Relationship to Blank
Colonel (ret.) Joe Felter is a Stanford faculty member who co-created Hacking for Defense (H4D) with Steve Blank in 2016. Felter brought the national security domain expertise — as a former Special Forces officer and senior advisor at the Department of Defense — while Blank brought the Lean Innovation methodology. Together they demonstrated that Customer Development could be applied to defense and national security problems.
Career
Felter served as a U.S. Army Special Forces officer and held senior positions at the Department of Defense, including Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia. At Stanford, he is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute. He co-founded the Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation (2021) with Blank and Raj Shah.
Significance
Felter represents the defense/national security strand of Blank's later career — the connection between Silicon Valley innovation methodology and national security challenges. His collaboration with Blank on H4D and the Gordian Knot Center bridges the gap between the military establishment and startup methodology that Blank first encountered at ESL in 1978.
Sources: Stanford profiles, Gordian Knot Center, steveblank.com