Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

In the very early days, the trick is to find anyone at all who can understand you when you are talking about your product. In our first year at IMVU, we thought we were building a 3D avatar chat product. As product people, we thought of competition in terms of features. But the early customers all compared it to MySpace.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

At IMVU, we were terrified by how early we shipped (and charged for) our first product. Despite that, we were able to establish credibility, because we used those early numbers to demonstrate that our customers were getting real value from our product and, more importantly, that we understood how to build more of it.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

benjaminjoffe : early adopters of buggy product are visionary customers, sometimes smarter than founders! In fact, early stage companies shouldnt be able to get time from anyone else - who else would be crazy enough to try an truly innovative new product? They just call forth amazing products from the ether.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

One of the topics that raised heated debate was whether I had conflated technical design with product design , because I made the admittedly counter-intuitive claim that sometimes good technical design actually leads to increased technical debt. The argument itself got me thinking a lot about design and its role in building products.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Sometimes an early negative result from an experiment is a harbinger of doom for that product, and means it should be abandoned. She has a separate team, with its own culture and office, and a mandate straight from top management to innovate without regard to the company’s historic products, channels, or supply chain.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Every product ultimately is satisfying a need in the customers who buy it or use it. Products that dont solve satisfy any need for any customers tend to die out quickly. The more painful curse for startups is the product that satisfies a need or solves a problem - but that problem is not very important. Thats an early adopter.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2010

The path I went down after a few years was to hire more process driven people and devolved more daily operational ownership to people running individual functions such as product management, sales management, finance, etc. I then noticed that our head of sales in France had created almost a manufacturing process for responding to RFPs.

Non-Compete 296

Non-Compete Sales Hiring France 296

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 17, 2010

Three premier early-stage venture investors have joined forces to sponsor the event: Baseline , Floodgate , and First Round Capital. Three premier early-stage venture investors have joined forces to sponsor the event: Baseline , Floodgate , and First Round Capital. Expo SF (May. Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 107

San Francisco Romania Cleveland South Africa 107

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

I liked the flattering Venture Hacks commentary so much Ill just quote it: Many founders believe that early stage startups are endeavors of execution. The customer is known, the product is known, and all we have to do is act. He believes that many early stage startups are labors of learning. Expo SF (May.

Lean 74

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 74

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 12, 2009

However, this financial bar has had the effect of excluding one segment of potential customers that Id really like to see there - early stage entrepreneurs who have all the intelligence and vision of their later stage counterparts, but simply cannot afford the cash flow to attend. Expo SF (May.

Lean 60

Lean Programming San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

This wasnt an education product - it was a pretty surprising group to find using it. What all these teachers had in common were two things: they were technology early adopters that were willing to take a chance on a new software product, and they all had similar problems organizing their classes and students. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 20, 2009

For short stories - I think it is always good to introduce some practical problem (you might have heard from entrepreneur at early stage) and how the lean startup method helped solved that. How about a fictive short story about few guys starting up a web product company on lean startup way? Expo SF (May.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. All my products and ideas focus on early cash and a business model that works from the first day. It doesn't matter what business model you have thought about, in the early day.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94