Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Return the name of the hypothesis chosen or assigned.

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Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 21, 2020

That’s the mission driving products like Hemafuse , one of 50 finalists for SXSW Pitch 2020. Carolyn Yarina , Co-Founder and CEO of Sisu Global Health. All SXSW Pitch events take place at the Hilton Austin Downtown. The name of our company, Sisu, means, in Finnish, persevering in the face of adversity.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

So, if youre interested in helping avoid mistakes like that, here are the steps: Get a domain name. It doesnt have to be the worlds catchiest name, just pick something reasonably descriptive. If youre concerned about sullying your eventual brand name, dont use your "really good" name, pick a code name.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now A great checklist of techniques and tools for making your development more agile, written from a Rail perspective.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

It’s easy to overestimate the impact of this kind of traffic because it just feels good to have your name and company featured. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

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Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

I want to thank Techstars for putting this event together and giving me a chance to experience the scene, even if it lacks a name. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. 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.

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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. Even worse, agile wasnt really helping me ship higher quality software.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

The key to successful integration of customer feedback is to make each kind of collection part of the regular company discipline of building and releasing products. Anyone who has worked in a real-world product development team can tell you how utopian that sounds. One example is having a real Customer Advisory Board.

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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. Leverage product development with open source and third parties.

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Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Accept that many successful companies are going to want to be backed by big-name firms in other cities. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

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infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Such positions include: PR, Sales, Product Development, Lead Generation, Strategic Planning, Fund Raising, etc. One startup I joined was very proud that they had been ‘accepted’ as a client by a prestigious Silicon Valley law firm whose name rhymes with a type of pasta (they are lawyers after all, so I have to be careful here…).

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Much of what I have found effective is counter-intuitive, because it requires investing more effort in each hire - all in the name of efficiency. Returning to our example of the beleaguered founder who still has the pager, before hiring an operations guy, try promoting someone from within to take on the job.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

We're starting our new business, fanminder.com, to help small merchants instantly communicate with their customers, and I'm increasingly hearing your name and reading your keen insights. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Paul June 6, 2009 8:34 PM Nick Shepheard said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Ash Maurya is the founder of WiredReach , a bootstrapped startup that he has been running for seven years. Recently, he was bitten by the lean startup bug and has started writing about his experiences attempting to apply lean startup and customer development principles. Read on to find out. Read on to find out.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Whether youre a US citizen or an immigrant, entrepreneur or investor, founder or employee, theres something you can do. If you are an immigrant founder who has helped build a company that has created jobs in the US, we need you to tell your story. This is especially true if you live outside the echo chamber of Silicon Valley.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

First, a definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products. There is a distinction between product and offering.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2011

The finished book will come out on September 13, featuring an amazing cover designed by my IMVU co-founder Marcus Gosling and refined and tested by so many of you. Why you should pre-order the Lean Startup Book A few months ago in Austin during SXSW, Andres Glusman (of Meetup.com) arranged a very special meetup.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. I believe this is one reason why the myth of the dictatorial startup founder has such enduring appeal.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. Luckily, Chad Austin has recently weighed in with an excellent piece called 10 Pitfalls of Dirty Code. This was an effective approach to discovering a business by using a sequence of product prototypes to get early customer feedback. But it worked.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

All the good domain names were taken, all the good ideas were being implemented. If Id bought just a handful of the "best of the rest" domain names that were available at the time (for a whopping $70 each), I probably could have just retired right then. I was much more focused on other transient success stories of the day.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Some startups fail because the founders cant have this conversation - they either blow up when they try, or they fail to change because they are afraid of conflict. Although I wish I could take credit for these pivots, the reality is that they were not caused by my singular insight or that of my other co-founders.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

As Im pontificating about agile, I see the name Kent Beck in my peripheral vision. Eric Names matter. By pulling in a web of associations, names help people quickly assess ideas. There is a dark side to naming. The naming question has been raised about the "lean" in Lean Startups. Eric Names matter.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

The same is true of brand-name products in almost every category (and it can be measured ). ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

During a lull in her practice she got a serendipitous opportunity to shift gears completely and ended up leading software product development teams. Some examples of a feature being a company's primary advantage are: Apple compromises everything in the name of design. The Dream Team. Existing customers.or

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 31, 2009

lets you post a description of a job without having to reveal the name of the company who is offering it, or the contact information of the hiring manager. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Its incredibly simple, and its called joblink.tw. Think of it as a bit.ly

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Pay attention to whether people are comfortable “naming names&# in the meeting. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 15comments: Anonymoussaid. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? There’s no easy fix to this problem.

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techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

The number one question you all asked after reading my last blog post about starting a business from scratch was “how do I find my co-founders?&# And therein lies the problem in finding co-founders for that startup you’re dying to launch. Having trouble meeting folks you think would be good co-founders?

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

If necessary, consider doing this under a different brand name than the one you are wedded to using. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. Its like knowing the future.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Now, whenever I screen resumes, I ask the recruiter to black out any demographic information from the resume itself: name, age, gender, country of origin. One last suggestion, which is a technique I learned from my IMVU co-founder Will Harvey. “Who is this guy?&# “Who is this guy?&#

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

For startups that are tempted to mimic this behavior, I suggest reading the great account of the early Apple in Founders at Work.) Also SJ's obsession with better taste (positively) contributes to the overall product development process. Regardless, they must cull a lot of bad ideas for every one that we hear about.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Even with only a few months of development, third parties have crammed every single category in the store full of apps. All I see is a name, an icon, a price, the developers name, and a review star-rating. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? I cant really tell.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Founders push for it. Who doesnt want to see their name in print? In some ways, founders are even worse. My experience is that many founders actually have a deep anxiety that maybe they are not succeeding. gave us two years of a beta product to build up the service and the brand awareness.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

We would pretty much bid on any phrase that was "[name of competitive product] chat" and variations like that. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. I’m sure other disciplines have their own names for it; even protozoans exhibit this behavior (its called taxis ). I understand and respect why optimizers want to do tests like that.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Ironically, meetings like this had given data and experimentation a bad name inside this company. Why was a team this smart, this disciplined, and this committed to waste-free product development creating so much waste? Ironically, meetings like this had given data and experimentation a bad name inside this company.

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San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

This attention is valuable to yet another set of people: namely, the traditional businesses (see above) who are using marketing to grow, and are looking to advertise to new prospects. Minimum viable product is a tactic for mitigating risk. Founders struggle with this question. Founders struggle with this question.

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