Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on?

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

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? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

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

AUGUST 8, 2009

I thought a good place to start was with the origins of the idea that "software design" should be considered a discipline in its own right, on par with computer science, software engineering, and computer programming. Firmness: A program should not have any bugs that inhibit its function. We owe a lot to this seminal document.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

If done right, a programming interview serves two purposes simultaneously. The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. Still, a startup product development team is a service organization.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

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. Eric, Is this post about Architecture? Whats wrong with this picture?

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

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

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. The "just fix it" mentality is counter-productive here. Just change it.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Its why, at my previous job, we were able to get a new engineer completely productive on their first day. We had a great on-boarding process, complete with a mentoring program and a syllabus of key ideas to be covered. Most engineers would ship code to production on their first day. What is customer development?

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

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. You can turn your entire application infrastructure investment into a pay-as-you-go variable cost, and bring new products to market at speeds an order of magnitude faster than just 10 years ago. yeah, its awesome.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

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

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

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I started my last company with 100% off-shore resources because I could never have completed Customer Development at a reasonable cost of money or regulatory burden had I employed US Citizens. You can see the design of the program here. I hate to say it, I'm sorry to say it, but it is the 100% truth.

DC 90

DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Thats a perfectly reasonable reaction, given that most releases of most products are bad news. Even worse, the sad state of product development generally means that the new "features" are as likely to be ones that make the product worse, not better. Its likely that the new release will contain new bugs.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

The idea is that often you can change the customers experience without shipping them new software at all. This is one of the most powerful aspects of web architecture, and it often gets lost in other client-server programming paradigms. 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

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.&# No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

bfliris So it sounds like with Meebo (your claim to fame) you were passionate about the idea but had no programming skill, partnered with two people that had strong programming ability and did very little to assist them in creating a succesful application. I have had a programming job and tried to do side projects after work/ weekends.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

" => I have not bothered to put up a landing page, survey to test customer demand, or done any customer development whatsoever. "Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life?" Edit (based on your comment below) : Regarding back end programming, it really is very easy.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42