Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

The law of large numbers (of customers) says you cant help but make at least some money - your valuation is determined by how well you monetize the tidal wave of growth. Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, October 4, 2008 About the author ( Update January, 2010: This post originally dates from October, 2008 back when I first started writing this blog. Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? )

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San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 14, 2008 How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people Frequency is more important than talking to the "right" customers, especially early on. Youll know when the person youre talking to is not a potential customer - they just wont understand what youre saying.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 2, 2008 Just-In-Time Scalability At my previous company, we pioneered an approach to building out our infrastructure that we called "Just-In-Time Scalability." You can also download our presentation, " Just-In-Time Scalability: Agile Methods to Support Massive Growth."

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. Some startups avoid getting customer feedback for precisely this reason: they are afraid that if early reactions are negative, theyll be "forced" to abandon their vision. As the CTO/VP Engineering, I was the worst offender.

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Venture Chronicles

AUGUST 2, 2013

I have covered a couple of topics in this series, the first being hiring the best people and the second organizing for success based on the attributes of the people you are hiring. and more on point is that the best product is a result of what you learn from your customers, not what you think you should be doing.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time! Even with the highest standards imaginable, theres no way to hire just genius hackers. Hire a CTO or VP Engineering. Worst of all, your teammates are constantly wanting to have meetings.

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Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, July 28, 2010 Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot (The following guest post is a new experiment for this blog. Third, the company expected hundreds of amateurs who performed poorly in the game to realize they weren’t good at investing and therefore become customers. says Rachleff.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

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. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

All of these are true waste, and they generally happen because somebody is optimizing for their particular part of the puzzle, not for the team as a whole. Labels: agile , listening to customers 3comments: hauteroute said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

There was a time when "web content" was considered "not code" and therefore not routinely source controlled. I know plenty of people who prefer more advanced source control system, but my belief is that many agile practices diminish the importance of advanced features like branching. Can you make a build in one step? Youd better.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 13, 2008 SEM on five dollars a day How do you build a new product with constant customer feedback while simultaneously staying under the radar? Slowly, over time, we optimized (or eliminated) each step in the process of becoming a customer by giving us money. chatted five times?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

0comments: Post a Comment Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Subscribe via email Blog Archive ► 2010 (48) ► October (3) Case Study: Rapid iteration with hardware The Lean Startup Bundle Stop lying on stage ► September (4) Good enough never is (or is it?) Expo SF (May.

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Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

As the product matured, they were able to ratchet up the quality to prevent regression on features that had been truly embraced by their customers. On the negative side, we got a visceral feel for the kinds of changes that could really harm customers, like commits that take the whole site down. And that was not a lot of fun.

Continuous Deployment 131

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

October 13, 2008 9:44 PM Post a Comment Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Subscribe via email Blog Archive ► 2010 (48) ► October (3) Case Study: Rapid iteration with hardware The Lean Startup Bundle Stop lying on stage ► September (4) Good enough never is (or is it?) Expo SF (May.

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Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

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. In almost all Agile Development systems, thousands of automated tests are run against every change to the software.

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San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

In my experience, the majority of changes we made to products have no effect at all on customer behavior. The report is set up to show you what happened to customers who registered in that period (a so-called cohort analysis ). This report is set up to tell you about new customers specifically. First of all, why split-test?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Labels: continuous deployment 0comments: Post a Comment Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Subscribe via email Blog Archive ► 2010 (48) ► October (3) Case Study: Rapid iteration with hardware The Lean Startup Bundle Stop lying on stage ► September (4) Good enough never is (or is it?) Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

So one of the first things we did was to hire an Oracle expert and get to work. We just had our app support a few tens of thousands of customers, and it did well. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

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San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

At IMVU, when wed hire a new engineer, we could get them to ship code to production on their first day, even if they had never programmed in PHP before. Which makes them exactly the kind of programmers companies should want to hire. In my role as a CTO, Ive always tried to choose the right tool for the right job.

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PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

0comments: Post a Comment Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Subscribe via email Blog Archive ► 2010 (48) ► October (3) Case Study: Rapid iteration with hardware The Lean Startup Bundle Stop lying on stage ► September (4) Good enough never is (or is it?) Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I see startups struggle with this all the time. You have customers, they are using your product, and you are trying to help them. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, But then what? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 76

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 16, 2008

Read more at How to Usability Test your Site for Free | Noah Kagans Okdork.com Labels: listening to customers 1 comments: HKagan said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

When you have an infinitesimal number of customers, it can be embarrassing. But as long as your ego can take it, there are huge advantages to having a small number of customers. Most importantly, you can get to know those few customers in a way that people with zillions of customers cant. You can even meet the friend.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

But from a customer experience point of view, Im not yet sold. Today, the fact that the store is open and has almost no barriers to entry is great for the companies I meet, because they can get their first versions in front of customers quickly, and start iterating fast. How will new customers know that my apps are superior?

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

You delight customers just like before. In an eyeballs business, you just cant seem to acquire or activate that next step-up of customers. Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

We had all the tools in place but we didn’t actually practice agile development. No fancy tools needed here — it’s about the mentality, attention to detail, and the actions that foster agile development, not the tools & systems you set up in place to facilitate this. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Sometimes, testing with existing customers is more complicated than with new customers. Existing customers already have an expectation about how your product works, and its important to take this into consideration when adding or changing features. On the other hand, existing customers can be a testing benefit.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

My suggestion: take a much-loved feature and split-test it with some new customers to see if it really makes a difference. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, How did we combat this tendency? Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Only when youve tried everything you can think of, and youre not learning any more, is it time to bring out the axe. Keep split-testing, but keep this iron rule: if it doesnt change customer behavior, its not a feature. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Now that is fun.

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Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. The business model.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

Update: The end is near, Expensify is hiring a.NET programmer! As you might know, we’re hiring the best programmers in the world. If you are a startup looking to hire really excellent people, take notice of.NET on a resume, and ask why it’s there. Expensify Blog. Expense Reports That Don't Suck.

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Java PHP Software Review Coder 107