Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. But its not really viral growth, even when its exponential.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Products can find sources of validation with impressive stats along a number of dimensions, such as high engagement, viral coefficient, or long-term retention. Go on an agile diet quickly. With a product development team that is not shipping, any agile methodology will surface major problems quickly. Great post!

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

I think its helpful to think about two kinds of competition for distribution: acquisition competition and retention competition. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. Retention competition is how you get people to come back to your app. My advice: dont launch big.

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San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

In a previous post , I covered the three main drivers of growth: Paid, Sticky, and Viral. Let’s look at a viral growth company, like Facebook. If you are building a large, viral, ad-support consumer internet property, you just want to go big! They’re off to cross the chasm. As soon as possible!&#

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

The Next Web

AUGUST 26, 2012

In November 2010 we launched Whatser : an application that made it easy to get personal suggestions on where to go such as bars, restaurants, galleries, shops and other spots based on your location, interest and social graph. Keep the team small, agile and up-to-date. KPI’s are different for each start-up. Raising money takes time.

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Bankruptcy Technical Review Intellectual Property Due Diligence 121

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

This is a common problem that results from viral-loop optimization. By copying the exact same registration flow as every other successful viral app, many viral apps completely lose their positioning. At IMVU , we would routinely find retention effects that would stem from registration changes and have impact days or weeks later.

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join. This is essentially a version of the viral loop.

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Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140