Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Heck, thats what it says right there in the agile manifesto. In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. Labels: agile , continuous deployment , lean startup , product development , Test-driven development 4comments: Nivi said. But, unfortunately, startups cant afford to adopt that standard.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Agile VC

MAY 16, 2019

I have friends who are execs or shareholders of the company, but I have no stake in Slack nor intent to invest in the IPO. A somewhat unique thing about the Slack IPO is that they’re pursuing a direct listing on the NYSE. Slack’s net dollar retention rate is an incredibly impressive 143%. So Slack generated $1.43

Lock-up Period 100

Lock-up Period Retention Azure .Net 100

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campa. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Lets return to our team thats failing to hit their targets. They are on-schedule and on-budget, but their gross metrics are way off. Expo SF (May.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This theory has become so influential that I have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campa. Expo SF (May.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. We’d always cringe as we admitted that, no, we really only had a few thousand customers and a few thousand dollars in monthly revenue. Retention cohort analysis. I am chugging along.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Sounds very similar to agile development which is the way. If you can start getting ROI on a feature in month one of a twelve month project versus waiting until the end, youve comparatively reduced the cost of development by the revenue generated by that feature over 11 months. February 21, 2009 7:39 AM Rocky1138 said. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. Expo SF (May.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

To increase the number of iterations you have left, you can either increase cash on hand (by raising money or increasing revenues), reduce burn rate, or increase the speed of each iteration. Combining agile development with customer developm. The key is to be able to refute as many major hypotheses as you can. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. Naturally, they had just raised money, and their new investors were understandably pissed. Expo SF (May.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Agile VC

MAY 22, 2014

Unfortunately Alibaba doesn’t actually break out revenue by marketplace or business unit. In fact JD.com, which priced it’s IPO yesterday, is a direct seller (e.g. The makeup of the revenue is different too (see #4 below). And most importantly how attractive is the whole based on the sum of the underlying parts?

China 159

China Revenue Flash Affiliate 159

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

They asked for my advice, and we went through a number of recommendations that readers of this blog will already be able to guess: adding revenue opportunities, engagement loop optimization, and some immediate split-testing to figure out whats working and whats not. Great post, Eric. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

The agile software movement has made numerous contributions: continuous integration, which helps accelerate feedback about defects; story cards and kanban that reduce batch size; a daily stand-up that increases tempo. In fact, excess time pressure is exactly why they think they have these problems in the first place. Expo SF (May.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Not even if its generating revenue. So I don't think the Apple experience should be used to discount lean, agile, or customer development-type approaches. Most executives, especially in startups, dont have the courage to hold their teams to a high standard for new products or features. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

What is the right revenue model? Aside from the dramatically shorter development cycle that browser games enjoy, the split testing of features (which is intuitive to web application makers) is something that propelled Zynga's games and revenues to the top of the social games vertical. August 24, 2009 2:17 PM Norbert Mocsnik said.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Some of these benefits are shared by agile systems which have continuous integration but large batch releases, but others are unique to continuous deployment. No automated test is going to catch that, but it still will drive revenue to zero. No automated test is going to catch that, but it still will drive revenue to zero.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

In fact, in the early days, when IMVU would experience unexpected surges of revenue or traffic, it was inevitable that every person in the company was convinced that their project was responsible. When something works, its too easy to invent a story about how that was your intention all along. Expo SF (May.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Revenue is always my preferred measure, but you can use anything that is important to your business: retention, activation, viral invites, or even customer satisfaction in the form of something like net promoter score. Or it could be that they are endlessly pecking through menus, totally confused about what to do next. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Now, Andrew’s excellent piece that I quoted from above correctly diagnoses two situations where consumer internet companies often get in trouble: They focus too much on short-term revenue, getting caught in a local maximum via constant optimization. The real value we create is learning how to craft profitable ecosystems. Expo SF (May.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Agile VC

JANUARY 27, 2012

As a result of a convergence of many factors (lean startup methodology, broadband & smartphone penetration, social web, cloud computing, etc), breakout startups are clearly getting scale faster than they used to. Multi-billion dollar valuations for late stage startups like Dropbox, et al.

Hockey Stick 113

Hockey Stick Seed Stage Silicon Valley Syndicate 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

We just add up the revenue we've made in the past few months from Win98 users, and compare to the pain that Win98 has caused as identified in 5Ys. It's so old and so buggy that it's a real pain to ship 3D software on it. So far, it's been a net win to keep supporting it. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Should you charge from day one, testing the revenue model first? Their speed should be measured in validated learning about customers, not milestones, features, revenue, or even beautiful design. Should you charge from day one, testing the revenue model first? Or should you focus on user engagement or virality? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Not just about expenses, about increasing revenue. Make sure for planned revenues you have "leading indicators" to know if you will hit it. This can take the form of a traditional sales pipeline or a registration-activation-revenue chart. And its hard to know if youre truly succeeding without a focus on revenue.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

The whole episode cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. In fact, it was the revenue trends that eventually alerted us to the magnitude of the problem. Unfortunately, revenue a trailing indicator. Its a great time to increase revenues without spending money on acquiring new customers. Expo SF (May.

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

Realizing it had taken a wrong turn, SlideShare rethought its approach to premium accounts and ultimately performed what we’d call a value capture pivot , one where the company changes the way it collects revenue from customers. The process started with a few moving parts. The process started with a few moving parts. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. Almost all of them got scooped up by pre-IPO Google this time. That year, right before the IPO, those months mattered a great deal in terms of financial outcomes. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 1, 2009

LIKED: Y startups fail, cont deployment vs waterfall vs agile, small batches & learn fr biz metrics #leanstartup As concise a summary as Ive ever seen. I covered a few of them on twitter already: Q: "Do you reccomend removing features that youve launched but dont movethe needle on engagement or revenue?" A: yes, absolutely.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

This single decision wound up costing the company significant revenue and over the course of several months sent its customer growth into decline. "This single decision wound up costing the company significant revenue and over the course of several months sent its customer growth into decline." Expo SF (May.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158