Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

We had endless arguments internally about what features it should include, how the avatars should look, and how much it should cost. Finally the day came, we unleashed the landing page, emailed our existing customers, and started advertising online. Just load them all in and choose a low cost-per-click. I used to use $.05,

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

I used to think that investments in metrics were a form of waste. Customers dont care if you have good metrics, only if you have a good product. The only reason we learned the art of metrics-based decision making at IMVU was out of necessity. But code written that doesnt help the company succeed is a sunk cost.

San Francisco 98

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

While some cost-cutting measures reduce that number, others increase it. In lean times, it’s most important to focus on cutting costs in ways that speed you up, not slow you down. Otherwise, cutting costs just leads to going out of business a little slower. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

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. After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Lean startups have the ability to use this commodity stack to lower costs and, more importantly, reduce time to market. Agile software development. Customer development. The biggest source of cost/time advantage that all lean companies have is avoiding building features that customers dont want.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. Creating a company-wide feedback loop that incorporates both customer development and agile development is a challenge.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

For example, heres him discussing our collective blindness to queues: To understand the economic cost of queues, product developers must be able to answer two questions. Today, only 2 percent of product developers measure queues. Second, what is the cost of these queues? But, what is the cost of this buffer?

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

It costs not just the time of the actual meeting, but the time getting there and back, and the time preparing for it beforehand and thinking about it afterward. 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 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Since we were only paying per click, it didnt cost us anything to cast a wide net. And then we would use that simple analytics system I mentioned to monitor the conversion rates of customers from each campaign. Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

The cost of creating new companies is falling rapidly, and access to markets, distribution, and information is within the reach of anyone with an Internet connection. The cost will be felt in jobs -- thousands of new jobs that could have been created here, but werent. Read the rest of The New Startup Arms Race at Huffington Post.

San Francisco 121

San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. I want to talk specifics, and when you come right down to it, most technology startups dont have a very interesting cost structure.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

[link] And - of course - going through [link] and reading up on the various different approaches different companies have (successfully) taken towards getting scalability at reasonably low cost. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? So, for reference, I am Adam, of [link].

Open Source 107

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. Thats what business is designed to do.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule. Our cost to acquire a customer on AdWords was only a few cents.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

This approach is a the heart of breaking down the "time/quality/cost pick two" paradox , because these small investments cause the team to go faster over time. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Id like to point out something else about the example above.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If the CEO wants to completely change the product in order to serve a new customer segment, you need someone in the room who can digest the needs of the new (proposed) business, and lay out the costs of each possible approach. In my mind, theyre racking up costs (one month for that part, two months for that other part, uh oh).

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

The Lean Startup is a practical approach for creating and managing a new breed of company that excels in low-cost experimentation, rapid iteration, and true customer insight. It uses principles of agile software development, open source and web 2.0, No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Web Advisory Board 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

It cost us a few hundred thousand dollars to get our app up and running, but none of that was dollars spent on software licenses or professional services. We just had our app support a few tens of thousands of customers, and it did well. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics. Luckily, we also discovered that certain other metrics, like LTV and CPA were much better than we initially projected. If it costs $0.10 Even that early, it became clear that 4% was not an achievable goal. But $10.00?

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 29, 2010

Each part of the program is organized around one phase of the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop and begins with a keynote address from a heavy hitter: Steve Blank on Customer Development, Randy Komisar on "Getting to Plan B" and - a third person, not-yet-announced-but-extremely-cool-trust-me. I think this is a fair question.

San Francisco 120

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Or, if it really was prevented, what was the opportunity cost of choosing to prevent it ahead of time? And in most situations, there is significant cost involved in negotiating over the right estimates to plug in. One way to evaluate this fear is to spend time on analysis: how many customers will be affected?

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Ship more infrequently While this may decrease downtime (things break and you roll back), the cost on development time from work and rework will be large, and mistakes will continue to slip through. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

As the costs of production fall, it’s getting easier and easier to send in a proposal or even a complete work. Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it. I’ve met a lot of gatekeepers in the past few months.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

If you can start getting ROI on a feature in month one of a twelve month project versus waiting until the end, youve comparatively reduced the cost of development by the revenue generated by that feature over 11 months. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 27, 2009

The Lean Startup is a practical approach for creating and managing a new breed of company that excels in low-cost experimentation, rapid iteration, and true customer insight. It uses principles of agile software development, open source and web 2.0, No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Lean 60

Lean Austin San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Which comes to the second major principle: halt work that leads to more waste, even if it means abandoning sunk costs. Just because something looks pretty, or feels like a good idea, or has a lot of sunk cost in it, does not mean it should be pursued. This is a version of the andon cord technique from lean manufacturing.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Integration risk is the term I use to describe the costs of having code sitting on some, but not all, developers machines. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? First, a word about why continuous integration is so important.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

davemcclure : amazing concepts on Continuous Development => "Cluster Immune System" @EricRies #LeanStartup @fbFund [link] dalelarson : Because most features take longer to argue and prioritize than to build. Although there is cost and overhead associated with continuous deployment, the benefits are immense. Danger, Will Robinson.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Its one of the easiest ways to get leverage in your development process, amplifying the power of your team by letting you take advantage of code written by thousands of others. Its obvious that can lower your development costs, but I think its even more important that it can reduce your time to market.

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

In an eyeballs business, you just cant seem to acquire or activate that next step-up of customers. Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Stick to some kind of absolute-cost rule, like "no one is allowed to spend more time on the refactoring for a given feature than the feature itself, but also no one is allowed to spend zero time refactoring." Only one occasion was a substantial rewrite justified based on performance metrics. January 29, 2009 12:48 AM mooderssaid.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Automated testing dramatically reduces the cost of certifying changes, because it removes all of the grunt work QA traditionally does in software. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? To see why, take a look at Joels Top Five (Wrong) Reasons You Dont Have Testers.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Plus, we saw some of the intrinsic limitations of supporting such a large staff: slower cycle times, higher cost basis, and - most importantly - the ability to serve only a limited number of customer segments. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future. How costly is a failure?

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Then we could render the whole site with much less latency, bandwidth usage, and server cost. Its design goals arent geared towards efficiency in terms of technical costs. For example, its quite common that we dont know the exact set of assets a given customer is going to want to use.

Continuous Deployment 68

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

In practice, how developers respond to this dilemma is determined by their incentives, which are driven by the culture of their team. Who will ultimately bear the cost of their mistakes? One of the distinctions that has helped at the executive level is to stress that you're reducing the COST of failure, rather then its PROBABILITY.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167