Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 31, 2010

We scoff at their inability to innovate and for prioritizing shareholders over customers, but still we quiver in fear. What if a huge company with a hundred software developers and a million dollars in marketing budget decides to copy my idea? Every founder frets about competition from a big company, me included.

Software Review 243

Software Review Development Team Review Technical Review Software Developers 243

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 16, 2013

One good example is the way in which we''ve adjusted the length of different phases of our agile sprints. We don''t follow a set agile methodology, but rather follow a more home-grown, minimal version of various approaches. As we''ve grown, we now have a great qualitative research team dedicated helping us stay close.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Software Engineering Agile 167

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

No wait, I forgot, actually the question is: What happens when employee #2 makes off with your code and roadmap and marketing data and customer list, moves to Bolivia, and starts selling your stuff world-wide at one-tenth the price? The good news: There are good answers to these questions! Now Adriana has an epiphany?

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

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.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Take the example of a design team prepping mock-ups for their development team. Give the dev team your very first sketches and let them get started. And over time, the development team may be able to start anticipating your needs. That frees up even more development resources, and so on.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2010

To get to this Transition stage, the company needed passionate visionaries who can articulate a compelling vision, agile enough to learn and discover in real time, resilient enough to deal with countless failures, and responsive enough to capitalize on what they learned in order to secure early customers. What’s Next.

Agile 120

Agile Development Team Review Leadership Merger 120

ConversionXL

JUNE 13, 2017

Agile marketing may not be a phrase you hear often, but it’s becoming increasingly popular and important. Traditionally associated with development and product management, agile is a lightweight and, well, agile framework for software development and bringing features and products to market.

SCRUM 112

SCRUM Agile Marketing Development Team Review 112

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. The six key attributes spell ABCDEF: Agility. When talking about their past experience, candidates with agility will know why they did what they did in a given situation.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

I met one recently that is working on a really innovative product, and the stories I heard from their development team made me want to cringe. The product manager was clearly struggling to get results from the rest of the team. one more thought, where were the code reviews? October 6, 2008 12:17 AM r& said.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

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

OCTOBER 20, 2008

He has a good team, and theyve shipped a working product to many customers. Hes working harder than ever, and so is his team. But they are pushing for the things that matter to customers - features. So they insist on having the final say on when a feature is "done" enough to show to customers. Thats a bug.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

You constantly assess the situation, looking for hazards and timing your movements carefully to get across safely. Because of the extreme unknowns inherent in startup situations, we are all blind – to the realities of what customers what, market dynamics, and competitive threats. Imagine you are crossing the street.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

SoCal CTO

FEBRUARY 13, 2013

The second bullet, getting feedback from customers is most often not valid either. Even with these, you will have paper-tested your MVP, but the reality is that customers will not be able to assess the value to them until they actually use it. Review the code being built. To prove/disprove a hypothesis.

Technical Cofounder 338

Technical Cofounder Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO 338

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization. It exists to serve the needs of customers, and it does this by offering its capabilities to other functions in the company, and partnering with them. I am basically a one-man shop. Expo SF (May.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

mashable.com

MAY 9, 2011

With development teams often based around the world, being the center of communication and progress can either lead to a tremendously successful strategy or a bottleneck that can slow down an entire company. Hire someone well-versed in communication between developers, customers and team members.

CTO Hire 73

CTO Hire Fractional CTO CTO Technical Review 73

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

The idea of leverage is simple: for every ounce of effort your product development team puts into your product, find ways to magnify that effort by getting many other people to invest along with you. So we tried to craft a strategy that would give us the product development leverage we needed to serve all customers.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

www.readwriteweb.com

OCTOBER 7, 2007

Make sure you think through how you will administer the system, handle customer queries, examine user accounts, run reports on user numbers and website traffic, etc. These serve to ensure that everyone who ends up on the development team knows what the system is for. Write them as a chronological story.

Web 40

Web AJAX Software Review Development Team Review 40

sivers.org

JUNE 25, 2010

They log in to translate the documents, one at a time, marking each finished when done, which sends the file back to the company for review.” Also important: Only go for providers who have great reviews from many past customers. Decline bids from providers without many great reviews. The translator rejects or approves.

CTO Hire 84

CTO Hire Hiring Software Review Technical Review 84

blog.expensify.com

APRIL 24, 2012

If you want to serve enterprise customers,NET is one of the best ways to do that and do it well. The tools which you find restrictive I consider a huge timesaver (which paying customers tend to appreciate)… they allow me to rapidly prototype and get solutions to customers. The rest of us have some fine dining to enjoy.

Java 107

Java PHP Software Review Coder 107