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. This engineering manager is a smart guy, and very experienced.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2016

If you’re a technical startup founder, one of the painful lessons is that it’s not enough just to build a great product. You must also understand the value the product provides customers (along with the rest of your business model.). Clay Hebert , founder of Crowdfunding Hacks. Clay Hebert.

Detroit 120

Detroit Baltimore Entrepreneur Cofounder 120

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 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

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?

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Scientists and engineers as founders and startup CEOs is one of the least celebrated contributions of Silicon Valley. ESL, the first company I worked for in Silicon Valley , was founded by a PhD in Math and six other scientists and engineers. It might be its most important. ———-. Cold War Spin Outs.

Engineer 305

Engineer Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital 305

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

But founders need to know how to ask for their advice and when to ignore it. Startup Insights From Paul English, Co-Founder of Kayak - OnStartups , May 10, 2010 I’m just wrapping up several weeks of attending conferences across both coasts. Kayak is great Boston-area success story. Why Entrepreneurs Hate Lawyers. Here’s why.

Fractional CTO 248

Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. 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.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2010

In my last post I described my approach to one of the three classes I teach at Stanford in the engineering school: Fundamentals of Technology Entrepreneurship. While that’s gratifying, the fact is that most people are ill suited to survive in the wild as founders or early employees. ——————-.

Business Model 226

Business Model Silicon Valley California Engineer 226

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. 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. As the CTO/VP Engineering, I was the worst offender.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 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? Amazon PostRank

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

We also cavalierly lampoon the “suits” that get brought in to run startups after the founders are fired by callous VC’s. They have the ultimate responsibility in a venture-backed company of deciding whether to fire the founders and bring in “professional management.” I also frequently see the reverse. And there’s a worse fate, too.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

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." Thats why eBay advertises on search engines, and Facebook doesnt. Labels: search engine marketing 0comments: New comments are not allowed. Thats where Id like to pick up the discussion.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

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.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 13, 2008 SEM on five dollars a day How do you build a new product with constant customer feedback while simultaneously staying under the radar? Trying to answer that question at IMVU led me to discover Google AdWords and the world of search engine marketing. SEM is a simple idea.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

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. I always assumed I wouldnt manage anybody. They might do anything !

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

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

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

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.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

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. Wondering how do I get in touch with you - I am founder of a company here in San jose, CA and would like to invite you to be part of our advisor team. Blew my mind.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

As start-ups scale, this agility will be lost unless the founders maintain a consistent investment in that discipline. As start-ups scale, this agility will be lost unless the founders maintain a consistent investment in that discipline. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ▼ June (3) What is a startup?

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

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?

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

After years of engineering effort, changing these assumptions was incredibly hard. Without conscious process design, product development teams turn lines of code written into momentum in a certain direction. I know of at least five former employees that went on to become startup founders. We can accurately predict the future.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

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.) Beyond Apple, we can find examples of the Steve Jobs character at Toyota, in the form of the Chief Engineer. There are some good anecdotes about Chief Engineers in the Toyota Product Development Book.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

It required hearing customers say it over and over again for us to take a serious look, and eventually to realize that social networking was core to our business. Later, when the company was much larger, we had everyone on our engineering team agree to sit in on one usability test every month. Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

Finding great engineers is hard; figuring out whos good is even harder. For software engineers, I think this absolutely has to be a programming problem solved on a whiteboard. I have found this quite rare in engineers. Many of us engineers are strong introverts, without fantastic people skills.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

► 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

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. 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. What is customer development?

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

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?

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2016

How founders find the determination to push through tough times was the focus on today’s Entrepreneurs are Everywhere radio show. The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Jacqueline Ros. Christina Stembel.

Entrepreneur 260

Entrepreneur Cofounder San Francisco Campaign 260

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?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

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. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. Every time an engineer checks in code, they are batching up a certain amount of work.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

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

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Its why, at my previous job, we were able to get a new engineer completely productive on their first day. Most engineers would ship code to production on their first day. Let me show you what this looked like after a few years of practicing five whys in the operations and engineering teams at IMVU.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

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?

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

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. This is an incredible skill, one that most engineers overlook. These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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. No engineering team. When we lose sight of the humanity of our customers, were not likely to be able to delight them.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 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? Amazon PostRank

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. For customer development, start with Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany or take a look at his recent Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lecture.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102