Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

In most agile development systems, there is a notion of the "product backlog" a prioritized list of what software is most valuable to be developed next. But, over the years I’ve realized that the toughest problem - the one that matters most and was consistently the most challenging - was figuring out what the product backlog should be.

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Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

At IMVU, we were terrified by how early we shipped (and charged for) our first product. Despite that, we were able to establish credibility, because we used those early numbers to demonstrate that our customers were getting real value from our product and, more importantly, that we understood how to build more of it.

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San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 8, 2009 Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and whats changed since then) My recent article on technical debt and its positive uses generated a fair bit of controversy. You can follow some of that debate here and here ; I continue to believe that this idea is correct.

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Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

When we build products, we use a methodology. We know some products succeed and others fail, but the reasons are complex and the unpredictable. a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit." The theory of Product/Market Fit is one key component of customer development, and I highly recommend Marcs essay on that topic.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

In my experience, the majority of changes we made to products have no effect at all on customer behavior. This kind of result is typical when you ship a redesign of some part of your product. Without split-testing, your product tends to get prettier over time. First of all, why split-test? One last note on reporting.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage. The biggest source of waste in new product development is building something that nobody wants. Unfortunately, customers hated that initial product.

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Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 8, 2009 Datablindness Most of us are swimming in a sea of data about our products, companies, and teams. I had it all set up to a jury-rigged SurveyMonkey - PayPal minimum viable product. So the product development team was busy creating lots of split-tests for lots of hypotheses.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

See Paul Grahams Why Nerds are Unpopular to learn more) Take a look at this article on a programming Q&A site: How old are you, and how old were you when you started coding? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0, Expo (and a call for he.

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Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Sometimes an early negative result from an experiment is a harbinger of doom for that product, and means it should be abandoned. Imagine a general manager that has read The Innovator’s Dilemma and related books, and is therefore trying hard to help her organization make a transition to a new product category via disruptive innovation.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

You can find out what it would take for them to adopt your product, and then follow up a week later and see if they did. Same with finding out what it would take to get them to recommend your product to a friend. What led you to become a subscriber, versus just reading an article and leaving like everybody else? (or,

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. 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. What’s going on?

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 20, 2010

Although the article is a bit me-centric, I think they did a good job capturing the fact that this is more than just the bloggers and writers, but represents a shift in thinking among entrepreneurs all over the world. The article includes comments from Kevin Dewalt and Drew Houston. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Lean San Francisco Arlington Continuous Deployment 153

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

And once you have a relationship with an author, musician, or journalist, it will be quite easy for them to offer new products and services – and for you to give them feedback that helps them shape ever more interesting (and ever more profitable) offerings. There are too many products clamoring for attention. Is that a lot?

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 19, 2009 Inc Magazine on Minimum Viable Product (and a response) Inc Magazine has a great new piece up about the increasing use of the Minimum Viable Product by businesses (and not just startups). Like many companies, TPGTEX rolls out new products several times a year. Read the rest.

San Francisco 137

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 137

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 11, 2010

for Harvard Business Review) In the latest article for my series in HBR, I discuss the problem of how to figure out how much process startups should have. Companies that insist on building a world-class infrastructure before shipping a product are doomed to achieve failure, because theyre starved of feedback for too long.

San Francisco 120

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 120

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 8, 2010 Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Review) The next article in my series on entrepreneurship for Harvard Business Review is live today. Establish baseline metrics by building the minimum viable product — the minimum required to measure the response of early adopters.

Metrics 121

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 121

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 21, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, October 21, 2008 Lean startups vs lean companies Venture Hacks has a great article today on lean startups. They quote extensively from two of our most important thinkers: Taiichi Ohno , creator of the Toyota Production System, and Kent Beck , creator of extreme programming. Go read it.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 121

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, September 3, 2009 Dont be the Ice Cream Glove I have a new post up today on OReilly Radar , called " Is your product an Ice Cream Glove or a Snuggie? " Ali G meets with business leaders and investors on Wall Street to learn how to create a new company around a new product idea.

San Francisco 104

San Francisco DC Continuous Deployment Lean 104

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

I spent some time with his company before the conference and discussed ways to get started with continuous deployment , including my experience introducing it at IMVU. They were deploying to production with every commit before they had an automated build server or extensive automated test coverage in place.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. Andrew Chen recently did a great article on the economic model underlying freemium (it includes a detailed spreadsheet, too!). Is it that they act as free advertising for our premium product? Pretty good deal, right?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

The customer is known, the product is known, and all we have to do is act. The customer is unknown, the product is unknown, and startups must be built to learn. When wed go into a product planning meeting, often an engineer or product person would have already run a small scale A/B experiment , and so already have some data to go on.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 74

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

The Entire Video of John Doerr Giving 10 Tips for Start-ups to Avoid the Econalypse Related articles by Zemanta Ten ways to save your company by John Doerr John Doerrs 10 Ways to Stay on Top Ten ways to save your company by John Doerr John Doerr: 10 ways for companies to stay afloat in rough times (MG Siegler/VentureBeat) 1 comments: fnthawar said.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 20, 2009

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com. Read the rest of the article here. Related articles by Zemanta The Promise of the Lean Startup (gigaom.com) Labels: lean startup 11comments: Ravi said. How about a fictive short story about few guys starting up a web product company on lean startup way?

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Five Why’s rarely works for general abstract problems like “our product is buggy&# or “our team moves too slow.&# The net effect of all this was to make new engineers incredibly productive right away – in most cases, we’d have them deliver code to production on their very first day.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

As Steve writes in the Four Steps to the Epiphany , we always seek to find a market for the product as currently specified , not conduct a focus group to tell us what the spec should be. It gave the whole company license to go heads-down building product as fast as possible during the development cycle, acting as a solution team should.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

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. Product launch) In todays world, there is no reason you have to do these two things at the same time. Establish credibility with potential partners.

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San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 1, 2009

Heres the working definition Ive started using: A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. A: have them deploy code to production on their first day as an employee. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. made a big impression.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

But that team may also include product marketers or other in-house customers who can give insight into the impact that solution trade-offs might have on customers. Its not good enough to hit product milestones and conduct usability tests. Im continually inspired by your entrepreneurial passion and insight. Register here.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

You can even see the humiliating evidence of my smug incompetence in this absurd article from 1999.) All my products and ideas focus on early cash and a business model that works from the first day. Building a product that makes everybody's life better or something bad undone will drive you and will make work meaningful.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 8, 2008 Continuous integration step-by-step Lets start with the basics: Martin Fowlers original article lays out the mechanics of how to set up a CI server and the essential rules to follow while doing it. Great article. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

He doesnt put out crappy, buggy products and then ask for feedback. My normal answer is that I dont really think thats how Apple products are built. Thats what so many techniques that I advocate are all about: customer validation , minimum viable product , vision pivots , and even throwing away working code. It just wasnt great.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Most of the content for my presentation is drawn from my original article on engagement loops , with new diagrams courtsey of my friends at Kontagent and a few new examples. These decisions are critical to the success of any high-engagement product, and they take place entirely inside the minds of customers. Impressive.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

In a few cases, they are clearly smart people in a bad situation, and Ive written about their pain in The product managers lament and The engineering managers lament. The "just fix it" mentality is counter-productive here. At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization.

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Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Vivek Wadhwa and his team continue their excellent work investigating the true nature of entrepreneurship. Their recent article suggests that startups led by women are actually more successful, on average, than those led by men. The work product is a more realistic test, although it requires much more work on the part of the candidate.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I'll add two ideas: The modern structure of university patent licensing and technology transfer works really well in the life sciences and other fields with expensive product development processes. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Or take a recent TechCrunch article about a startup I wont name: “X billion messages sent since June 2009.&# These articles treat this as a huge number, and it is. It’s possible, but the article doesn’t say. Most of the article is about the features – new and old – of the product.

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San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

In this scheme, all of the data related to a specific feature of a product are stored on the same machines. It seems to be taken as a given in this article that youre going to be using relational databases. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Two of my favorites are from Flixster and LiveJournal.

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San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151