Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering. But since I spent a long time in a hybrid CTO/VP Engineering role, I still have this nagging question. Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Labels: product development Speed up or slow down? This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Take a look and let me know what you think.

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Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Ever since that time, I have struggled to explain how the feedback loop in customer development should interface with the feedback loop in product development. Eric Ries Lean Startup Schematic View Of Agile Development And Customer Development View more presentations from Eric Ries.

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Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

► 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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Its to everyones advantage to let the world think the founders thought of everything. I say this as a founder: the contribution of founders is always overestimated. The danger here is that new founders, looking at existing founders, will think that theyre supermen that one couldnt possibly equal oneself.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

And yet the key to startup speed is to maintain a disciplined approach to testing and evaluating new products, features, and ideas. As start-ups scale, this agility will be lost unless the founders maintain a consistent investment in that discipline. Techniques from lean manufacturing can be part of a startups innovation culture.

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Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

They are leaders, visionaries, founders and managers having tremendous success. I was an engineer on the engineering team. For one, the engineers consider the artists stupid; the artists consider the engineers arrogant. Yet talent organized improperly can lead to failure. The meeting was tense.

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Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

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

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. They work hard to keep their house in order at all times, and there are strict rules and guidelines in place that prevent engineers and teams from doing things their own way. Amazon PostRank

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

The same has been true of an unfortunate number of startups, they manage to generate a lot of hype, raise a lot of money, and sometimes make some of their investors, employees, or founders rich. Nothing is more demoralizing to an engineering team. Ive been there: is it me or my cofounder thats crazy? jellytheory : Ask WHY?

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

For some reason, though, despite the increased buy-in, the final product often doesnt look anything like the original spec. The VP Engineering spends all of his time trying to make sure the programmers understand and implement the spec. Labels: product development 8comments: Vincent van Wylick said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Its inspired by the classic OODA Loop and is really just a simplified version of that concept, applied specifically to creating a software product development team. There are three stages: We start with ideas about what our product could be. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I am convinced one of Joel Spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the Joel Test , a checklist of 12 essential practices that you could use to rate the effectiveness of a software product development team. why couldnt the engineer see the problem in their sandbox?

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Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

► 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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

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Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 13, 2009 The Principles of Product Development Flow If youve ever wondered why agile or lean development techniques work, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen is the book for you.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

► 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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

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Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Later, when the company was much larger, we had everyone on our engineering team agree to sit in on one usability test every month. It wasnt a huge time commitment, but it meant that every engineer was getting regular contact with an actual customer, which was invaluable. Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

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San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. 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.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Customer development is a parallel process to product development, which means that you dont have to give up on your dream. Our goal in product development is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers. Instead, we do everything possible to validate the founders belief.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

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. Great engineers see it and smile. This is called set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE). [1]

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

The human tendency to moralize about debt affects engineers, too. 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.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

Come to TS in Boston! ► 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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Amazon PostRank

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

Andy Mathieson, a founder and managing member at Fairview Capital , was particularly supportive. “Some people weren’t comfortable because it wasn’t as fun, and one senior engineer thought we’d be losing the part of kaChing that was an enabler for anyone who wanted to make it as a pro,&# Rachleff recalls.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 30, 2008

This basic pattern is useful in all aspects of product development. ► 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. Take a look and let me know what you think. Amazon PostRank

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Software Review San Francisco Design Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Do the engineers understand what they are building? ► 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. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2009

Its also frustrating how some founders see ANY form of struture/approach as limiting and go to the total reverse of waterfall by just doing what they were told by "their wifes friend" This is great and practical stuff.will make sure I pass it on and use in my discussions (giving credit to you!) Amazon PostRank

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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. Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Most important slide: live demo Prototype product Key questions: what will it take to ship a working product? whos on the engineering team? can the team bring the product to market? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? how do you know anyone would want it?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

► 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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 119

San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

In almost all Agile Development systems, thousands of automated tests are run against every change to the software. These tests are written by the engineers themselves, and they must all pass every time. This is equivalent of the andon cord in a Toyota production plant. Automated tests make defects visible.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

I believe its important that product teams be cross-functional, no matter what other job function the product champion does. The job of the Chief Engineer is to determine the needs of the product and then to negotiate with the heads of body engineering, drive train engineering, manufacturing engineering, production, purchasing, etc.,

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

You can learn more about that by reading The engineering managers lament.) leanstartup We organized our engineering team at IMVU to try and maximize cross-functional collaboration. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. I have personally sold many copies of his book, and continue to recommend it as one of the most important books a startup founder can read. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Eric, Any thoughts on how forum feedback fits into customer development and agile product development? Youve probably addressed this in the past, but I continue to be blown away by how fast Blizzard reacts to noise in their forums and rapidly makes fixes to the product. =) November 4, 2008 10:58 PM IMVU said.

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Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 9, 2010 Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# theory of management At any given time, something like four percent of the US population is engaged in some form of new-company-creation. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. Seems like a fairly low-cost method of gauging customer interest for a would-be product. Eric -- This is a pretty interesting idea.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on.

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