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?

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Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

He wrote a post this long weekend on how he manages the board of DataSift. Spend time building investor relationship long before you raise money. . In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more.

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Venture Chronicles

AUGUST 2, 2013

I have covered a couple of topics in this series, the first being hiring the best people and the second organizing for success based on the attributes of the people you are hiring. engineers paired would jump from frontend to backend erratically at each sprint iteration. We should have been able to do both.

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SVPG

OCTOBER 14, 2014

” I first witnessed this many years ago when I was an engineer for HP, building platform and tool technology products for “the enterprise.” In IT mindset companies, you usually find very slow, heavy, Waterfall processes, even when the engineers consider themselves Agile. I call this problem “IT Mindset.”

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc. Expo SF (May.

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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. So far, I have found "lean startup" works better with the entrepreneurs Ive talked to than "agile startup" or even "extreme startup.") Of course, many startups are capital efficient and generally frugal.

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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? ) In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. So much for timing.

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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."

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

Yet there’s a lot of mystery around pivots, and entrepreneurs ask all the time how you know it’s time to commit to a new direction. To shed some light, I talked with kaChing , a destination that enables individual investors to find outstanding money managers to manage their money.

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SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 13, 2013

Examples might be a recommendation engine, search engine, matching engine or something with a complex interface. WordPress - we spent quite a bit of time talking about how you could do a lot with WordPress to provide simple forms of lots of functionality. WordPress is pretty easy to hack.

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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. Youd better.

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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.

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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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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. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Great points Eric. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

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? Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Later, when the company was much larger, we had everyone on our engineering team agree to sit in on one usability test every month. It wasnt a huge time commitment, but it meant that every engineer was getting regular contact with an actual customer, which was invaluable. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Do the engineers understand what they are building? 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? Processes are always deteriorating or self-regulating.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

So one of the first things we did was to hire an Oracle expert and get to work. So did I when I finally found myself building an app with real scalability, a few years later, but a combination of our just-in-time scalability technique and great open source scaling tools, made it manageable. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

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? Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

but its really about how to manage your effort between what he calls the frontlist and backlist. 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. . Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 16, 2008

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? Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

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? Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

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? Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

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? Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Like gmlk, I usually subscribe the first time I find something useful. I originally thought I might get some development process tips (I manage developers), but I find that Im really enjoying your business tips (SEM, listening to customers, etc.). Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science?

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Hire a CEO to Go Public. A founder’s lack of credibility/experience in growing and managing a large company hindered a company that wanted 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.

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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. Who better to answer than the company's engineering lead. Call it facts for hire. How to Take Down Facebook -- Hint: It Ain't Twitter.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

In a few cases, they are clearly smart people in a bad situation, and Ive written about their pain in The product managers lament and The engineering managers lament. The last thing you need is a manager telling you how to do your job. Even with the highest standards imaginable, theres no way to hire just genius hackers.

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The Next Web

JANUARY 24, 2014

To put it into management speak, our digital infrastructure is world-class. We have three universities in the top 100 of the Shanghai ranking for engineering and technology. We have great intellectual property protection, and have efficient ways to enforce contracts. A top-notch infrastructure.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. At this meeting, we would present our goals for the cycle, all the raw results wed managed to collect, and our conclusions about what was next. As the CTO/VP Engineering, I was the worst offender. Context matters.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

For people we hired from larger companies especially, this was challenging. When a new engineer started at IMVU, I had a simple rule: they had to ship code to production on their first day. I tried to make sure we always gave the same answer: "if you manage to take the site down, thats our fault for making it too easy.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Trying to answer that question at IMVU led me to discover Google AdWords and the world of search engine marketing. You declare how much someone clicking an advertisement is worth to you, and then the search engine does its best to get you as many clicks as it can at that price. Labels: search engine marketing 4comments: Tauya said.

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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. While simple, it is easy to manage.

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. I used a freelance web designer and I only created the core functions to create, send, and manage invoices. Noah says, “Agile is what most software companies use.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Labels: iPhone , search engine marketing 3comments: Blake Engel said. 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? Hey Eric, very interesting post. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lots of engineers are busy checking in and deploying their work. Someone has managed to convince themselves that they have to do their big architecture change in one fell swoop. Sure, we kept that one engineer busy while they toiled away on their own, but did that optmize the whole teams efforts? . Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

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? Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Expo SF (May.

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