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.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. At a high level, anything that drives virality should be free. To take your specific example about virality - why do we want to have more users sign up? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

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

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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Should you charge from day one, testing the revenue model first? Or should you focus on user engagement or virality? 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?

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San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154