Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why vanity metrics are dangerous In a previous post, I defined two kinds of metrics: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. In this post, Id like to talk about the perils of vanity metrics. My personal favorite vanity metrics is "hits."

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 4, 2010 Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Kent Beck will give the opening keynote at the Startup Lessons Learned conference on April 23. Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. Our mystery keynote is now revealed and I couldnt be more excited. Expo SF (May.

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 6, 2008 Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile I thought Id share an interesting post from someone with a decidedly anti-agile point of view. Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. We were lucky to learn about Customer Development early on in the life of our startup. More importantly, we’d witnessed Customer Development’s massive success at another local startup. So how did Customer Development fail us?

Customer Development 230

Customer Development Developer Customer California 230

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

Traction and evidence from customers were what investors were looking for – even in “slow” sectors like healthcare and energy. The disadvantage is that its methodology was based on the old waterfall model of product development and not the agile and lean methods that startups use today. And there it was. Berkeley-wide.

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. Such direct experiences allows one to test critical “leap-of-faith” assumptions about what customers like and dislike.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, March 25, 2009 The Lean Startup at Agile Vancouver April 21st A surprising number of respondents in the latest Lessons Learned survey hail from one of the flourishing startup hubs in Canada. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Agile Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

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? This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Every board meeting, the metrics of success change.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

> Uber's " Reality Therapy 4 Startups": What U Need 2 Know NOW > Steve Blank on why NOT to be an Entrepreneur > Airbnb's Globetrotting Lessons: Building 4 a Global Market > Vinod Khosla - The VC Legend: Interview w/ Dave McClure > Eric Ries on Entrepreneurship: What He's Learned Along the Way > GitHub's Secret 2 Success: Rethinking (..)

Lean 165

Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering 165

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

Analyzing a case in the classroom, removed from the realities of a new venture, adds little to an entrepreneur’s preparation for the chaos, uncertainty, and conflicting customer responses that all entrepreneurs face. The reality is that most business plans don’t survive first contact with customers.

Lean 433

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 433

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

To move innovation faster, we now have 21 st century tools — Business Model Canvas , Customer Development , Agile Engineering – all adding up to a Lean Startup. Here the company executes a known business model (known customers, product features, competitors, pricing, distribution channel, supply chain, etc.)

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2009

Gathering real-world feedback from customers is a core concept of Customer Development as well as the Lean Startup. When I asked him if he actually had personally left the building and talked to these potential customers, or even had gotten them on the phone, he sounded confused. Customer needs are non-deterministic.

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Metrics Customer Customer Development Lean 239

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Are there customers for what you are building? How many are there? Can it scale?”

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. Handspring’s customers understood what a Personal Digital Assistant was.

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

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.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 26, 2009 A real Customer Advisory Board A reader recently asked on a previous post about the technique of having customers periodically produce a “state of the company&# progress report. Many companies seek to involve customers directly in the creation of their products.

Advisory Board 151

Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

Steve Blank

JUNE 21, 2017

6:22 What’s Customer Development. 7:11 Agile Engineering – Eric Ries. 32:05 No Innovation Pipeline, Guidance or Metrics. Or just parts of the interview: 1:20 Failure and Lessons Learned. 2:35 The origins of the Lean Startup. 3:35 Startups are not smaller versions of a larger company. 32:55 Teaching Lean.

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Silicon Valley Lean Government Boston 222

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

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 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

We wanted an agile approach that would allow us to build our software architecture as we needed it, without downtime, but also without large amounts of up-front cost. After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Boyd emphasized the importance of agility in combat: "the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than ones opponent." Agile software development. Agile allows companies to build higher quality software faster. Customer development.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

As start-ups scale, this agility will be lost unless the founders maintain a consistent investment in that discipline. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ▼ June (3) What is a startup?

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. We finally settled on a $1.99 Setup a simple website.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

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 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

Defective prototype code was as often thrown out (because customers didnt want it) as it was fixed (when customers did). Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Labels: product development Speed up or slow down? Expo SF (May.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

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 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. They measure their success on metrics that reflect success in execution, and they reward execution.

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IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Labels: agile , listening to customers 3comments: hauteroute said. Wouldn't it make more sense to Learn (customer discovery) then proceed to ideas,code, data, implement and measure? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Great points Eric. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires.

Silicon Valley 259

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 259

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

And do your customer development. These quotes are, as is my custom, straight from twitter. Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. Thank you @ericries for drastically altering my perception of agile startup Thank you all so much for your kind words.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Continuous Deployment 113

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

As a consequence, corporations used metrics like return on net assets (RONA), return on capital deployed, and internal rate of return (IRR) to measure efficiency. These metrics make it difficult for a company that wants to invest in long-term innovation. On the low-end, they undercut cost structures, resulting in customer migration.

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

Or depending on your metrics for success, get users, grow traffic, etc.). A business model diagram also shows how the product gets distributed to your customers and how money flows back into your company. Your job as a founder is to quickly validate whether the model is correct by seeing if customers behave as your model predicts.

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Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Behind this analysis is a spreadsheet model, complete with detailed metrics for a set of customer behaviors that show just how valuable the new product will be. They are long-term bets on the development of a new line of business, a new technology platform, or the creation of a new market.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Eventually, I hope to get them on a full agile diet, with TDD, scrums, sprints, pair programming, and more. But first I think we need to save the product manager from that special form of torture only a waterfall product development team can create. October 6, 2008 12:17 AM r& said. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. What Drives Innovation?

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Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120