A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 5, 2010

In the quest for optimization, A/B tests, metrics, and funnels, we're in danger of losing the fun and value of creative work. We're "lean" but we're not stirring hearts. Now by all of the usual arguments for Lean, Agile, and minimimalism, I should have used boogers too: Boogers were already semi-standardized.

Software Review 226

Software Review Metrics Lean Algorithm 226

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 29, 2021

It could be more revenue, hiring clients, or launching a new product or service, but every new year is an exciting time because it’s ripe with opportunity. It's important to keep business agile. One of the biggest problems we encounter was staying financially stable, especially when revenue was barely coming in.

Entrepreneur 137

Entrepreneur Social Media Employee Los Angeles 137

Steve Blank

APRIL 21, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment with a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. All the teams were showing us what agile looked like, but this week several would remind us what focused and relentless really meant. The Week 6 Lecture: Revenue Model. What types of revenue streams are there?

Channel 215

Channel Artificial Inteligence San Francisco Business Model 215

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 8, 2023

million people and generate monthly revenue. Most startups are driven by high-end technology, innovations, and agile testing, with the help of which new trends are being born. You can find the latest news in the form of newsletters in Lean Luxe , 2 PM , Chips + Dips , Retail Brew , The Hustle , and Vogue Business.

eCommerce 185

eCommerce Technical Review Software Review Analytics 185

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? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. Step 1: Start with a lean plan. At this stage, simply list your primary revenue streams and your key expenses. Subscription Business Trends and Predictions for 2016.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 28, 2008 The lean startup comes to Stanford Im going to be talking about lean startups (and the IMVU case in particular) three times in the next two weeks at Stanford. Labels: events , lean startup 5comments: Hitchens said. How did we combat this tendency? When will you be speaking?

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 68

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem) Lean startups don’t optimize. At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. For example, I’m a big believer in split-testing.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. Sounds very similar to agile development which is the way. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. Small is beautiful.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Behind this analysis is a spreadsheet model, complete with detailed metrics for a set of customer behaviors that show just how valuable the new product will be. They are on-schedule and on-budget, but their gross metrics are way off. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Expo SF (May.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for T he Lean Startup Conference. We’ve posted the full program for The Lean Startup Conference , and it includes more than three days of events for Gold pass holders and six days of events for VIP pass holders. On the evening of December 8, Ignite Lean Startup kicks off the conference.

Continuous Deployment 162

Continuous Deployment Norway Lean Analytics 162

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Heck, thats what it says right there in the agile manifesto. In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. Labels: agile , continuous deployment , lean startup , product development , Test-driven development 4comments: Nivi said. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

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. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. And we can offer investors metrics to play Moneyball – with the Investment Readiness Level. We think we can do better. Here’s how.

Oakland 326

Oakland Incubator Lean Metrics 326

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it. The problem is that there are no other metrics they can look at to judge the content of a book to know if it’s worth reviewing. What is the right revenue model?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. 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. Expo SF (May. for Harvard Business Revie.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

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. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. They measure their success on metrics that reflect success in execution, and they reward execution.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

A Progress Graph on the right visually shows how far you’ve come (in whatever units of goodness you’re tracking – revenue, units, users, etc.) They will realize that you have built a startup that’s agile, resilient and customer-centric. Did the VC’s like your team ?

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

One of the most common questions I get about the lean startup methodology is, "but what about Steve Jobs ?" So how do you reconcile his success with the lean startup, which seems to suggest the opposite?" Plus, the premise of the question misunderstands the lean startup, too. Not even if its generating revenue.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Up and Running

NOVEMBER 29, 2017

This actually aligns closely with the Lean Planning approach, which allows your business to be more agile and make adjustments as you test your idea in the market. I had been ignorantly focusing on the 20 percent of the business that wasn’t directly related to revenue. It’s essential to have a strategy for getting customers.

Acquisition 93

Acquisition Startup Engineer Metrics 93

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

In lean times, it’s most important to focus on cutting costs in ways that speed you up, not slow you down. To increase the number of iterations you have left, you can either increase cash on hand (by raising money or increasing revenues), reduce burn rate, or increase the speed of each iteration. Work in small batches.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

They asked for my advice, and we went through a number of recommendations that readers of this blog will already be able to guess: adding revenue opportunities, engagement loop optimization, and some immediate split-testing to figure out whats working and whats not. Great post, Eric. And we all know what the success rates of rewrites are!

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Some of these benefits are shared by agile systems which have continuous integration but large batch releases, but others are unique to continuous deployment. Monitoring of real-world metrics. No automated test is going to catch that, but it still will drive revenue to zero. Monitoring of real-world metrics.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2009

Gathering real-world feedback from customers is a core concept of Customer Development as well as the Lean Startup. Web startups are at real disadvantage here as founders may confuse web metrics, A/B testing and on-line surveys as the entirety of first-hand knowledge – for most web business models they are not. Only 57 Questions.

Metrics 239

Metrics Customer Customer Development Lean 239

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.) We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Dave McClure, “Startup Metrics for Pirates”, [link]. to optimize this search.

Wiki 311

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 311

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

For the rest of us, there is an alternative: to create credibility by building a lean startup. We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. My 2008 revenues were over $100k on a 35k inventory. Retention cohort analysis.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, July 2, 2009 How to conduct a Five Whys root cause analysis In the lean startup workshops , we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the technique of Five Whys. My intention is to describe a full working process, similar to what I’ve seen at IMVU and other lean startups. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2010

Or depending on your metrics for success, get users, grow traffic, etc.). How Does Customer Development, Agile Development and Lean Startups Fit? Agile Development is the way startups quickly iterate their product as they learn. This methodology does for startups what the Toyota Lean Production System did for cars.).

Agile 335

Agile Startup Silicon Valley Business Model 335

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

You don't have an "edge" just because you're passionate, hard-working, or "lean.". I'm a great example of someone who wasn't an authority on anything , but built that authority over time to the point where now my company (Smart Bear) is untouchable as the leader in both revenue and ideas in the area of peer code review. Like what??

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A business that strives for something like this should absolutely be charging money from day one, in order to establish baselines for their two key metrics: CPA (the cost to acquire a new customer) and LTV (the lifetime value of each acquired customer). These concepts have important implications for any lean startup.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. What Drives Innovation?

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Luckily, the metrics helped us figure out the difference. Question 2: If your product has areas where people read and then different areas where people interact, are there ways to do metrics to determine where people spend their time? Were looking to metrics to determine how users interact with our product. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 28, 2016

I’ve previously written about lean marketing – testing your ideas in small batches, listening to feedback, tweaking campaigns, and re-testing. There’s another important concept that complements lean marketing: marketing velocity. Keep in mind that marketing velocity and agility are two distinctly different concepts.

Revenue 48

Revenue Marketing Sales Agile 48