Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

The six key attributes spell ABCDEF: Agility. By far the most important thing you want to hire for in a startup is the ability to handle the unexpected. Those people also tend to go crazy in a startup. When talking about their past experience, candidates with agility will know why they did what they did in a given situation.

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San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations. When operating with continuous deployment, its almost impossible to have integration conflicts. Sounds very similar to agile development which is the way. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This theory has become so influential that I have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. I highly recommend this book for all entrepreneurs, in startups as well as in big companies. Heres the catch. Theory of market types.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

MarkH : Key takeaways from Erics great talk #w2e #leanstartup 1) "building a culture to learn " @ericries Marks point is the one that seems to have had the biggest impact from the talk as a whole: that startups should be built to learn. The lean startup focuses on situations where we have both an unknown problem and an unknown solution.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

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. A "startup within the startup" feeling is a good thing.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, January 4, 2009 Sharding for startups The most important aspect of a scalable web architecture is data partitioning. Sharding for startups To support a single partitioning scheme is easy, especially if you design for it from the start. But startups rarely have either luxury.

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San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

And that narrow definition of entrepreneurship doesn’t count all of the managers inside established companies who are effectively engaged in the same process of building an internal startup (see What is a startup? Let’s start with the startup personality attributes. for my more expansive definition).

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San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

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. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage.

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Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. After all, our startup is on a fixed budget.

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Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

When startups grow, they tend to have problems handling the inevitable conflicts that emerge from having to do multiple kinds of work all at once. Have you met that prickly operations guy who seems to love servers more than people (but would never let them fail on his watch)? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Maybe operations has changed the OS configuration in production in a way that is incompatible with some developers change. As with many lean startup practices, its getting started thats the hard part. Still, my experience working with startups has been that too much time spent talking about advanced topics can lead to inaction.

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Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, December 6, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part three Those startups that manage to build a product people want have to deal with the consequences of that success. And still being a startup means continuing to innovate as well as keep the lights on.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Of all the tactics I have advocated as part of the lean startup , none has provoked as many extreme reactions as continuous deployment , a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. So we need to find solutions that operate at the systems level to break teams out of this pincer action.

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Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

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? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue?

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Fundamentally, lean startups do more with less, because they systematically find and eliminate waste that slows down value creation. I want to talk specifics, and when you come right down to it, most technology startups dont have a very interesting cost structure. Is it time to make your first operations hire? That depends.

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Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 8, 2009 What would you want to tell Washington DC about startups? Beyond just those who will be hearing about the lean startup for the first time, Im expecting to shake a lot of hands and have a lot of interesting side conversations. And what hurdles could be eliminated?

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

Its even more critical in lean startups when they need to manage growth. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Many people still find this idea challenging, even for companies that operate solely on the web. Ash Maurya is the founder of WiredReach , a bootstrapped startup that he has been running for seven years. Ash Maurya is the founder of WiredReach , a bootstrapped startup that he has been running for seven years.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

The idea was that these two people would operate as a unit, with the mentors job performance during this period evaluated by the performance of the new person. 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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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

That’s what most startup decisions are like. 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. This startup has been busy transforming their culture and process to incorporate split-testing.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

For startups (and other innovators ), that’s a decisive advantage. The work itself, especially in startups, depends primarily on intelligence, communication, creativity and empathy. Their recent article suggests that startups led by women are actually more successful, on average, than those led by men.

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San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

Startups and larger companies alike can learn a lot from the organization I observed. Obama understood the two concepts that are essential for building a high-performance, highly adaptable, agile organization: 1) rapid iteration and 2) clear values-based objectives. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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Campaign San Francisco Lean Agile 84

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

these devices all need human instruction to enable correct and desired operation. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

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Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 22, 2008 Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to measure customer satisfaction Ive mentioned Net Promoter Score (NPS) in a few previous posts, but havent had a chance to describe it in detail yet. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

You can train your operations or customer service staff on how it works - all live in the production environment. In a successful startup, the development team is also growing. Very few startups can afford this overhead, and so they simply accept a reduction in coverage instead. Unfortunately, it gets worse.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

Whats new is that we have learned to apply those principles in new contexts, like the extreme uncertainty that is the soil in which startups grow. Are there examples of using Set Based Concurrent Engineering (SBCE) productively in the customer discovery phase of a startup? So, in that spirit: thanks, Mitch.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Thanks to those of you who were willing to fill out the survey, I learned my net promoter score (about 25) as well as some clear other segmentation insights: about 80% of you are founders of or work at a startup, you read many of the same other blogs, and many of you would like to engage with Lessons Learned in formats and venues beyond this blog.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 21, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, October 21, 2008 Lean startups vs lean companies Venture Hacks has a great article today on lean startups. If youre not familiar with their work, and how it relates to startups, this is a great place to start. But I do think it is a misconception of what lean startups are all about.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 121

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

Since then, PHP (as part of the LAMP stack ) has really been the dominant development platform, at least in the free software and startup worlds. And yet I keep returning to PHP as a development platform, as have most of my fellow startup CTOs. Given that startups depend on superstars to survive, why stick with PHP?

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PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 23, 2009

Pretty soon you’re chasing your own tail a little bit because you’re not operating against a clear, long-term vision of what you’re trying to accomplish. 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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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Audio 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 20, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 20, 2009 How to build companies that matter (the lean startup on OReilly Radar) I have a post up today on OReilly Radar about using lean startup principles to build companies that matter. They started building BASIC interpreters, but evolved into the worlds largest operating systems monopoly.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Companies want the coverage, but they don’t actually want to reveal anything useful about their operations. Or take a recent TechCrunch article about a startup I wont name: “X billion messages sent since June 2009.&# The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, November 5, 2008 Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and media buyers I see lots of startups whose business plans revolve around selling high-value ad space to brand advertisers. So many startups hope to benefit from that seismic trend. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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Advertising San Francisco Media Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

When startups achieve that milestone, its a mixed blessing. Lets take an example of a startup I was advising a few years ago. FYI the surveymonkey link isnt operational. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Those of us who have had the privilege of working in the premier startup hub in the world often take its advantages for granted. In true startup form, the world was forever changed when the CIA and the National Security Agency acted as venture capitalists for this first wave of entrepreneurship. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

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Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

It took hundreds of years for newspapers to learn to behave as worthy holders of this public trust and cover the news without fear or favour, and create a firewall between news and views and the ad-sales side of the operation. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May. .

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Community Management Lean Software Review 158

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

(a guide for hackers) (This post was inspired by a conversation with Nivi from Venture Hacks , but is otherwise not his fault) There has been a proliferation of frameworks and metaphors lately that are designed to help startups avoid the all-too-common fatal mistake of failing to find a market. Tough sell. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Ruby Lean 89