Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

This builds on a lot of great thinking that has come before, like the agile movements insistence that only the creation of working code counts as progress for a software development team. We set sales targets from day one, $300 the first month. As the experiments progressed, day-in-day-out we werent making sales. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

For a startup, having great sales DNA is a wonderful asset. This is the magic of sales: by learning about each customer in-depth, they can convince each of them that this product would solve serious problems. But here’s where a truly great sales artist comes in. They are closing orders.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. blader : @ericries my #1 takeaway from #leanstartup : "No marketing team. No engineering team. This is my take on that idea.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. Problem is, you inevitably become yesterday’s old news. Expo SF (May. Conference streaming, sponsors, discounted tickets.

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Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

When I first encountered agile software techniques, in the form of extreme programming , I thought I had found the answer. I explained it to people this way: agile lets you make the trade-offs visible to whole company, so that they can make informed choices. Even worse, agile wasnt really helping me ship higher quality software.

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Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

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. Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campa. Expo SF (May. Conference streaming, sponsors, discounted tickets.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

In the early fall of 2009, as kaChing prepared for its marketplace launch, the management team showed the app—which included real time market data, SEC-grade accounting, analytics, compliance and customer management tools—to a number of investment pros to get feedback and endorsements. says Rachleff. says Rachleff.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

The cost of creating new companies is falling rapidly, and access to markets, distribution, and information is within the reach of anyone with an Internet connection. These companies produced over $52 billion dollars in sales in 2005, and employed 450,000 workers that year. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121

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. Just as a business incurs some debt to take advantage of a market opportunity developers may incur technical debt to hit an important deadline.

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Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

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. I suddenly lose my ability to judge if our marketing programs are being effective. It was pretty ugly, the marketing and design sucked, and I was embarrassed by it.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. This is the usual reason given for a marketing launch, but for most early stage startups, its a failure. In the right situation, its a very useful tactic, too.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

In traditional marketing there are three main objectives. If you are trying to find a product that sells, than each test would require a different product to be created (or at least a different sales page).in This adds to the complexity of decision making since you dont know its the ad, sales page, product, keywords and so on. .

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Now, helping potential customers discover new things they might like is the job of the discipline of marketing. But that job is changing dramatically, and this brings us to the next major problem facing traditional media organizations: Media companies are failing at marketing. There are too many products clamoring for attention.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Even if, in a previous life, you were a world expert in some functional specialty, like in-depth market research or scalable systems design, the compressed timeline of a startup makes it irrelevant. In school I was being pounded day and night with anything that has to do with agile software development. I am basically a one-man shop.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Labels: agile , product development , Test-driven development 11comments: William Pietri said. Back when it first came out, Fowlers book Refactoring was what got me into the Agile world, so it holds a special place in my heart. Eric - There is definitely a business/marketing analog to exactly this situation that happens a lot too.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Although customers didnt flock to this offering at first, we had enough of a developer program active to start recruiting early adopters to start creating 3D objects for sale in our catalog. Many complex apps can now be prototyped as a simple mashup in order to prove market viability - and this is true beyond just software apps.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Because this language may lead you to believe this concept is for enterprise sales only, I thought Id walk you through an example from the world of consumer electronics. Combining agile development with customer developm. But if that piece-parts solution is great, then its unlikely they are going to need to buy any additional products.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

Similarly, government purchasing is a frustrating series of hoops, even compared to enterprise sales. The US was once known as a free market democracy that could make the trains run on time. The objective function of successful bureaucracy is to do what the law requires as quickly and cheaply as possible. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, February 12, 2009 What is a market? (a To wit: achieving product/market fit , getting customer validation , making something people want , things that matter , and of course the many excellent books on the topic, of which Ill mention just two of the best, Crossing the Chasm and The Innovators Dilemma.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Ruby Lean 89

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2008

Sales depend on being right (whereas in UGC we can pretty much try anything, and promote the winners). In other words, a marketing department. You do get the beneift of total control of your content, so you can guarantee your customers a quality experience. You can use these three questions to analyze existing businesses. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 16, 2010 Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium (Normally, I do not write about companies that are doing a marketing launch. I was an early adopter of this feature, and participated in the last marketing launch, as you can see here. The idea seemed to SlideShare to be a natural direction.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

This can take the form of a traditional sales pipeline or a registration-activation-revenue chart. Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Expo SF (May.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Thats why some entrepreneurs are trying another approach to product launches: marketing a product online before spending much on research and development or inventory. Then, the company spends no more than a few hundred dollars marketing the product through search engines and to the contacts in its sales database and LinkedIn.

San Francisco 137

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 137

www.ere.net

JULY 15, 2012

Common reason for failure: omitting this step altogether and deploying employment branding and recruitment marketing to channels that are easiest to deploy to. The process should have the sales and influence component that work to improve the likelihood of top candidates accepting. Keith Halperin. May 11, 2010 at 4:31 pm. Interesting!

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Hiring Metrics Search Widget 57

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

What can you do to your product and marketing message to increase engagement? From a strictly "promotional marketing" point of view, they probably run those campaigns more than is optimal (theres always fatigue that diminishes the ROI on promotions the more you use them). Levers of engagement Lets start with the levers of engagement.

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Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

Agile VC

JUNE 12, 2012

Swipely is focused on payment marketing, namely unifying loyalty programs and payments for main street merchants. food trucks, farmers market vendors, small retailers, event organizers, etc), most of whom previously didn’t accept credit cards.

Mobile 250

Mobile Disintermediation SMS Government 250

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2009

We decided from the get-go that, while we clearly saw the benefits and necessity of our concept, we would remain fiercely skeptical of our own ideas and implement the customer development process to vet the idea, market, customers etc, before writing a single line of code. The market will tell you.

San Francisco 144

San Francisco Customer Wiki Lean 144

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

For months, we made constant product and policy changes, trying to end the controversy without simply undoing our original decision and abandoning the mainstream market. Since LL took over xstreet, they have seen a 34% DROP in users and sales, why? IMVU charges a fee for submission of products to be advertised for sale in its catalog.

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Community Management Lean Software Review 158