Teaching Team
Teaching Team
Industry Masters
Course Advisors
Teaching Assistants
Teaching Team Profile
Steve Blank
A RETIRED EIGHT-TIME SERIAL ENTREPRENEUR, Steve’s insight that startups are not smaller versions of large companies has reshaped the way startups are built and how entrepreneurship is taught. His observation that large companies execute business models, but startups search for them, led him to realize that startups need their own tools, different than those used to manage existing companies.
Steve’s first tool for startups, the Customer Development methodology, spawned the Lean Startup movement. The fundamentals of Customer Development are detailed in Blank’s books, The Four Steps to the Epiphany and the The Startup Owner’s Manual. Blank teaches Customer Development and entrepreneurship at Stanford University, U.C. Berkeley Haas Business School and Columbia University, and his Customer Development process is taught at Universities throughout the world.In 2009 Steve earned the Stanford University Undergraduate Teaching Award in Management Science and Engineering. In 2010, he earned the Earl F. Cheit Outstanding Teaching Award at U.C. Berkeley Haas School of Business.
In 2011, he developed the Lean LaunchPad, a hands-on class that integrates Business Model design and Customer Development into practice through fast-paced, real-world customer interaction and business model iteration. In 2011, the National Science Foundation adopted Blank’s class for its Innovation Corps (I-Corps), training teams of the nation’s top scientists and engineers to take their ideas out of the university lab and into the commercial marketplace. In 2014 the I-Corps program was expanded to include the NIH, DOE, and DOD. Over 750 teams have gone through the I-Corps program.
Steve’s eight startups in 21 years as an entrepreneur include two semiconductor companies, Zilog and MIPS Computers; Convergent Technologies; a consulting stint for Pixar; a supercomputer firm, Ardent; a peripheral supplier, SuperMac; a military intelligence systems supplier, ESL; and Rocket Science Games. Steve co-founded startup number eight, E.piphany, in his living room. Steve has followed his curiosity about why entrepreneurship blossomed in Silicon Valley while stillborn elsewhere with the talk “The Secret History of Silicon Valley.”
Steve Weinstein
With a background that spans technology, product development, and entertainment, Steve Weinstein has been focused on where media meets technology. Currently Steve is the founder and CEO of MovieLabs. Steve is also the co-founder of KineTrope a small design shop for small consumer and professional electronics. Additionally, Steve is currently teaching entrepreneurship at U.C. Berkeley and at Stanford.
Previously, Steve served as CTO of Deluxe Entertainment, a 6,000 person post production house, and CTO at Rovi Corporation where he guided the transition from physical technologies to e-commerce, connected home, secure and subscription services. Additionally, Steve held the role of Chief Technology Officer at Vicinity, a mapping company acquired by Microsoft in 2002. Steve was also a founding executive and Chief Strategist and Technologist at Liberate Technologies, an interactive television software company. Further back in his career, Steve held executive-level positions at Microprose/Spectrum HoloByte (game company), Electronics for Imaging (print processing), and Media Cybernetics (image processing). Steve also was chief architect at Ship Analytics for real time ship, sub and helicopter trainers. Steve started his career at Naval Research Laboratory in the area of advanced signal processing, computer language design, and real time os development.
Joe Felter
Joe Felter is a William J. Perry Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and research fellow at the Hoover Institution. From 2017 to 2019, Felter served as US deputy assistant secretary of defense for South Asia, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. There he was the principal advisor for all policy matters pertaining to development and implementation of defense strategies and plans in the region and responsible for managing bilateral security relationships and guiding Department of Defense (DoD) engagement with multilateral institutions.
At Stanford, Felter is codirector of the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project and coauthor of Hacking for Defense, a defense innovation–focused academic curriculum sponsored by the DoD and taught at more than 20 universities across the country. His previous academic positions include director of West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center, assistant professor in the US Military Academy’s Department of Social Sciences, and adjunct associate professor at Columbia University’s School for International and Public Affairs. His research focuses on addressing politically motivated violence and has appeared in the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Development Economics, Journal of Conflict Resolution, and a range of other academic and policy-focused publications. He is coauthor of Small Wars, Big Data: The Information Revolution and Modern Conflict (Princeton University Press, 2018).
A former US Army Special Forces and Foreign Area officer, Joe served in a variety of special operations and diplomatic assignments across East and Southeast Asia. His combat deployments include Panama with the 75th Ranger Regiment, Iraq with a Joint Special Operations Task Force, and Afghanistan, where he commanded the COMISAF Counterinsurgency Advisory and Assistance Team, reporting directly to Generals Stanley McChrystal and David Petraeus.
He received a BS from the US Military Academy at West Point, a masters in public administration from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, a graduate certificate in management from the University of West Australia, and a PhD in political science from Stanford University.
Chris Moran
Chris Moran serves as Executive Director and General Manager of Lockheed Martin Ventures, leading strategic technology investments for the corporation. Before joining Lockheed Martin, he spent 32 years at Applied Materials in various leadership roles, including Head of Business Systems & Analytics and General Manager of Applied Ventures. Moran holds both Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering from MIT.
Jillian Manus
Jillian Manus is a Venture Partner at SHIELD Capital, where she focuses on early-stage, dual-use frontier technologies at the nexus of commercial markets and national security, particularly in cybersecurity, artificial intelligence, autonomy, and space. She also serves as the U.S. Venture Advisor to the European Innovation Council Fund, Europe’s largest €30b deep-tech innovation platform, deploying capital into cutting-edge European startups and SMEs. It is one of Europe’s priority initiatives.
Manus is the longtime Managing Partner of Structure Capital; a Silicon Valley early-stage venture fund branded the “Architects of the Zero Waste Economy” for its focus on underutilized assets and excess capacity. She has served more than three decades in U.S. intelligence and national security, holding operational, advisory, and strategic roles supporting U.S. and allied institutions with a focus on emerging technology, geopolitical risk, and security policy at the public-private intersection.
Manus is an adjunct professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she teaches the course “Hacking for Defense”. Previously, she served as Co-Director of Technology, Media & Telecom at Credit Suisse in Zurich, held senior roles in Media including as Associate Publisher of the national technology publication Upside. She later founded Broad Strategy, Manus Media, and Global Goal Sports Management to advise technology companies and institutional investors on growth, capital formation, global market entry, and ancillary rights strategies.
She describes herself as an Innovation Diplomat, committed to reducing conflict, deepening alliances and strengthening international security by channeling investment into global innovation ecosystems. A frequent global public speaker, podcast host (including co-hosting “The Pitch”), and media commentator on business and politics for platforms such as CNBC, Bloomberg, Sky, and CNN, she is widely recognized for her leadership in transatlantic innovation.
She serves on multiple corporate and nonprofit boards, including the Stanford University School of Medicine Board of Fellows, the NASDAQ Entrepreneurial Center Board of Directors, The World Affairs / Commonwealth Club Board, NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and Communities in Schools. Named one of Business Insider’s “Top 25 Early-Stage Female Investors” and recipient of honors such as the Transatlantic Bridge Award, Manus lives in San Francisco and continues to amplify work across Europe, the United States, and Ukraine through her investing, board service, and advocacy for cross-border innovation diplomacy.
Pete Newell
COLONEL U.S. ARMY (ret) is a Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the National Defense University Institute for National Strategic Studies, Center for Technology and National Security Policy and a senior advisor within the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Manufacturing Office (AMO).
During his 32 years in uniform he served as both an enlisted national guardsman and as an active duty officer. He served in, led, and commanded Infantry units at the platoon through brigade level, while performing peace support, combat, and special operations in Panama, Kosovo, Egypt, Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.
During his last assignment in the military he led the U.S. Army Rapid Equipping Force (REF) in the investment of over $1.4B in developing rapid solutions to answer Soldiers’ most pressing needs. Among the initiatives he developed were the Army’s $66M effort to develop and deploy renewable energy systems on the battlefield and the Army’s $45M effort to design an integrated system to gather the data required to determine the potential causes of Traumatic Brain Injury. He was also responsible for the Army’s first deployment of mobile advanced/additive manufacturing labs in a bid to more closely connect scientists and engineers to problems on the battlefield. His efforts to accelerate problem recognition and solution delivery to military units is the subject of the 2013 Stanford Graduate School of Business Case Study “The Rapid Equipping Force Customer Focused Innovation in the U.S. Army” and appears in the 2014 book Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less by Bob Sutton and Huggy Rao.
Newell holds a BS from Kansas State University, an MS in Operations from the US Army Command & General Staff College, an MS in Strategy from the National Defense University and Advanced Certificates from the MIT Sloan School and Stanford University Graduate School of Business.
Jeff Decker
Jeff Decker is the Program Director for Hacking for Defense and is industry master for Hacking for Defense. Jeff served in the U.S. Army as a 2nd Ranger Battalion light infantry squad leader in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Following his service, he earned his doctorate in International Relations from Bond University in Australia, where he wrote his dissertation “Enhancing the Effectiveness of Private Military Contractors.” Jeff conducted research analysis in national security and international affairs at the RAND Corporation. Jeff’s current research focuses on defense innovation, dual-use technologies, and fostering defense-industry partnerships.
Course Advisors
Arun Majumdar
Dr. Arun Majumdar is the Jay Precourt Professor at Stanford University, a faculty member of the Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering (by courtesy) and co-director of the Precourt Institute for Energy, which integrates and coordinates research and education activities across all seven Schools and the Hoover Institution at Stanford.
Dr. Majumdar’s research in the past has involved the science and engineering of nanoscale materials and devices, especially in the areas of energy conversion, transport and storage as well as biomolecular analysis. His current research focuses on using electrochemical reactions for thermal energy conversion, thermochemical redox reactions, understanding the limits of heat transport in nanostructured materials and a new effort to re-engineer the electricity grid.
In October 2009, Dr. Majumdar was nominated by President Obama and confirmed by the Senate to become the Founding Director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E), where he served till June 2012 and helped ARPA-E become a model of excellence for the government with bipartisan support from Congress and other stakeholders. Between March 2011 and June 2012, he also served as the Acting Under Secretary of Energy, enabling the portfolio that reported to him: Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Office of Electricity Delivery and Reliability, Office of Nuclear Energy and the Office of Fossil Energy, as well as multiple cross-cutting efforts such as Sunshot, Grid Tech Team and others that he had initiated. Furthermore, he was a Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Energy, Dr. Steven Chu, on a variety of matters related to management, personnel, budget, and policy. In 2010, he served on Secretary Chu’s Science Team to help stop the leak of the Deep Water Horizon (BP) oil spill.
After leaving Washington, DC and before joining Stanford, Dr. Majumdar was the Vice President for Energy at Google, where he created several energy technology initiatives, especially at the intersection of data, computing and electricity grid.
Prior to joining the Department of Energy, Dr. Majumdar was the Almy & Agnes Maynard Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering at University of California–Berkeley and the Associate Laboratory Director for energy and environment at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Dr. Majumdar is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He served as the Vice Chairman of the Advisory Board of US Secretary of Energy, Dr. Ernest Moniz, and was also a Science Envoy for the US Department of State with focus on energy and technology innovation in the Baltics and Poland. He is a member of the Advisory Council of the Electric Power Research Institute and a member of the International Advisory Panel for Energy of the Singapore Ministry of Trade and Industry.
Dr. Majumdar received his bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay in 1985 and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1989.
Sally Benson
Sally M. Benson, who joined Stanford University in 2007, is the co-director of Stanford’s Precourt Institute for Energy and the director of the Global Climate and Energy Project (GCEP). A Professor in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering in the School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, she studies technologies and pathways to reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Prior to joining GCEP, Benson was a staff scientist in the Earth Sciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). In 2004, she completed a four-year term as Deputy Director of Operations at the lab. Benson also served as Division Director for Earth Sciences and Associate Laboratory Director for Energy Sciences at LBNL.
A ground water hydrologist and reservoir engineer, Benson has conducted research to address a range of issues related to energy and the environment. Her research interests include geologic storage of CO2 in deep underground formations, technologies and energy systems for a low-carbon future, and geotechnical instrumentation for subsurface characterization and monitoring.
The author or co-author of over 160 scientific publications, Benson is a member of the American Geophysical Union, the Society of Petroleum Engineers, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Chemical Society.
Tom Byers
At Stanford University since 1995, Professor Tom Byers focuses on education regarding high-growth entrepreneurship and technology innovation. He is the first holder of the Entrepreneurship Professorship endowed chair in the School of Engineering, and is also a Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education. He has been a faculty director since the inception of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), which serves as the entrepreneurship center for the engineering school. STVP includes the Mayfield Fellows work/study program for undergraduates and the Entrepreneurship Corner (eCorner) collection of thought leader videos. He was the director and lead principal investigator of the Epicenter, which was funded by the National Science Foundation to stimulate entrepreneurship education at all US engineering and science colleges. He is the co-author of a textbook called Technology Ventures: From Idea to Enterprise that is published by McGraw-Hill.
He is a past recipient of the prestigious Gordon Prize by the National Academy of Engineering in the USA and Stanford University’s Gores Award, which is its highest honor for excellence in teaching. He is a member of the board of trustees at Menlo College. He has been a member of advisory boards at Harvard Business School, UC Berkeley, World Economic Forum, and Conservation International. Tom was executive vice president and general manager of Symantec Corporation during its formation, and started his career at Accenture. Tom holds a BS in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research and an MBA from UC Berkeley. He also earned a PhD in Business Administration (Management Science) at UC Berkeley.
John Mitchell
John Mitchell became the inaugural Vice Provost for Online Learning in 2012, as well as the first Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning in 2015.
His team has worked with more than 500 Stanford faculty members and instructors on 1,000 online projects for campus or public audiences, transitioned faculty and students to a new university-wide course evaluation system and a new learning management system, and initiated the Year of Learning to envision the future of teaching and learning at Stanford and beyond. As co-director of the Lytics Lab, he is working to improve educational outcomes through data-driven research and iterative design.
Mitchell is the Mary and Gordon Crary Family Professor in the School of Engineering, professor of computer science, and (by courtesy) professor of electrical engineering and of education. His past research has focused on computer security, developing analysis methods and improving network protocol security, authorization and access control, web security, and privacy. He is a member of the steering committee for Stanford University’s Cyber Initiative.
Mitchell’s first research project in online learning started in 2009, when he and six undergraduate students built Stanford CourseWare, an innovative platform that expanded to support interactive video and discussion. CourseWare served as the foundation for initial flipped classroom experiments at Stanford and helped inspire the first massive open online courses (MOOCs) from Stanford. He received his BS from Stanford and his MS and PhD from MIT.
William J. Perry
Perry was the 19th secretary of defense for the United States, serving from February 1994 to January 1997. He previously served as deputy secretary of defense (1993-1994) and as under secretary of defense for research and engineering (1977-1981). Dr. Perry currently serves on the Defense Policy Board (DPB), the International Security Advisory Board (ISAB) and the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board (SEAB). He is on the board of directors of Covant, Fabrinet, LGS Bell Labs Innovations and several emerging high-tech companies. His previous business experience includes serving as a laboratory director for General Telephone and Electronics (1954-1964); founder and president of ESL Inc. (1964-1977); executive vice-president of Hambrecht & Quist Inc. (1981-1985); and founder and chairman of Technology Strategies & Alliances (1985-1993). He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
From 1946 to 1947, Perry was an enlisted man in the Army Corps of Engineers, and served in the Army of Occupation in Japan. He joined the Reserve Officer Training Corps in 1948 and was a second lieutenant in the Army Reserves from 1950 to 1955. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1997 and the Knight Commander of the British Empire in 1998. Perry has received a number of other awards including the Department of Defense Distinguished Service Medal (1980 and 1981), and Outstanding Civilian Service Medals from the Army (1962 and 1997), the Air Force (1997), the Navy (1997), the Defense Intelligence Agency (1977 and 1997), NASA (1981) and the Coast Guard (1997). He received the American Electronic Association’s Medal of Achievement (1980), the Eisenhower Award (1996), the Marshall Award (1997), the Forrestal Medal (1994), and the Henry Stimson Medal (1994). The National Academy of Engineering selected him for the Arthur Bueche Medal in 1996. He has received awards from the enlisted personnel of the Army, Navy, and the Air Force. He has received decorations from the governments of Albania, Bahrain, France, Germany, Hungary, Japan, Korea, Poland, Slovenia, and Ukraine. He received a BS and MS from Stanford University and a PhD from Pennsylvania State University, all in mathematics.