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?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? 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." Whats wrong with this picture?

Customer Development 168

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.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations. This is a fantastic article.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

All of the incentives described in the article focus on making it easy and highly desirable to launch your product: [He] claimed that launching projects is the natural state that Googles internal ecosystem tends towards, and its because they pump so much energy into pointing people in that direction. Focus on launching.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

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.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

It’s common, perhaps the norm, for startups to pivot like that—to discover that a product is catching on in unintended ways worth pursuing. Finally, after launch, 30 professional money managers, having read articles on the company, contacted kaChing out of the blue. in fact only five people converted into paying customers.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

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.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

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,

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133

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

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. Even Marc Andreessen weighs in.

Lean 153

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?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

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.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

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

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.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 121

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? There are over forty pages of responses from programmers of all ages, and if you just read the stories at random, youll see a clear pattern. .

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

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

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

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?

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

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

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.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

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.

Lean 74

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 74

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.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

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?

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

They were deploying to production with every commit before they had an automated build server or extensive automated test coverage in place. Initially, IMVU sought to quickly build a product that would prove out the soundness of their ideas and test the validity of their business model.

Continuous Deployment 131

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

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

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.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

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

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

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. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , Test-driven development 3comments: Chris said.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

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. In a future post, Ill attempt to unpack this definition in detail. made a big impression.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 60

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Tech Gadgets Mobile Enterprise GreenTech CrunchBase TechCrunch TV Disrupt SF More TechCrunch TV Beta Invites Crunchies Elevator Pitches Gillmor Gang Podcasts TechCrunch Europe TechCrunch Trends TechCrunch France TechCrunch Japan Whats Hot: Android Apple Facebook Google Microsoft Twitter Yahoo Zynga Subscribe: From Nothing To Something.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

And instead of design, engineering, QA, and operations we have a solution team implementing a startup-centric version of agile development. 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. Register here.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. Its the ultimate high-engagement product. You can learn more about the event here.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

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. For more on this subject, take a look at The product managers lament.

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. Take a look and let me know what you think. Take a look and let me know what you think.

DC 90

DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

mashable.com

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

No doubt early-stage companies can be started on a shoestring by low-paid entrepreneurs, but when financing a scalable, sustainable product, a free application server won’t make much of a difference. For example, my company decided early on to hire a UI designer, which has helped tremendously with our product development.

Startup 79

Startup Social Media RSS Social Network 79