Kevin Warnock

Steve Blank's commencement address May 15, 2011 at Philadelphia University

Here is the best commencement address I have ever heard or read. It’s by Steve Blank. I’ve written about Steve Blank and his writing before.

I consider his Four Steps to the Epiphany book to be the most important book for entrepreneurs to read.

Blank gave this speech May 15, 2011 at the commencement for Philadelphia University.

Here’s one story from the speech that particularly resonates with me. When Blank was a young man he was in the United States military. He volunteered to go to Thailand and he kept volunteering once he got there. His enthusiasm and curiosity paid off, as you’ll see:

“Once again, I was going to see where the road would take me. Volunteering for the unknown…which meant leaving the security of what I knew…would continually change my life.

Two weeks later I was lugging heavy boxes across the runway under the broiling Thailand sun. My job was to replace failed electronic warfare equipment in fighter planes as they returned from bombing missions over North Vietnam.

As I faced yet another 110-degree day, I did consider that perhaps my decision to leave Miami might have been a bit hasty. Yet every day I would ask, “Where does our equipment come from… and how do we know it’s protecting our airplanes?”

The answer I got was, “Don’t you know there’s a war on? Shut up and keep doing what you’re told.”

Still I was forever curious. At times continually asking questions got me in trouble…

once it almost sent me to jail…

but mostly it made me smarter.

I wanted to know more.  I had found something I loved to do.. …and I wanted to get better at it.

When my shift on the flightline was over, my friends would go downtown drinking. Instead, I’d often head into the shop and volunteer to help repair broken jammers and receivers. Eventually, the shop chief who ran this 150-person shop approached me and asked, “You’re really interested in this stuff, aren’t you?” He listened to me babble for a while, and then walked me to a stack of broken electronic equipment and challenged me troubleshoot and fix them.

Hours later when I was finished, he looked at my work and told me, “We need another pair of hands repairing this equipment. As of tomorrow you no longer work on the flightline.” He had just given me a small part of the electronic warfare shop to run.

People talk about getting lucky breaks in their careers. I’m living proof that the “lucky breaks” theory is simply wrong. You get to make your own luck. 80% of success in your career will come from just showing up. The world is run by those who show up…not those who wait to be asked.

Eighteen months after arriving in Thailand, I was managing a group of 15 electronics technicians.

I had just turned 20 years old.”

I think most success people have is the result of them doing more than is expected, and I admire Blank for selecting such a concrete example from his past to illustrate this point.

While I’m mentioning important books, the book I consider the second most important for entrepreneurs to read is The Entrepreneurs Guide to Business Law, by Craig E. Dauchy and Constance E. Bagley. I used to work with Dauchy at Cooley LLP. He’s one of the most respected members of that firm, so I place a lot of faith in what this book has to say.

I consider attending the Berkeley Entrepreneurs Forum to be one of the high points of each month during the academic year. The Forum is the premier event developed and hosted by the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley. I’m a member of the Advisory Council for the Entrepreneurs Forum, and I’ve enjoyed participating very much.

The draw for the evening is the speaker or panel on a subtopic of entrepreneurship. The action though is in the networking during the cocktail hour prior to the formal program and immediately after the program when there’s an opportunity to meet the speakers. I’ve shaken hands with more billionaires at the Entrepreneurs Forum than at any other single place.

The most recent program was by an individual speaker, my favorite format. The speaker was Steve Blank, the same Steve Blank I saw at the Commonwealth Club of California last month.

Blank delivered his talk entitled ‘The secret history of Silicon Valley’, which I had already watched on YouTube from an earlier presentation elsewhere. This talk is rich with colorful information about how Silicon Valley was formed. It’s a fascinating story tightly intertwined with Stanford University and World War II, of all things. I didn’t know this, I’m embarrassed to admit. But I would guess 99% of people don’t know this history.

I shot high definition video of Blank’s talk, but I have decided to link instead to the official version, which is edited with clear views of his slides. I’m not a fan of speaker slides generally, but these slides really do help tell the remarkable story more effectively.

I’ve heard Blank is an exceptionally engaging and likeable teacher, which probably explains why he won the Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching for the Berkeley-Columbia MBA Program last year 2010. Jerry Engel, the Faculty Director of the Lester Center, said in his opening remarks to Blank’s talk that he’s envious of Blank, since Engel hasn’t received this award.

Here’s the YouTube video of Blank’s talk, which happened February 24, 2011 in the Anderson Auditorium at the Haas School of Business on the UC Berkeley campus in Berkeley, California, USA.

Engel was a member of the board of advisors for my first company, Hotpaper.com, Inc. and is a member of the board of advisors for my current company, Silveroffice, Inc., the makers of gOffice, the first true online office suite, launched in 2004.

Steve Blank wrote what I consider to be the best book I’ve read on how to start a successful technology company — The Four Steps to the Epiphany, Successful Strategies for Products that Win.

The four steps to the Epiphany book cover

If you consider yourself an entrepreneur, even if you’ve been successful for years, you need to own this book and read it multiple times, because you’ve probably just been lucky. Seriously.