Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 243

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 243

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? Expo SF (May.

Agile 60

Agile Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

What I saw reminded me of some of the best and worst things I did as a founder. We’re building the wrong product!” Tossing their agile development process and at times their entire business model in the air, the company would go into fire-drill mode and engineering would start working on whatever his latest insight was.

Founder 320

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 320

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 9, 2010 Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# theory of management At any given time, something like four percent of the US population is engaged in some form of new-company-creation. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

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. I like the term because of two connotations: Lean in the sense of low-burn.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In addition to presenting the IMVU case, we tried for the first time to do an overview of a software engineering methodology that integrates practices from agile software development with Steves method of Customer Development. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 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.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

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

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Pretty soon, a soul-searching meeting ensues. Labels: product development Speed up or slow down? This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

And yet the key to startup speed is to maintain a disciplined approach to testing and evaluating new products, features, and ideas. As start-ups scale, this agility will be lost unless the founders maintain a consistent investment in that discipline. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. In fact, this company hasn’t shipped any new products in months.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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. You can learn about customer development, and quite a bit more, in Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

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. Hopefully others will find it useful as well.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Thats why eBay advertises on search engines, and Facebook doesnt. Labels: search engine marketing 0comments: New comments are not allowed. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

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

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. Seems like a fairly low-cost method of gauging customer interest for a would-be product. Eric -- This is a pretty interesting idea. Expo SF (May.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

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. Labels: product development 8comments: Vincent van Wylick said.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

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. Even worse, agile wasnt really helping me ship higher quality software.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

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.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Its to everyones advantage to let the world think the founders thought of everything. I say this as a founder: the contribution of founders is always overestimated. The danger here is that new founders, looking at existing founders, will think that theyre supermen that one couldnt possibly equal oneself.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I am convinced one of Joel Spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the Joel Test , a checklist of 12 essential practices that you could use to rate the effectiveness of a software product development team. Joel said it: "Top notch development teams dont torture their programmers."

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Its inspired by the classic OODA Loop and is really just a simplified version of that concept, applied specifically to creating a software product development team. There are three stages: We start with ideas about what our product could be. Labels: agile , listening to customers 3comments: hauteroute said. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

During the same period (1987 – 1990) and I did some work at MIT under Eric von Hippel on “user driven innovation with regard to software development&# which today would probably fall under the heading of “open source software development approaches.&# No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said. I always assumed I wouldnt manage anybody.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Would love to get in touch.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 30, 2008

This basic pattern is useful in all aspects of product development. Much better is to infer the right toolkit by searching for commonalities among actually-built experiences. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

Software Review 74

Software Review San Francisco Design Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 1, 2008 Test-Driven Development as andon cord You cannot control what you cannot see, and the hardest part of managing software projects is that the final product is so intangible. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And when we do make bets, they’re small bets on incremental products or acquisitions that simply add to the bottom line.”. Bob looked wistful, “Our founders built a company known for taking risks and moving fast. More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. How can we restart our innovation culture?”.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2009

Its also frustrating how some founders see ANY form of struture/approach as limiting and go to the total reverse of waterfall by just doing what they were told by "their wifes friend" This is great and practical stuff.will make sure I pass it on and use in my discussions (giving credit to you!) Expo SF (May.

Lean 115

Lean Video San Francisco Continuous Deployment 115

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

It uses principles of agile software development, open source and web 2.0, Hey Someone else who is extending the agile/lean approach beyond just developing software. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? February 9, 2009 7:45 PM Joseph Flahiff said. Expo SF (May.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Web Advisory Board 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

Although Im not a developer, I am captivated by the lean and agile start-up model that you write about. I plan to apply these models to my own ventures, especially within new contexts separate from software and web development. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Lean 76

Lean San Francisco Web Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Most of the people building our product werent themselves target customers. So there was simply no substitute for seeing actual customers with the product, live. Today, when I talk to startup founders, the most common answer I get to the question "do you talk to your customers?" Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. I have personally sold many copies of his book, and continue to recommend it as one of the most important books a startup founder can read. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166