Remove Agile Remove Design Remove Product Development Remove Viral
article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Startup Lessons Learned

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." Here, the key metrics are Acquisition and Referral, combined into the now-famous viral coefficient. If the coefficient is > 1.0 , you generally have a viral hit on your hands.

article thumbnail

16 Common Mistakes Young Startups Make

mashable.com

Dont underestimate the importance of Minimum Viable Design. Your first product will likely be just a little bit ugly, and thats okay — its part of getting to market quickly and testing your idea in front of live customers. Not Embracing Agility. "If Assuming Virality. "A Services dont spontaneously go viral.

Cofounder 111
Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Business ecology and the four customer currencies

Startup Lessons Learned

I had a lot of use for this concept back when I worked on game design and virtual worlds. In order to maintain game play balance, game designers have to take into account the needs of customers who have an excess of four different assets: time , money , skill , and passion. Having a balanced ecosystem is what game designers strive for.

Customer 156
article thumbnail

7 lessons we learned from the bankruptcy of Whatser

The Next Web

For this reason you should find out as quickly as possible if the product is indeed offering real value to your customers by looking at real data. The metrics that matter the most are returning customers (user retention), turnover per customer and viral growth (k-factor). Keep the team small, agile and up-to-date.

article thumbnail

Engagement loops: beyond viral

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join.

Viral 140
article thumbnail

Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem)

Startup Lessons Learned

In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. Some designers also hate optimizing (which is why the “41 shades of blue&# test is so famous – a famous designer claims to have quit over it ).

article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Startup Lessons Learned

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

Customer 167