VC Cafe

DECEMBER 28, 2010

See the October 2010 edition after the jump. The G/SCORE measures the key milestones a company has achieved in business building along seven factors: overall concept, market opportunity, competitive risk, product development, business development, team, and business model. billion in 2010.

Technical Review 87

Technical Review South Korea Mexico 87

blog.wepay.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

» 6 Things a Non-Engineer Should Know Before Founding a Web Startup By Rich Aberman Despite the obvious look of shock and panic on the faces of my WePay teammates, I recently committed my first lines of production code. I used to think that you build the product and then you get people to use it. The 90/10 rule.

Engineer 53

Engineer Software Review Web Technical Review 53

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

Marketing demand creation programs (Search Engine Marketing, Public Relations, Advertising, Lead Generation, Trade Shows, etc.) are all expensive and potentially fatal distractions if done before you have found product/market fit and a repeatable sales model. Reply Amit , on January 22, 2010 at 11:34 am Said: Great article!

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

blog.wepay.com

APRIL 28, 2010

» 6 Things a Non-Engineer Should Know Before Founding a Web Startup By Rich Aberman Despite the obvious look of shock and panic on the faces of my WePay teammates, I recently committed my first lines of production code. I used to think that you build the product and then you get people to use it. The 90/10 rule.

Engineer 53

Engineer Software Review Web Technical Review 53

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 4, 2015

by Melissa Lincoln, Senior Product Marketing Manager at Leadspace. Leadspace was founded in 2010 and maintains offices in both San Francisco and just outside Tel Aviv in Hod HaSharon, Israel. As any engineering VP based in San Francisco knows, it’s a competitive market for technical talent.

B2B 100

B2B San Francisco Semantic 100

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Their engineering teams didn’t have the expertise using off-the-shelf microprocessors (back then “real” computer companies designed their own instruction sets and operating systems.) They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. Their engineers hated us.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering. But since I spent a long time in a hybrid CTO/VP Engineering role, I still have this nagging question. I want to add one last idea, even though I recognize it is controversial, bordering on the boundary between the CTO and VP Engineering. Heres my take.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

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. I help lead the Engineering Leadership SIG at SDForum and wonder if you would be interested in speaking to our group about lean starups. Blew my mind.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." Thats why eBay advertises on search engines, and Facebook doesnt. Labels: search engine marketing 0comments: New comments are not allowed. Thats where Id like to pick up the discussion.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

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. why couldnt the engineer see the problem in their sandbox?

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, June 17, 2010 No departments Big companies have departments. I was an engineer on the engineering team. For one, the engineers consider the artists stupid; the artists consider the engineers arrogant. Startups are companies. Startups aspire to become big companies.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money. Would you mind sharing them?

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. 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.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Refreshing to finally see lean and agile thinking emerge in product/business-floors and not only in technology. Critical also, as the lean company/start-up can not be lean by just using lean principles in IT and not in Product Development/Management - a common misinterpretation of the Toyota Production System.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Market Risk vs. Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention.

Vertical 144

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

The human tendency to moralize about debt affects engineers, too. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage. The biggest source of waste in new product development is building something that nobody wants.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Venture Chronicles

AUGUST 2, 2013

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. If we did anything egregiously wrong at Get Satisfaction in the 2010-1012 time period it was to under-invest in the product with the assumption that the existing product was good enough.

Product 62

Product CTO Hire Architecture Startup 62

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Ever since that time, I have struggled to explain how the feedback loop in customer development should interface with the feedback loop in product development. Eric Ries Lean Startup Schematic View Of Agile Development And Customer Development View more presentations from Eric Ries.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

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? Trying to answer that question at IMVU led me to discover Google AdWords and the world of search engine marketing. SEM is a simple idea.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

Finding great engineers is hard; figuring out whos good is even harder. The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. I have found this quite rare in engineers. Thats OK, were not trying to hire a therapist.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

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. Labels: product development Speed up or slow down? Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

bizthoughts.mikelee.org

MARCH 8, 2012

BizThoughts Thoughts about business, technology, the web & entrepreneurship About Booklist Contact Nov 15 2011 Finding a Technical Cofounder By Mike Lee Categories: Entrepreneurship , Leadership Since I have a technical background, I get about one offer a month to join some engineering team, or to be a technical cofounder.

Technical Cofounder 40

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 40

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 4, 2010 Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Kent Beck will give the opening keynote at the Startup Lessons Learned conference on April 23. Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Also SJ's obsession with better taste (positively) contributes to the overall product development process. Beyond Apple, we can find examples of the Steve Jobs character at Toyota, in the form of the Chief Engineer. There are some good anecdotes about Chief Engineers in the Toyota Product Development Book.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, science and engineering at both Stanford and U.C. Berkeley were heavily funded to develop Cold War weapon systems. 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.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

The Next Web

DECEMBER 2, 2013

Founder Kevin Systrom launched Instagram with 25,000 beta users on October 6, 2010; two years later, the app continues to see massive growth, recently reporting 150 million active users. Luck, timing and social engineering are bigger components than most entrepreneurs care to imagine,” adds Werdelin. million to develop.”.

Cost 168

Cost San Francisco New York City Ruby 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

For some reason, though, despite the increased buy-in, the final product often doesnt look anything like the original spec. The VP Engineering spends all of his time trying to make sure the programmers understand and implement the spec. Labels: product development 8comments: Vincent van Wylick said.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

The more work youve sunk into a product or vision, the harder it is to let it go. As the CTO/VP Engineering, I was the worst offender. That means that I (and other engineers) were able to participate in the problem team discussions. Such discussions would have been impossible in our execution-oriented engineering team meetings.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

I thought a good place to start was with the origins of the idea that "software design" should be considered a discipline in its own right, on par with computer science, software engineering, and computer programming. Great engineers see it and smile. This is called set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE). [1]

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

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. When It’s Darkest Men See the Stars - Steve Blank , November 24, 2010 When It’s Darkest Men See the Stars. but: Something is Still Missing.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

We started with a simple wiki page with a few bullet points of things that new engineers had tripped over recently. In response to Five Whys that noticed that not all new engineers were reading the list, we expanded it into a new engineer curriculum. We never set out to build a world-class engineering-training process.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 9, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 9, 2010 Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23, 2010 in SF) Today we are opening up registration for the first ever Startup Lessons Learned Conference on April 23, 2010 in San Francisco. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 151

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. They work hard to keep their house in order at all times, and there are strict rules and guidelines in place that prevent engineers and teams from doing things their own way. Bring your questions.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Even though some aspects of the product were eventually vindicated as good ones, the underlying architecture suffered from hard-to-change assumptions. After years of engineering effort, changing these assumptions was incredibly hard. This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development. Great post!!!

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Our bias as technologists is to over-focus on the product part of the problem, and five whys tends to counteract that tendency. Its why, at my previous job, we were able to get a new engineer completely productive on their first day. Most engineers would ship code to production on their first day.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167