Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Ive attempted to embed the relevant slides below. Talk about waste.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? When we build products, we use a methodology. Steve Blank has devoted many years now to trying to answer that question, with a theory he calls Customer Development. a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit." Theory of market types.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. I have personally sold many copies of his book, and continue to recommend it as one of the most important books a startup founder can read.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. March 25, 2009 9:16 AM Jesse Farmer said. March 25, 2009 9:19 AM Eric said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 3, 2009 Minimum Viable Product: a guide One of the most important lean startup techniques is called the minimum viable product. We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration. August 3, 2009 10:52 AM Chris Hopf said. There was only one such company.

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Software By Rob

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

The conference was the second reminder in just over a month that I need to get out of the house more often and meet other developers and entrepreneurs. The key take-away is that product differentiation is how you make money, and neutralization (keeping up with your competition) is how you stay in the game. Build a better user of [X].&#

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

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conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. I feel like “conversion rate optimization” is in 2013 what “social media marketing” was in 2009. Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. Website Analysis.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

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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. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. And what of the product development team? But all things are never equal. Go on an agile diet quickly.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Labels: product development Speed up or slow down?

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Our mystery keynote is now revealed and I couldnt be more excited.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 1, 2008 Test-Driven Development as andon cord You cannot control what you cannot see, and the hardest part of managing software projects is that the final product is so intangible. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, January 30, 2009 Achieving a failure We spend a lot of time planning. 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. Great post!

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 1, 2009 The Steve Jobs method Image via CrunchBase Its been a long time since I did a post that was primarily a link to another blog with commentary, but I came across something today that I really want to share. For one, capacity development. August 1, 2009 7:39 AM Ravi Mohan said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 22, 2009 Pivot, dont jump to a new vision In a lean startup , instead of being organized around traditional functional departments, we use a cross-functional problem team and solution team. Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, February 28, 2009 Throwing away working code Lean startups work by systematically eradicating waste. This builds on a lot of great thinking that has come before, like the agile movements insistence that only the creation of working code counts as progress for a software development team.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, July 29, 2009 Embrace technical debt Financial debt plays an important and positive role in our economy under normal conditions. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage. Remember Hamlet?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said. What made them exceptional?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The goal is to have split-testing be a continuous part of our development process, so much so that it is considered a completely routine part of developing a new feature. Focus on the output metrics of that part of the product, and you make the problem a lot more clear.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, April 9, 2009 Built to learn Its been an exhilarating ride since the Web 2.0 Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience.

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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. Labels: product development 8comments: Vincent van Wylick said. This post has been removed by the author. Nice write-up.

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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. These problems can be anything: development mistakes, site outages, marketing program failures, or even internal missed schedules.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I am convinced one of Joel Spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the Joel Test , a checklist of 12 essential practices that you could use to rate the effectiveness of a software product development team. Joel said it: "Top notch development teams dont torture their programmers."

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 3, 2009 Employees should be masters of their own time Every startup should have a culture of learning. In order to give people the data they need to apply the strategy, we were very open with our company metrics, making all reports generally available and easy to run. I asked why.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. And this was a huge product, which took years to develop.

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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. They’ll increase code quality, prevent defects and educate your developers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. No vanity metrics should be looked at. It works to undermine excuses for poor or shoddy work.

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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

APRIL 7, 2010

At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. For example, I’m a big believer in split-testing.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 15, 2009 Why Continuous Deployment? One large source of waste in development is “double-checking.&# For example, imagine a team operating in a traditional waterfall development system, without continuous deployment, test-driven development, or continuous integration.

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Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. It’s one of the subtle distinctions that at times gets lost in the process.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ▼ June (3) What is a startup?

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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. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. January 2, 2009 8:54 AM mancjew said. January 2, 2009 8:57 AM Abbas said. Abbas February 22, 2009 3:33 PM cwillu said. Would love to get in touch.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

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