Venture Chronicles

AUGUST 2, 2013

3) It all starts with the product: Companies can overcome a great many challenges with band-aids, duct tape, and bailing wire. but one aspect of a startup and/or growth stage company that cannot be glossed over is the product. It all starts with the product.

Product 62

Product CTO Hire Architecture Startup 62

Steve Blank

APRIL 10, 2009

An example of a reversible decision could be adding a product feature, a new algorithm in the code, targeting a specific set of customers, etc. An irreversible decision is firing an employee, launching your product, a five-year lease for an expensive new building, etc. That’s why startups are agile.

Silicon Valley 300

Silicon Valley RSS Startup Agile 300

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 13, 2010

The objective of this course is that groups of students finish with a completed software product that has real customers and an identified market. The syllabus for the Stanford course can be seen here.

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Chile Silicon Valley Lean Agile 235

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. So far, I have found "lean startup" works better with the entrepreneurs Ive talked to than "agile startup" or even "extreme startup.") Of course, many startups are capital efficient and generally frugal.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Feld Thoughts

MAY 5, 2014

We were the original investors in Orbotix and I joined their board in the fall of 2010 after they went through the Techstars Boulder program. Their first product will “reinvent the ball” through the creation of a robotic ball controlled by a smart phone. Is Twice As Fast, Agile, And Awesome. They shipped Sphero 1.0

Software Review 136

Software Review Agile Mobile Programming 136

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities. The board raises a collective eyebrow.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, June 2, 2010 The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business Review) I continue my series for Harvard Business Review with the Lean Startup technique called Five Whys. Five Whys has its origins in the Toyota Production System. Five Whys has its origins in the Toyota Production System.

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Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. We didnt think wed able to compete with that.

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Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Agile – you may find the real opportunities for your company was somewhere else. Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? This means you still need to have a resilient personality, and be agile. How quickly will you recover? Can you recognize and capitalize on them?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In addition to presenting the IMVU case, we tried for the first time to do an overview of a software engineering methodology that integrates practices from agile software development with Steves method of Customer Development. Unfortunately, positioning our product as an "IM add-on" was a complete mistake.

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Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

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. Every startup has a chance to change the world, by bringing not just a new product, but an entirely new institution into existence. Blew my mind.

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San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. Nothing made any difference.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

We wanted an agile approach that would allow us to build our software architecture as we needed it, without downtime, but also without large amounts of up-front cost. You can also download our presentation, " Just-In-Time Scalability: Agile Methods to Support Massive Growth." Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. but: Something is Still Missing.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

When we build products, we use a methodology. We know some products succeed and others fail, but the reasons are complex and the unpredictable. a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit." The theory of Product/Market Fit is one key component of customer development, and I highly recommend Marcs essay on that topic.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Boyd emphasized the importance of agility in combat: "the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than ones opponent." Agile software development. Agile allows companies to build higher quality software faster. This speeds up the Ideas-Code-Data feedback loop.

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Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 25, 2011

If you somehow missed SLLCONF 2010 , you can get caught up with a complete video recording here.) It may be hard to remember that there was a time when people in the agile software development community thought Lean Startup was incompatible with agile practices. Wealthfront CTO Pascal-Louis Perez will show you how.

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San Francisco Silicon Valley Lean Agile 146

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

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. Filing Date: initial S-1 filed Nov 17, 2010 , updated March 9, 2011. Financial Snapshot: 2010 Revenue: $170 million.

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Transformify

SEPTEMBER 12, 2017

Those countries relying on agriculture or oil production tend to have high unemployment rates and wide skills gaps. Nairobi, the capital of Nigeria, is often pointed out as the birth place of the so-called Silicon Savanah which gave the rise to the Africa’s tech scene between 2007 and 2010. Project/ Product Management.

Africa 75

Africa Benin Seychelles Nigeria 75

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

He was named entrepreneur-in-residence at Harvard Business School in 2010 and is currently an IDEO Fellow. To fill Safeway’s order, “ We were cold-calling anybody that we made anything to do with meat … pleading with them to consider making our products for us. “. Taking My Class. If you can’t hear the clip, click here.

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Lean Technical Cofounder Silicon Valley Channel 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Berkeley in 2010 to run the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship in the Haas School of Business we were teaching entrepreneurship the same way as when I was a student back in 1995. The disadvantage is that its methodology was based on the old waterfall model of product development and not the agile and lean methods that startups use today.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

YoungUpstarts

JULY 14, 2015

Instead, take the time to compose a nimble, agile sales team that has worked in the industry you’re looking to penetrate, understands the fluctuating nature of a startup and is willing to do the dirty work: segment the market, make cold calls, automate sales and implement a sales process that is unique to your company and product.

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The Next Web

FEBRUARY 22, 2014

These professions all share certain key characteristics: They are high pressure environments that encourage agility, creativity, and teamwork. Professional agility in a candidate can be more profitable than a job history directly matching your job description. The time it takes to fill an open position has doubled since 2010.

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Hiring Silicon Valley Technical Review Agile 133

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, March 25, 2010 Speed up or slow down? This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Everyone was in the flow; the team was hyper-productive. Labels: product development Speed up or slow down? Expo SF (May.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

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. He wrote it in 2000, and as far as I know has never updated it. Youd better.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

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. He has a good team, and theyve shipped a working product to many customers.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

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.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

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. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2023

I’ve known Professor Cristobal Garcia since 2010 when he hosted my first visit to Catholic University in Santiago of Chile and to southern Patagonia. Co mpanies also face Wicked problems. In contrast, designing AI-driven enterprise software or building dating apps are comparatively simple problems.) Class Flow Week 1 What is a simple idea?

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Lean Chile Ukraine Spain 294

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

The other departments in marketing gave the same answers; the product-marketing department said their job was to write data sheets. But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. The same was true for the Product Marketing group.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

You get increasing growth by optimizing the viral loop , and you get revenue as a side-effect, assuming you have even the most anemic monetization scheme baked into your product. Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

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 Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said. March 23, 2010 2:05 PM Anonymoussaid. But along the way, something strange happened. And what about if deployment takes forever?

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CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. 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. For software, the easiest batch to see is code.

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San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 11, 2020

It has published its financial data since its inception in 2010. Build an Agile Culture. Many companies today—both small and large—are realizing the benefits of organizational agility. Building an agile organizational culture has proven to help improve collaboration, encourage design thinking, and spark innovation.

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Agile Startup San Francisco United States 145

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, January 7, 2010 Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Although much of it will sound familiar to readers of this blog, whats new is my first step towards the " new entrepreneurship " that is my goal for 2010. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

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San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119