Steve Blank reads this blog

we were all exited to spot Steve tweeting about visiting Prague. Steve was very kind to spare his vacation time and meet with a group of around thirty startup enthusiasts. 

Vojta Bednar from tyinternety.cz with a great help of Lenka Kucerova from StartupYard organized the meeting as a part of the “Ve sklepe” series. It was for the first time in English. Around thirty Prague startup fans watching twitter noticed this opportunity and rushed to meet Steve. The meeting took place in a Romanic style cellar with very quite, centuries old atmosphere in the center of Prague. At the beginning the cellar was very quite not only because the cell phones were organically shut off (no signal in the cellar), but all watched Steve with dignity and respect. Steve immediately noticed that and started asking questions provoking the audience. After a while the atmosphere became very open and friendly. At the end the viewers were firing one question after another. Steve was great, fast talking with the typically American clarity and focus on action. I really liked his formulations and statements. I engaged with him immediately. I know very well all his presentations from YouTube and I was happy to find him very energetic and practical finally in the real life too. I also admire very much Steve's motivation. He feels it is his obligation to give up his experience to the world.

At the beginning he presented a very brief cv. Then Vojta started asking questions. Steve was talking about his companies, how he got on the cover of Wired magazine, what is the role of governments supporting entrepreneurship, how he came up with the idea of teaching the art of startup. He has also mentioned the latest idea to use the methodology of the Internet or technological startup and apply it to the rest (99%) of startups growing everywhere. He also disclosed the topic of his next blogs. He will focus on the corporate innovation. I also liked his description of the democratization of the entrepreneurship: we all have equal access to information, the real problem is how to sort it. Elaborating on what is the best location for startup, he has explained how unique is Silicon Valley and how difficult it is to start global IT company elsewhere. He mentioned Singapore, Finland and Israel as the centers with talent concentration. Overall there were many topics he has touched and made many interesting statements. I am not going to details. I am sure you all will see the video on the tyinternety.cz pages real soon. Do not miss it.

We spent almost two hours in the cellar and then we have continued in a nearby pub drinking bier. This was the best opportunity for me to get signed his latest book “The Startup Owner's Manual“. For me it was great to meet Steve and get motivated for further work with my students. The biggest highlight was to realize Steve has read my last blog about the Startup Summit. Yes, maybe I am the only one blogging in English about startups in the Czech Republic ... I will end with quoting Steve: Startup is the inverse of the iq test. And I will add: therefore do not be afraid and start something …