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Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? Often times, it seems like people are thinking its synonymous with "that guy who gets paid to sit in the corner and think technical deep thoughts" or "that guy who gets to swoop in a rearrange my project at the last minute on a whim."

CTO

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review

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Lessons Learned: Customer Development Engineering

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. What about a hardware business with some long-lead-time components?

Customer Development

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer

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Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

The law of large numbers (of customers) says you cant help but make at least some money - your valuation is determined by how well you monetize the tidal wave of growth. Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth.

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire

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Lessons Learned: The lean startup

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. So far, I have found "lean startup" works better with the entrepreneurs Ive talked to than "agile startup" or even "extreme startup.") Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

Lean

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment

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Lessons Learned: Just-In-Time Scalability

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 2, 2008 Just-In-Time Scalability At my previous company, we pioneered an approach to building out our infrastructure that we called "Just-In-Time Scalability." You can also download our presentation, " Just-In-Time Scalability: Agile Methods to Support Massive Growth."

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean

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How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 14, 2008 How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people Frequency is more important than talking to the "right" customers, especially early on. Youll know when the person youre talking to is not a potential customer - they just wont understand what youre saying.

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment

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Lessons Learned: About the author

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content.

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO

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Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now A great checklist of techniques and tools for making your development more agile, written from a Rail perspective. Expo SF (May.

Software Review

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment

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Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time! Even with the highest standards imaginable, theres no way to hire just genius hackers. Hire a CTO or VP Engineering. Worst of all, your teammates are constantly wanting to have meetings.

Software Review

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco

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Pivot, don't jump to a new vision

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. Some startups avoid getting customer feedback for precisely this reason: they are afraid that if early reactions are negative, theyll be "forced" to abandon their vision. As the CTO/VP Engineering, I was the worst offender.

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile

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Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

In the early fall of 2009, as kaChing prepared for its marketplace launch, the management team showed the app—which included real time market data, SEC-grade accounting, analytics, compliance and customer management tools—to a number of investment pros to get feedback and endorsements. That all-hands lasted five minutes.

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC

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Lessons Learned: Ideas. Code. Data. Implement. Measure. Learn

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

All of these are true waste, and they generally happen because somebody is optimizing for their particular part of the puzzle, not for the team as a whole. Labels: agile , listening to customers 3comments: hauteroute said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

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Lessons Learned: SEM on five dollars a day

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? Slowly, over time, we optimized (or eliminated) each step in the process of becoming a customer by giving us money. chatted five times?

SEM

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

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Andrew Chen: Growing renewable audiences

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Expo SF (May.

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean

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Lessons Learned: Great open source scalability tools from Danga

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Expo SF (May.

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean

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Lessons Learned: A new version of the Joel Test (draft)

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

There was a time when "web content" was considered "not code" and therefore not routinely source controlled. I know plenty of people who prefer more advanced source control system, but my belief is that many agile practices diminish the importance of advanced features like branching. Can you make a build in one step? Youd better.

Software Review

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment

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Fear is the mind-killer

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

As the product matured, they were able to ratchet up the quality to prevent regression on features that had been truly embraced by their customers. On the negative side, we got a visceral feel for the kinds of changes that could really harm customers, like commits that take the whole site down. And that was not a lot of fun.

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean

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Lessons Learned: Test-Driven Development as andon cord

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 1, 2008 Test-Driven Development as andon cord You cannot control what you cannot see, and the hardest part of managing software projects is that the final product is so intangible. In almost all Agile Development systems, thousands of automated tests are run against every change to the software.

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC

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On deployment

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

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Lessons Learned: The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

In my experience, the majority of changes we made to products have no effect at all on customer behavior. The report is set up to show you what happened to customers who registered in that period (a so-called cohort analysis ). This report is set up to tell you about new customers specifically. First of all, why split-test?

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment

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Waves of technology platforms

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

So one of the first things we did was to hire an Oracle expert and get to work. We just had our app support a few tens of thousands of customers, and it did well. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean

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Marc Prensky's Weblog: Cell Phones in Class

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC Lean

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Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I see startups struggle with this all the time. You have customers, they are using your product, and you are trying to help them. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud. But then what? And fix the ones from before.

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

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How to Usability Test your Site for Free

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 16, 2008

Read more at How to Usability Test your Site for Free | Noah Kagans Okdork.com Labels: listening to customers 1 comments: HKagan said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

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Lessons Learned: Greasemonkey compiler

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

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Not crossing the chasm

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

You delight customers just like before. In an eyeballs business, you just cant seem to acquire or activate that next step-up of customers. Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value. How to listen to customers, and not just the loud. You listen and learn.

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC

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How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

But from a customer experience point of view, Im not yet sold. Today, the fact that the store is open and has almost no barriers to entry is great for the companies I meet, because they can get their first versions in front of customers quickly, and start iterating fast. How will new customers know that my apps are superior?

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

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Lessons Learned: Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

When you have an infinitesimal number of customers, it can be embarrassing. But as long as your ego can take it, there are huge advantages to having a small number of customers. Most importantly, you can get to know those few customers in a way that people with zillions of customers cant. You can even meet the friend.

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

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Lessons Learned: Why PHP won

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

At IMVU, when wed hire a new engineer, we could get them to ship code to production on their first day, even if they had never programmed in PHP before. Which makes them exactly the kind of programmers companies should want to hire. In my role as a CTO, Ive always tried to choose the right tool for the right job.

PHP

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco

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You don't need as many tools as you think

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

We had all the tools in place but we didn’t actually practice agile development. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud. Scrum reports would come in once a month, nobody was actually responsible for anything. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment

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Lessons Learned: The lean startup comes to Stanford

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

My suggestion: take a much-loved feature and split-test it with some new customers to see if it really makes a difference. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud. How did we combat this tendency? Expo SF (May.

Lean

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup

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Lessons Learned: Q&A with an actual reader

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Sometimes, testing with existing customers is more complicated than with new customers. Existing customers already have an expectation about how your product works, and its important to take this into consideration when adding or changing features. On the other hand, existing customers can be a testing benefit.

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

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Thoughts on scientific product development

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Only when youve tried everything you can think of, and youre not learning any more, is it time to bring out the axe. Keep split-testing, but keep this iron rule: if it doesnt change customer behavior, its not a feature. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

Product Development

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product