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. February 21, 2009 12:10 AM Harold Fowler said. February 21, 2009 7:39 AM Rocky1138 said. February 21, 2009 12:26 PM Anonymoussaid. February 21, 2009 3:08 PM SCC said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Slowly, over time, we optimized (or eliminated) each step in the process of becoming a customer by giving us money. And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 27, 2009 Cash is not king Cash on hand is just one important variable in a startup’s life, but it’s not necessarily the most important. Unfortunately for the current crop of founders, there is intense pressure to engage in selective memory when companies tell the story of their founding.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Continuous deployment and continuous learning At long last, some of the actual implementers of the advanced systems we built at IMVU for rapid deployment and rapid response are starting to write about it. In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 15, 2009 Why Continuous Deployment? June 15, 2009 7:41 AM William Pietri said. June 15, 2009 8:24 AM Stevesaid. One thing you seem to be treating lightly is how to use continuous development in business systems. Corporate customers seem to prefer regular but distinct releases.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, January 2, 2009 Lessons Learned on Mashable today I had the good fortune to be asked to write a guest post over at Mashable , which is running today, called HOW TO: Raise Money in a Down Economy. January 2, 2009 11:54 AM Daniel Davie said. January 2, 2009 4:48 PM Chris Desouza said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, July 2, 2009 How to conduct a Five Whys root cause analysis In the lean startup workshops , we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the technique of Five Whys. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 15comments: Anonymoussaid. July 3, 2009 3:11 AM Eric Williamson said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Lets return to our team thats failing to hit their targets.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why vanity metrics are dangerous In a previous post, I defined two kinds of metrics: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, June 5, 2009 It’s a startup, not a spreadsheet Some people, when they start to realize the power of using data to inform their decisions, become obsessed with optimization. And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. What is customer development?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, January 28, 2009 Refactoring yourself out of business Let me start out by saying I am a big fan of refactoring , the ongoing process of changing code so that it performs the same behaviors but has more elegant structure. Its an essential discipline of good software development, especially in startups.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# Founders struggle with this question. And this is true outside of games.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 24, 2009 Marching through quicksand I have been spending a lot of time lately talking to people in various media companies: editors and agents, executives, journalists, producers and directors. What is the right revenue model? Doug August 24, 2009 8:21 AM Hugh said. Very smart stuff.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, September 11, 2009 The cardinal sin of community management Once you have a product launched, you will the face the joys – and the despair – of a community that grows up around it. There are many articles by many experts ( myself included ) extolling the virtues of listening to customers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

When you read stories of successful startups in the popular and business press, you usually hear about how the founders anticipated several of these challenges in their initial vision. Should you charge from day one, testing the revenue model first? Unfortunately, startup success requires getting them all right.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

In fact, in the early days, when IMVU would experience unexpected surges of revenue or traffic, it was inevitable that every person in the company was convinced that their project was responsible. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

We Changed Our Mind In 1966, 10 years after Hewlett’s memo, Hewlett Packard’s revenue and headcount had grown ten fold; $200 million and 11,000 employees – all from test and measurement equipment. It was priced at $22,000 – equivalent to about $140,000 in 2009 dollars.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Either way, you would have been better off focusing your split-test on high level metrics that measure how much customers like your product as a whole. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Tweet View Comments Guest Author Sep 20, 2009 This guest post was written by Meebo CEO Seth Sternberg. One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. How To Get There. Then, forget everything else, VCs included, and just build. and Google.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 28, 2009 Continuous deployment for mission-critical applications Having evangelized the concept of continuous deployment for the past few years, Ive come into contact with almost every conceivable question, objection, or concern that people have about it. Better handling of intermittent bugs.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

It requires separating the product launch from the marketing launch (see Dont Launch ) as well as other staple Lean Startup tactics: minimum viable product, split-testing, customer development and the pivot. That is customer development. “But it never happened.&# [Alas, customers dont know what they want!

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, January 27, 2009 Three freemium strategies Im excited to see so much attention being paid to freemium businesses lately. These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. January 28, 2009 1:46 AM Anonymoussaid. Pretty good deal, right?

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Not just about expenses, about increasing revenue. Make sure for planned revenues you have "leading indicators" to know if you will hit it. Over-communicate with employees, investors, customers. This can take the form of a traditional sales pipeline or a registration-activation-revenue chart. Offer equity instead of cash.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. And I tried to evaluate the idea and figure out: What did the founder really need here? Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? What went wrong?

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

It took us months to realize what we had done, and to eventually apologize and win back the trust of those customers wed alienated. The whole episode cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. In fact, it was the revenue trends that eventually alerted us to the magnitude of the problem. Great post!

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, July 9, 2009 10 years of entrepreneurship I recently passed my ten-year anniversary of becoming an entrepreneur. We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. July 9, 2009 7:32 AM Peter Kane said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 1, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, May 1, 2009 Lean Startup webcast post-game Wow, what an incredible turnout for webcast this morning, right on the heels of a phenomenal crowd at startup2startup last night. 2009 05 01 How To Build A Lean Startup Step By Step View more presentations from Eric Ries. May 3, 2009 4:45 AM Eric said.

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