Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

I believe its important that product teams be cross-functional, no matter what other job function the product champion does. At IMVU , we called this person a Producer (revealing our games background); in Scrum , they are called the Product Owner. about what their function needs to do to fully support the product.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Through case studies, exercises, and discussions, Eric Ries will guide entrepreneurs of all stripes through the key areas that determine success for startups: product, engineering, QA, marketing, and business strategy. This workshop presents a new methodology that will allow you to bring new products -- and companies -- to life.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

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

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, November 5, 2008 Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and media buyers I see lots of startups whose business plans revolve around selling high-value ad space to brand advertisers. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Advertising 60

Advertising San Francisco Media Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

And once you have a relationship with an author, musician, or journalist, it will be quite easy for them to offer new products and services – and for you to give them feedback that helps them shape ever more interesting (and ever more profitable) offerings. There are too many products clamoring for attention. Is that a lot?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Every product ultimately is satisfying a need in the customers who buy it or use it. Products that dont solve satisfy any need for any customers tend to die out quickly. The more painful curse for startups is the product that satisfies a need or solves a problem - but that problem is not very important. Thats an early adopter.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. Their economics blends elements of the free, advertising-supported, "eyeballs" business with more traditional e-commerce and subscription businesses. Is it that they act as free advertising for our premium product?

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

First, SlideShare is a fantastic product (that I use on a regular basis) and an impressive company example of Lean Startup practices in action. If your company is using minimum viable product , you’ve probably said the same thing yourself. But I have decided to make an exception today, for two reasons.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, January 11, 2009 CPI > CPC Google revolutionized advertising by popularizing pay-per-click. Because social networks have generated staggering quantities of traffic without generating as much economic value from traditional advertising models, theres a big opportunity to buy traffic on a new model.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

As Steve writes in the Four Steps to the Epiphany , we always seek to find a market for the product as currently specified , not conduct a focus group to tell us what the spec should be. It gave the whole company license to go heads-down building product as fast as possible during the development cycle, acting as a solution team should.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

This wasnt an education product - it was a pretty surprising group to find using it. What all these teachers had in common were two things: they were technology early adopters that were willing to take a chance on a new software product, and they all had similar problems organizing their classes and students.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 13, 2008 Five Whys Taiichi Ohno was one of the inventors of the Toyota Production System. His book Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production is a fascinating read, even though its decidedly non-practical. Each five whys email is a teaching document. and so forth.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Hewlett and David Packard, who in 1938 began developing their first product, an audio oscillator, in this garage. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# This is precisely the dilemma that the doctrine of minimum viable product is designed to solve. Almost everything we know today about how to build quality products in traditional management has its origins with W.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them. Let’s look at some examples: In a traditional business, customers pay money for a physical artifact (a product) or a service.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Five Why’s rarely works for general abstract problems like “our product is buggy&# or “our team moves too slow.&# The net effect of all this was to make new engineers incredibly productive right away – in most cases, we’d have them deliver code to production on their very first day.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

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. For a marketing job, for example, its reasonable to expect that a candidate will have done their homework and used your product (maybe even talked to your customers) before coming in.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

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? In a mature company with a mature product, the goal is to pay for lots of people to come to your website. SEM is a simple idea. chatted once?

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. Product launch) In todays world, there is no reason you have to do these two things at the same time. Establish credibility with potential partners.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

But they are often counter-productive when placed in a management role for other kinds of work. Successful products and features have a natural lifecycle. The problem is that people who were essential to the product in a previous phase can get carried along and find themselves stuck downstream.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

These decisions are critical to the success of any high-engagement product, and they take place entirely inside the minds of customers. Its the ultimate high-engagement product. But that is not the only source of positioning: brand advertisers have been using packaging and TV ads to do this for years. Impressive.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Most of the article is about the features – new and old – of the product. Isn’t it equally possible that this company is spending more money on advertising or marketing than it’s competitors? And it is much more insulated from external effects, like an advertising or PR blitz, than your typical vanity metric.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

You could conduct an in-person usability test, which is very useful for getting a view of how actual people perceive the totality of your product. The tracking survey asks one simple question: How likely are you to recommend Product X to a friend or colleague? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

To wit: achieving product/market fit , getting customer validation , making something people want , things that matter , and of course the many excellent books on the topic, of which Ill mention just two of the best, Crossing the Chasm and The Innovators Dilemma. Are advertisers customers, and are they part of a market? Tough sell.

San Francisco 89

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Ruby Lean 89

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

Campaign 84

Campaign San Francisco Lean Agile 84

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, September 11, 2009 The cardinal sin of community management Once you have a product launched, you will the face the joys – and the despair – of a community that grows up around it. It took me a long time to understand that benefit of our product. This probably sounds illogical.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158