Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? That means knowing whats written and whats not, what the architecture can and cant support, and how long it would take to build something new. Thats more than just drawing architecture diagrams, though.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

He complemented their elegantly designed minicomputers and made some astute comment about their architecture (now I’m rolling my eyes, their computers were dinosaurs) and asked who were the brilliant designers. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on?

Technology 139

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

We basically had a retainer with one of the pioneering folks in computational chemistry, who ported and tuned his company’s application for our rather radical architecture, and also acted as a marketeer for us in that (then quite nascent) field.

Engineer 205

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 205

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Even though some aspects of the product were eventually vindicated as good ones, the underlying architecture suffered from hard-to-change assumptions. Without conscious process design, product development teams turn lines of code written into momentum in a certain direction. Even a great architecture becomes inflexible.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It’s important to invest in good architecture so that your website will scale once customers arrive. If you make that investment, and then customers arrive, and the site stays up, most companies will reward the people who built the architecture and, thus, prevented the scaling problems.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

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. So far, this is just a summary of what all of us who have attempted to build web-scale architectures considers obvious. Customer data is normally partitioned according to customer id.

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2016

Lessons learned from starting up and teaching entrepreneurship were the focus of an interview with the latest guest on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern). Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. Grant Warner.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder DC Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

For example, at a previous virtual world company , we spent years developing an architecture to cope with millions of simultaneous users. The downside was that we had to combine dozens of projects whose internal architectures, coding styles, and general quality varied widely. Sometimes quick and dirty actually incurs less debt.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Steve Blank

MARCH 9, 2016

The two guests on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show tell it like it really is to navigate the chaos of a startup. The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Cofounder Entrepreneur IPO 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2018

Innovators vs. Entrepreneurs. There are two types of people who engage in large company/agency innovation: Innovators – those who invent new technology, product, service or processes; and Entrepreneurs – those who’ve figured out how to get innovation adopted and delivered through the existing company/agency procedures and processes.

Programming 322

Programming Incubator Leadership Silicon Valley 322

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

They had this great architecture, and Apple had figured out to get movies into their own computers for a demo, but for the rest of us there was no physical device that allowed an average consumer to plug a video camera or VCR into and get video into a Mac. It was fun watching it happen.

Video 168

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 168

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

How this research is transferred outside the university, and why this “tech transfer” process is important was the focus of an interview with two of the latest guests on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere , my radio show on SiriusXM Channel 111 (airing weekly Thursdays at 1 pm Pacific, 4 pm Eastern).

Government 120

Government Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Silicon Valley 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

I suggested that we change the underlying architecture of our UI system so that the artists would be able to build their own UI pieces themselves and then integrate them into the product without requiring new code every time. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ▼ June (3) What is a startup?

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2012

I am often reminded of the story of the building of Chicago and the rise of modern skyscrapers of glass & steel with non-load-bearing walls as talked about in The Fountainhead but also chronicled in history books and in the many architectural tours I’ve taken in Chicago. I talk about it often including in my own personal narrative.

Community 350

Community Silicon Valley Detroit Chicago 350

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

When I tell this story to entrepreneurs and big-company types alike, I sometimes get this response: "well, sure, if you start out with all those great tools, processes and TDD from the beginning, thats easy! It seems your cluster architecture is one of the key architectural constraints making continuous deployment possible.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

I know them right away - we can talk high-level architecture all the way down to the bits-and-bytes of his system. When the architecture needs modifying - why do we need a meeting? Building a good application architecture is not just coding. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Just change it.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

You dont need to invent a new architecture, and you dont need to even build your architecture up-front. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Were in a new wave of platform evolution. yeah, its awesome.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

And as Kapor himself points out, the core ideas have even older origins: The Roman architecture critic Vitruvius advanced the notion that well-designed buildings were those which exhibited firmness, commodity, and delight. Customer Development is itself an example of SBCE. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

and going into a long diatribe about how insecure the ActiveX architecture was compared to Javas pristine sandbox. what happens if we have a pipelined architecture? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Eric, Is this post about Architecture? I define Architecture (capital A) as "the advocacy for human values in a process" (not little a architecture, over-arching structural approach, just design-in-the-large). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

But it goes beyond that, including techniques for improving the economics of product development. Reinertsen weaves together ideas from lean manufacturing, maneuver warfare, queuing theory, and even the architecture of computer operating systems and the Internet. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

The engineering team has decided its reached a breaking point, and is taking several weeks to bring it up to modern standards, including unit tests, getting started with continuous integration , and a new MVC architecture. On the other, they already have a team fully engaged on making their product architecture better.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Lets start with a distinction between shipping new software to the customer, and changing the customers experience. The idea is that often you can change the customers experience without shipping them new software at all. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Continuous Deployment 68

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Someone has managed to convince themselves that they have to do their big architecture change in one fell swoop. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Product Development 68

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

As a result, sitting here on this plane, Ive been pondering what message I want to deliver on behalf of startups and entrepreneurs. So heres my simple question: What do folks in Washington need to know about the global community of entrepreneurs? So what are good entrepreneur-friendly policies?

DC 90

DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Switching these customers directly to continuous deployment sounds harder than it really is. A typical "new feature" release is, in my experience, about 80% changes to underlying APIs or architecture. Switching these customers directly to continuous deployment sounds harder than it really is. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Open APIs and data-oriented architecture (aka "web 2.0"). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Product development leverage Validated learning about customers Built to learn Web 2.0

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Both sides start to think of their point of view in moralistic terms: “those guys don’t see the economic value of fast action, they only care about their precious architecture diagrams&# or “those guys are sloppy and have no professional pride.&# Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

andrewchenblog.com

MARCH 10, 2010

Coupled with A/B testing, customer development, and thinking through business problems in a scientific, hypothesis-driven way, you end up with a powerful cocktail of techniques to build a modern startup in the most iterative way possible. Ideas for when and how to pay down product design debt? what a coincidence. See [link].

Technical Review 47

Technical Review Design Las Vegas Product 47

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

The plug-in co-processor architecture was too complex and couldn’t be made to work reliably. Nothing else was in the development pipeline for the next 12 months. This requires deep customer and competitive knowledge. Instead of the family of eight products we were expecting, only one could be delivered.

Silicon Valley 136

Silicon Valley Product RSS Engineer 136

blog.startupsquare.com

APRIL 13, 2010

2 Comments Tags: Customer Development , lean startup , pivot , Strategy. Having gone through 51 iterations of my mockups and gathered as much as feedback as I could with our primitive alpha, I feel confident about our basic customer problem hypothesis. This is “Customer Need&# in Eric’s list.

Lean 40

Lean Startup Cofounder Architecture 40

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

It is the first in a series of posts he’s writing about the decisions a young entrepreneur needs to make when she/he is first starting a business. One of the things I do as a founder of a later stage startup is to meet with early stage entrepreneurs to help them get their companies going. Unless that person is … you?

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

" Web Development Startups Solo Founders I am a creative guy with a startup idea. Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life? 5 Comments 30 Answers Tristan Kromer , I help entrepreneurs find co-founders. "Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life?"

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42