Pete Newell of BMNT and Joe Felter at Stanford, we observed that students in our research universities had little connection to the problems their government was trying to solve or the larger issues civil society was grappling with. As we thought about how we could get students engaged, we realized the same Lean LaunchPad/I-Corps class would provide a framework to do so. That year we launched both Hacking for Defense and Hacking for Diplomacy (with Professor Jeremy Weinstein and the State Department) at Stanford. The Department of Defense adopted and scaled Hacking for Defense across 60 universities while Hacking for Diplomacy has been taught at Georgetown, James Madison University, Rochester Institute for Technology, University of Connecticut and now Indiana University, sponsored by the Department of State Bureau of Diplomatic Security (see here).
Team ArgusNet – instant geospatial data for search and rescue.
If you can’t see the ArgusNet video click here
If you can’t see the ArgusNet presentation click here
Goals for Hacking for Defense
Our primary goal for the class was to teach students Lean Innovation methods while they engaged in national public service.
In the class we saw that students could learn about the nation’s threats and security challenges while working with innovators inside the DoD and Intelligence Community. At the same time the experience would introduce to the sponsors, who are innovators inside the Department of Defense (DOD) and Intelligence Community (IC), a methodology that could help them understand and better respond to rapidly evolving threats. We wanted to show that if we could get teams to rapidly discover the real problems in the field using Lean methods, and only then articulate the requirements to solve them, defense acquisition programs could operate at speed and urgency and deliver timely and needed solutions.
Finally, we wanted to familiarize students with the military as a profession and help them better understand its expertise, and its proper role in society. We hoped it would also show our sponsors in the Department of Defense and Intelligence community that civilian students can make a meaningful contribution to problem understanding and rapid prototyping of solutions to real-world problems.
Team NeoLens – AI-powered troubleshooting for military mechanics.
If you can’t see the NeoLens video click here
If you can’t see the NeoLens presentation click here
Go-to-Market/Deployment Strategies
The initial goal of the teams is to ensure they understand the problem. The next step is to see if they can find mission/solution fit (the DoD equivalent of commercial product/market fit.) But most importantly, the class teaches the teams about the difficult and complex path of getting a solution in the hands of a warfighter/beneficiary. Who writes the requirement? What’s an OTA? What’s color of money? What’s a Program Manager? Who owns the current contract? …
Team Omnicomm – improving the quality, security and resiliency of communications for special operations units.
If you can’t see the Omnicomm video click here
If you can’t see the Omnicomm presentation click here
Mission-Driven in 70 Universities and Continuing to Expand in Scope and Reach
What started as a class is now a movement.
From its beginning with our Stanford class, Hacking for Defense is now offered in over 70 universities in the U.S., as well as in the UK as Hacking for the MOD and in Australia. In the U.S., the course is a program of record and supported by Congress, H4D is sponsored by the Common Mission Project, Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR). Corporate partners include Boeing, Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin.
Steve Weinstein started Hacking for Impact (Non-Profits) and Hacking for Local (Oakland) at U.C. Berkeley, and Hacking for Oceans at bot Scripps and UC Santa Cruz, as well as Hacking for Climate and Sustainability at Stanford. Jennifer Carolan started Hacking for Education at Stanford.
Team Strom – simplified mineral value chain.
If you can’t see the Strom video click here
If you can’t see the Strom presentation click here
What’s Next For These Teams?
.When they graduate, the Stanford students on these teams have the pick of jobs in startups, companies, and consulting firms .This year, seven of our teams applied to the Defense Innovation Unit accelerator – the DIU Defense Innovation Summer Fellows Program – Commercialization Pathway. Seven were accepted. This further reinforced our thinking that Hacking for Defense has turned into a pre-accelerator – preparing students to transition their learning from the classroom to deployment
See the teams present in person here
It Takes A Village
While I authored this blog post, this class is a team project. The secret sauce of the success of Hacking for Defense at Stanford is the extraordinary group of dedicated volunteers supporting our students in so many critical ways.
The teaching team consisted of myself and:
Pete Newell, retired Army Colonel and ex Director of the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force, now CEO of BMNT.
Joe Felter, retired Army Special Forces Colonel; and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania; and currently the Director of the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation at Stanford which we co-founded in 2021.
Steve Weinstein, partner at America’s Frontier Fund, 30-year veteran of Silicon Valley technology companies and Hollywood media companies. Steve was CEO of MovieLabs, the joint R&D lab of all the major motion picture studios.
Chris Moran, Executive Director and General Manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures; the venture capital investment arm of Lockheed Martin.
Jeff Decker, a Stanford researcher focusing on dual-use research. Jeff served in the U.S. Army as a special operations light infantry squad leader in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Our teaching assistants this year were Joel Johnson, Rachel Wu, Evan Twarog, Faith Zehfuss, and Ethan Hellman.
31 Sponsors, Business and National Security Mentors
The teams were assisted by the originators of their problems – the sponsors.
Sponsors gave us their toughest national security problems: Josh Pavluk, Kari Montoya, Nelson Layfield, Mark Breier, Jason Horton, Stephen J. Plunkett, Chris O’Connor, David Grande, Daniel Owins, Nathaniel Huston, Joy Shanaberger, and David Ryan.
National Security Mentors helped students who came into the class with no knowledge of the Department of Defense, and the FBI understand the complexity, intricacies and nuances of those organizations: Katie Tobin, Doug Seich, Salvadore Badillo-Rios, Marco Romani, Matt Croce, Donnie Hasseltine, Mark McVay, David Vernal, Brad Boyd, Marquay Edmonson.
Business Mentors helped the teams understand if their solutions could be a commercially successful business: Diane Schrader, Marc Clapper, Laura Clapper, Eric Byler, Adam Walters, Jeremey Schoos, Craig Seidel, Rich “Astro” Lawson.
Thanks to all!