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."

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CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

SoCal CTO

JUNE 26, 2012

I've done four Free CTO Consulting Sessions in the past month with startup founders who all had run into variations of the same problem. They didn't feel they had visibility into timelines and costs for development of their software. The teams involved didn't seem to be exhibiting many of the Symptoms of a Weak Development Team.

Software Developers 254

Software Developers Software Development Agile Fractional CTO 254

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 5, 2010

In the era of Skype, web conferencing tools and collaboration software conventional wisdom says that distributed startup teams can be just as effective as those that are in person. The conversations bleed into the sales messages the next time, they wend their way into software designs and form the plan of attach against competition.

Distribution 335

Distribution Offshore CTO Hire Bulgaria 335

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Hire a CEO to Go Public. The VCs would hire a CEO with a track record who looked and acted like the type of CEO Wall Street bankers expected to see in large companies. The role of the independent member was typically to tell the founding CEO that the VCs were hiring a new CEO.). People had to actually pay you for your product.

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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. Can this methodology be used for startups that are not exclusively about software? Talk about waste.

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Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Since the term “cloud computing” was coined in 1996—at least as we have come to understand its meaning—the software as a service industry has exploded. If you want a slice of the pie, there isn’t a better time to get involved. I started UpKeep after seeing and using traditional enterprise software. The business model.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Board Effect

JANUARY 15, 2020

It’s important for organizations to develop best practices for digital governance, especially in industries that are highly regulated. Digital governance helps to keep organizations agile, nimble and adaptable, which is necessary in today’s age of evolution and disruption. What Is Digital Governance?

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SoCal CTO

APRIL 28, 2014

There was a lot of passion in the room last week when I presented Working with Developers at the Stubbs Precellerator. I guess it should not be a surprise that Founders have lots of challenges working with developers. But my developers want to go into way too much detail. Time Wasters - Don''t talk too much.

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Technical Cofounder Developer Fractional CTO CTO Hire 280

sivers.org

JUNE 25, 2010

Derek Sivers about me blog books email list contact How to hire a programmer to make your ideas happen 2010-06-19 Do you have an idea for a website, online business, or application, but need a programmer to turn that idea into reality? Say, “We are hiring a developer to create only the beginning of an application.

CTO Hire 84

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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. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

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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. These tests are written by the engineers themselves, and they must all pass every time.

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San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68

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." After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

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 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 13, 2013

If you are on the lower complexity end, the key is defining small chunks of work that can be done quickly by a developer. If you do not break it down into small pieces, its hard to make progress with part-time resources, freelancers, etc. Structure development contracts appropriately or directing the in-house team appropriately.

Technical Cofounder 338

Technical Cofounder Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 338

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 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 Thoughts on scientific product development I enjoyed reading a post today from Laserlike (Mike Speiser), on Scientific product development. The goal of iterative development is to give us guard rails so we dont veer off to either extreme. you can be incredibly scientific.

Product Development 68

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

SVPG

OCTOBER 14, 2014

” We were big practitioners of what we now call Customer Development, and our customer was typically the IT organization of large companies. It took me several years before I had strong opinions about the way they built software, but I quickly saw the behaviors and especially the consequences. In any case, the Internet happened.

Product 91

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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. are the parts of the Joel Test I think are most out-of-date.

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Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

rapidrollout.wordpress.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Web Startup Lessons Advice from a CTO and Entrepreneur Home About Finding a Technical Partner for Your Startup Today I received an inquiry from a student at an Ivy League university who wants to launch a web startup. And James doesn’t have any money to pay for development. Hi Daniel, I recently ran across your blog.

Technical Review 40

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Its inspired by the classic OODA Loop and is really just a simplified version of that concept, applied specifically to creating a software product development team. Were a software company, so what we do everyday is turn ideas into code. Labels: agile , listening to customers 3comments: hauteroute said. Great points Eric.

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 2, 2008 On deployment My favorite question to ask a software development team is "how do you do a release." Certainly no faster than the time it takes to release. Usually, whatever is used as a development cycle. How long does the software sit un-deployed?

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

But by the time I was building my first websites for commercial use , PHP had taken over. Since then, PHP (as part of the LAMP stack ) has really been the dominant development platform, at least in the free software and startup worlds. Its one of the most effective paradigms for software devlopment in history.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

So one of the first things we did was to hire an Oracle expert and get to work. It felt like software that grownups were supposed to use, and we didnt qualify. Meanwhile, we were building our app in PHP, using a generic DB driver and mysql, "for the time being." I was building a new startup in 1999, and wanted to do it right.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

Update: The end is near, Expensify is hiring a.NET programmer! Or, rather, more offensively to Facebook and Google employees, less offensive to.NET developers, though the underlying message is the same.). As you might know, we’re hiring the best programmers in the world. Expensify Blog. Some additional comments at the end.

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107

This is going to be BIG.

MARCH 1, 2010

often gets vilified in the pursuit of a good developer, but think about things from the perspective of your average hardcore developer ninja. Someone offers you a secure job with lots of responsibility to build some piece of trading software that billions of dollars will run on and thousands of people will use.

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New York City New York Startup Burn Rate 113

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

His post is ostensibly about how often to release new work (whether youre a blog writer, movie star, software team.) Heres my favorite part: If youve got a team, part of the team should obsess about the backlist, honing it, editing it and promoting it, while the rest work to generate (as opposed to promote) the frontlist. .&#

San Francisco 76

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

We had all the tools in place but we didn’t actually practice agile development. No fancy tools needed here — it’s about the mentality, attention to detail, and the actions that foster agile development, not the tools & systems you set up in place to facilitate this. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 68

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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. Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? Five Reasons You Haven’t Launched - Software By Rob , November 10, 2010 Photo by stevendepolo.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

For example, we used to be baffled at IMVU by the significant minority of people who would download the software but never chat with anyone. Like gmlk, I usually subscribe the first time I find something useful. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? So why you? Expo SF (May.

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