Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

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. And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time! Hire a CTO or VP Engineering.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

My ex-boss was going to be the VP of Engineering and I would report to the CEO whose marketing acumen and sales instincts seemed at the time to be telepathic and sense of theater was legend. Our vision was that just as the PC was revolutionizing the business market, we were going to do the same for scientists and engineers.

North Carolina 126

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 126

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process. Since that time we've seen a massive change from product engineering to financial engineering. Amazon PostRank

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. My first time at your blog.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 4, 2018

For example, in the case of one recent company that we’ve been working with for the last 7 months, we have sourced half of the new team members for the company, including their CTO, head of marketing, head of customer success, and a talented senior engineer.

North America 36

North America Seed Stage Early Stage Lead Investor 36

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Trying to answer that question at IMVU led me to discover Google AdWords and the world of search engine marketing. You declare how much someone clicking an advertisement is worth to you, and then the search engine does its best to get you as many clicks as it can at that price. Labels: search engine marketing 4comments: Tauya said.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

For people we hired from larger companies especially, this was challenging. When a new engineer started at IMVU, I had a simple rule: they had to ship code to production on their first day. We always assigned them a "code mentor" from the ranks of the more established engineers. Heres the key point. But it still turned out OK.

Continuous Deployment 131

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

“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. “It took a ton of our time, and just wasn’t contributing to our long term vision.&#

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode. Amazon PostRank

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode. Amazon PostRank

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

At IMVU, when wed hire a new engineer, we could get them to ship code to production on their first day, even if they had never programmed in PHP before. Which makes them exactly the kind of programmers companies should want to hire. In my role as a CTO, Ive always tried to choose the right tool for the right job.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode. Amazon PostRank

Open Source 107

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

At IMVU , our engineering team accumulated thousands upon thousands of tests, and we had a build cluster (using BuildBot ) that ran them. Joel is focused on the fact that in many environments, programmers are considered "just the hired help" akin to manual labor, and not treated properly. Do programmers have quiet working conditions?

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

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?

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

As the CTO/VP Engineering, I was the worst offender. That means that I (and other engineers) were able to participate in the problem team discussions. Such discussions would have been impossible in our execution-oriented engineering team meetings. Thats why its so essential to have a co-equal problem team.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Do the engineers understand what they are building? Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Processes are always deteriorating or self-regulating. Can they tell a good release from a bad one? Do they measure?

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

So one of the first things we did was to hire an Oracle expert and get to work. Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. I was building a new startup in 1999, and wanted to do it right. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

These tests are written by the engineers themselves, and they must all pass every time. Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Automated tests make defects visible. Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC Lean 60

www.entrepreneur.com

SEPTEMBER 22, 2011

If you have invested $100,000 worth of your time in writing a business plan, and your partner, a young engineering student, has invested $25,000 worth of her time in building a prototype, it doesn't mean the market value of your startup is $125,000. Coming soon to Dallas, Boston and Philadelphia.

Sweat Equity 55

Sweat Equity Equity Fractional CTO CTO 55

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 16, 2008

Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 76

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lots of engineers are busy checking in and deploying their work. Meanwhile, a dozen other engineers are getting annoyed, because this constant bouncing is making it harder for them to work (they cant deploy changes while tests or the cluster are in red-alert mode). Seth Godin: How often should you publish? Amazon PostRank

Product Development 68

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Labels: iPhone , search engine marketing 3comments: Blake Engel said. Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. How will new customers know that my apps are superior? Hey Eric, very interesting post. Amazon PostRank

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 28, 2008 The lean startup comes to Stanford Im going to be talking about lean startups (and the IMVU case in particular) three times in the next two weeks at Stanford. Its exciting to see the theory and methodology being discussed in an academic context. When will you be speaking? wow, dead on.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Most engineers are terrible visual designers, but if the designer on their team is struggling, maybe they can help out with an icon or two. Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Waves of technology platforms The lean startup Customer Development Engineering Greasemonkey compiler Great open source scalability tools from Danga Ideas. Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133