Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 8, 2008 Continuous integration step-by-step Lets start with the basics: Martin Fowlers original article lays out the mechanics of how to set up a CI server and the essential rules to follow while doing it. It also happens whenever you have code that is checked-in, but not yet deployed anywhere.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now A great checklist of techniques and tools for making your development more agile, written from a Rail perspective.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? It became harder and harder to separate how the software is built from how the software is structured. If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not?

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, February 11, 2009 The free software hiring advantage This is one of those startup tips Im a little reluctant to share, because its been such a powerful source of competitive advantage in the companies Ive worked with. Especially for a startup, not taking maximum advantage of free software is crazy.

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, March 25, 2010 Speed up or slow down? for Harvard Business Review) Over at Harvard Business Review, Ive been building up a series designed to introduce the Lean Startup methodology to a business-focused audience. In the early days, chaos stayed under control.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. Each specialist takes up his part of the spec (UI, middleware, backend) and cranks out code. October 6, 2008 12:17 AM r& said.

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San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, December 7, 2008 The hackers lament One of the thrilling parts of working and writing in Silicon Valley is the incredible variety of people Ive had the chance to meet. Hes just as comfortable writing code as racking servers, debugging windows drivers, or devising new interview questions.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Our code pushes take another six minutes. Since these two steps are pipelined that means at peak we’re pushing a new revision of the code to the website every nine minutes. On average we deploy new code fifty times a day. Code reviews and pairing Great practices. Throwing out a lot of code.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, February 20, 2009 Work in small batches Software should be designed, written, and deployed in small batches. For software, the easiest batch to see is code. Every time an engineer checks in code, they are batching up a certain amount of work. This is easiest to see in deployment.

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San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Of all the tactics I have advocated as part of the lean startup , none has provoked as many extreme reactions as continuous deployment , a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. When a developer wants to check-in code, this is a very scary moment.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Cracking the Code

APRIL 13, 2007

Cracking The Code. Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Software 2.0: How the use of internet is transforming the software industry. To win in this new space, software companies need new marketing skills. Friday, April 13, 2007.

Software Review 48

Software Review Internet Software Technical Review 48

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 2, 2008 Paul Graham on fundraising I have found no better primer on the current realities of starting a new technology company in a startup hub like Silicon Valley than Paul Grahams essays. Your natural tendency when an investor says yes will be to relax and go back to writing code.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Refreshing to finally see lean and agile thinking emerge in product/business-floors and not only in technology. My experience is in Enterprise Software - where we are forced to chunk features into formal releases. January 10, 2010 12:57 PM talltodd said. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

I hope to show why lean and agile techniques actually reduce the negative impacts of technical debt and increase our ability to take advantage of its positive effects. But there is more to technical debt than just the interest payments that come due. The failure of the feature had nothing to do with the quality of the code.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Agile VC

APRIL 17, 2011

In 2010 I deconstructed the filings for GameFly and Quinstreet. GameFly filed in 2010 and remains in registration, though 2011 has seen a positive start for VC-backed IPOs with 14 in Q1 2011. Kayak Software Corporation. Filing Date: initial S-1 filed Nov 17, 2010 , updated March 9, 2011. 2010 Net Income: $8 million.

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Pre-Money Valuation Liquidation Preference Dividend Common Stock 113

Cracking the Code

DECEMBER 16, 2006

Cracking The Code. Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Venture Capital is about investing in the small, fast and agile company hoping that it will beat the large and slow incumbent. Cracking The Code on Facebook. software. (10).

Software Review 48

Software Review Venture Capital Technical Review Europe 48

femgineer.com

JULY 18, 2010

We engineers know that need to be agile in a startup and be able to scrap code and rebuild, but want we don’t want is to have a founder who manic or aimless. So before you ask someone to even spend an hour of their time writing code or reviewing specs make sure you can pay them in some form (coffee, dinner, laptop, etc.),

Engineer 41

Engineer Software Review Startup Technical Review 41

Altgate

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

The presentation was on outsourcing generally, not just software engineering and the audience was very early stage companies (some yet to be founded). Almost certainly accounting is a support service and should be outsourced (unless, perhaps, you’re selling accounting software and you need to eat your own dogfood!).

Software Review 65

Software Review Offshore Startup Boston 65

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 8, 2009 Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and whats changed since then) My recent article on technical debt and its positive uses generated a fair bit of controversy. The same might be said of good software. Here we have the beginnings of a theory of design for software.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, May 31, 2010 Thank you The past month has been an incredible roller coaster: #sllconf was a trending topic (briefly topping Justin Bieber before the wifi in the hotel gave out), the Web 2.0 And a special thanks is due to all of our presenters, panelists, and mentors. We all owe you.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 15, 2008 The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time Split-testing is a core lean startup discipline, and its one of those rare topics that comes up just as often in a technical context as in a business-oriented one when Im talking to startups. September 15, 2008 9:12 PM Hitchens said.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

Since then, PHP (as part of the LAMP stack ) has really been the dominant development platform, at least in the free software and startup worlds. When we started IMVU in 2004, we could rely on a staggering amount of open source software that jumpstarted our initial product offering. Every change required a server restart.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

When I wrote a review of Four Steps on this blog in November, 2008, I did my best to be candid and warn of a few shortcomings: And Steve is the first to admit that its a "turgid" read, without a great deal of narrative flow. Four Steps primarily centers its stories and case studies on B2B hardware and software startups.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

Lean Planning started with Tim Berry ‘s 2008 “ Plan-As-You-Go Business Plan ” which was a new way for entrepreneurs to think about planning. Here at Palo Alto Software in 2007 and 2008, we embraced these planning concepts and moved towards a more agile planning process. Step 3: Develop a Financial Model.

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

Getting features and fixes into hands of users was the greatest priority - a test environment would just get in the way and slow down the validation coming from having code running in production. When a new engineer started at IMVU, I had a simple rule: they had to ship code to production on their first day. Heres the key point.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Without conscious process design, product development teams turn lines of code written into momentum in a certain direction. This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development. Labels: agile , customer development 5comments: William Pietri said. Even a great architecture becomes inflexible. Great post!

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San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Due to an interaction effect between your hardware, solar flares, and quantum flux, this virus will crash your computer and erase your hard drive sometime soon. In the past, we invested in brilliant architecture, code reuse, refactoring, modular design, etc. In other words, a principled way to combine agility with stability.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 3, 2009

At IMVU , these were quite common (after all, were shipping code 50 times a day). They are collected and reviewed after an appropriate interval (e.g. In response to Sean - Intel still runs a very formal process of setting expectations, evaluating employees and reviewing progress on a quarterly basis. love your openness at IMVU.

Employee 146

Employee San Francisco Lean Software Review 146

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, June 17, 2010 No departments Big companies have departments. I was the junior guy on a project team; I was called in to do some technical due diligence for reasons that were obscure to me, because the team already had much more senior engineers assigned to it. Startups are companies.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

See Paul Grahams Why Nerds are Unpopular to learn more) Take a look at this article on a programming Q&A site: How old are you, and how old were you when you started coding? We also learned that law is code , and that leadership was needed to build thriving communities in a digital age. Can I send you a review copy?

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 27, 2010 Good enough never is (or is it?) Over time, such teams either explode due to irreconcilable differences or dramatically slow down. Lean manufacturing , agile software development , and Theory of Constraints are all examples of this idea in action.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, September 18, 2008 How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone I have had the opportunity to meet a lot of iPhone-related companies lately. All I see is a name, an icon, a price, the developers name, and a review star-rating. The reviews are all over the map. I cant really tell.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, May 14, 2009 The Lean Startup Workshop - now an OReilly Master Class My rate of posting has been much lower lately, and this is mostly due to preparations for the upcoming Lean Startup Workshop on May 29. We changed our model to B2B and adopted Agile around 2002. Expo SF (May.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

For example, a site outage may seem like it was caused by a bad piece of code, but: why was that code written? The net effect of all this was to make new engineers incredibly productive right away – in most cases, we’d have them deliver code to production on their very first day.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

I believe it is a full, company-wide turn through the OODA loop (for a software business, see especially Ideas-Code-Learn ). You need a process for systematically reviewing your costs and eliminating those that slow you down. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, What counts as an iteration?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Im also excited to share two long-form reviews from actual attendees. Thank you @ericries for drastically altering my perception of agile startup Thank you all so much for your kind words. More recently it's skewed to software & web. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Lets start with a distinction between shipping new software to the customer, and changing the customers experience. The idea is that often you can change the customers experience without shipping them new software at all. Id like to add one extra thought to Joes thought experiment. But that doesnt make it any less important to answer.

Continuous Deployment 68

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 68