Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

I want to thank Techstars for putting this event together and giving me a chance to experience the scene, even if it lacks a name. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Traveling to new startup hubs is one of my favorite things about being able to do this full-time.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

It’s easy to overestimate the impact of this kind of traffic because it just feels good to have your name and company featured. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? It strokes your ego. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Expo SF (May.

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Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Return the name of the hypothesis chosen or assigned.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Accept that many successful companies are going to want to be backed by big-name firms in other cities. And do your customer development. Thank you @ericries for drastically altering my perception of agile startup Thank you all so much for your kind words. Instead, focus on getting them ready for that stage. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This is the magic of sales: by learning about each customer in-depth, they can convince each of them that this product would solve serious problems. Now, in some situations, this over-selling would lead to a secondary problem, namely, that customers would realize they had been duped and refuse to re-subscribe.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. Sounds very similar to agile development which is the way. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

I hope to show why lean and agile techniques actually reduce the negative impacts of technical debt and increase our ability to take advantage of its positive effects. Just as a business incurs some debt to take advantage of a market opportunity developers may incur technical debt to hit an important deadline.

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Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

As I evolved my thinking, I started to frame the problem this way: How can we devise a product development process that allows the business leaders to take responsibility for the outcome by making conscious trade-offs? When I first encountered agile software techniques, in the form of extreme programming , I thought I had found the answer.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Recently, he was bitten by the lean startup bug and has started writing about his experiences attempting to apply lean startup and customer development principles. Ive previously named his post Achieving Flow in a Lean Startup as one of my favorite blog posts of 2009. Things started to slip. Things started to slip.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

The key to successful integration of customer feedback is to make each kind of collection part of the regular company discipline of building and releasing products. The key to successful integration of customer feedback is to make each kind of collection part of the regular company discipline of building and releasing products.

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Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Much of what I have found effective is counter-intuitive, because it requires investing more effort in each hire - all in the name of efficiency. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Expo SF (May.

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Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

We're starting our new business, fanminder.com, to help small merchants instantly communicate with their customers, and I'm increasingly hearing your name and reading your keen insights. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Steve Blank

JUNE 8, 2009

In the last three posts, we drew the relationship of market risk and invention risk with vertical markets and pointed out verticals where customer development would be useful. In contrast to simply executing your business plan, the Customer Development process is built on low-cost and continuous learning and iterating.

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Vertical Silicon Valley RSS Marketing 125

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

It was still a year away from its IPO. The original Hewlett Packard which made test and measurement products was spun-out and renamed Agilent. The remaining company kept the Hewlett Packard name and focussed on computers. Agilent is a $5.8 But first some background.) Its latest product was an oscilloscope, the HP 150a.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

If youre a startup investor, and you support the goals of the Startup Visa proposal, wed like you lend your name to our efforts. If youre a startup investor, and you support the goals of the Startup Visa proposal, wed like you lend your name to our efforts. You can read about the latest iteration of the proposal at StartupVisa.com.

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San Francisco DC Startup Lean 118

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. In a customer problem pivot, we try to solve a different problem for the same customer segment. When doing intense customer development, the problem team can attain a high level of empathy with potential customers.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

First, a definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products. Some caveats right off the bat. August 3, 2009 8:08 PM William Mitchell said.

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San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

For those whove heard it, it contains a length discourse on the subject of agile software development and extreme programming, including its weaknesses when applied to startups. As Im pontificating about agile, I see the name Kent Beck in my peripheral vision. Eric Names matter. There is a dark side to naming.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 13, 2009 The Principles of Product Development Flow If youve ever wondered why agile or lean development techniques work, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen is the book for you. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

All the good domain names were taken, all the good ideas were being implemented. If Id bought just a handful of the "best of the rest" domain names that were available at the time (for a whopping $70 each), I probably could have just retired right then. Almost all of them got scooped up by pre-IPO Google this time. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

The same is true of brand-name products in almost every category (and it can be measured ). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? This is always true, because modern economies have become increasingly virtual over the years. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 102

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Heck, thats what it says right there in the agile manifesto. As Ive argued elsewhere , my belief is that startups (and anyone else trying to find an unknown solution to an unknown problem ) have to measure progress with validated learning about customers. In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

Lean manufacturing , agile software development , and Theory of Constraints are all examples of this idea in action. In fact, we know so much that we already know what they will care enough about (namely, the product’s quality – as opposed to, say, missing features). Even better, this is a falsifiable hypothesis.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

If necessary, consider doing this under a different brand name than the one you are wedded to using. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Dont do PR upfront, dont put out a press release. Its like knowing the future. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Do some Customer Development instead. Who doesnt want to see their name in print? Now that were beginning our first marketing, the key partners we need have heard our name long enough to trust us. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Help you raise money.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 31, 2009

lets you post a description of a job without having to reveal the name of the company who is offering it, or the contact information of the hiring manager. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Its incredibly simple, and its called joblink.tw. Think of it as a bit.ly

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San Francisco Lean Startup Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

In talking with Mary Poppendieck about it, she said that the Chief Engineer role at 3M was called a "Product Champion" The name is less important than understanding the depth of competence that this person has, and what it takes to build it. There are some good anecdotes about Chief Engineers in the Toyota Product Development Book.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

We would pretty much bid on any phrase that was "[name of competitive product] chat" and variations like that. And then we would use that simple analytics system I mentioned to monitor the conversion rates of customers from each campaign. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Even with only a few months of development, third parties have crammed every single category in the store full of apps. All I see is a name, an icon, a price, the developers name, and a review star-rating. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Pay attention to whether people are comfortable “naming names&# in the meeting. There’s no easy fix to this problem. ► 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.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

It then proceeds to list a whole host of cool new features the Warhammer team has added since I last logged in. ► 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.

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

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. 1 comments: Josh Moore said.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Ironically, meetings like this had given data and experimentation a bad name inside this company. This team had been working for many months in a standard agile configuration: a disciplined engineering team taking direction from a product owner who would prioritize the features they should work on. What a waste. And who can blame them?

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San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them.

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Now, whenever I screen resumes, I ask the recruiter to black out any demographic information from the resume itself: name, age, gender, country of origin. Now, whenever I screen resumes, I ask the recruiter to black out any demographic information from the resume itself: name, age, gender, country of origin. “Who is this guy?&#

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San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

I’m sure other disciplines have their own names for it; even protozoans exhibit this behavior (its called taxis ). For more on how to figure out which question applies in which context, see Business ecology and the four customer currencies.) and for which customer? and for which customer?

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San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154