Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

Wave after wave of hardware, software, biotech and cleantech products have emerged from what has become “ground zero” of entrepreneurial and startup culture. Compressing the Product Development Cycle. Venture capital used to be a tight club clustered around formal firms located in Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle. In the 20 th century startups I was part of, the time to build a first product release was measured in years as we turned out the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. Where is it going?

Restful 227

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 227

David Cohen

NOVEMBER 15, 2012

I just got back to Boulder from an amazing week in Boston and I wanted to reflect on it while it is fresh in my mind. Of all of the things I’ve helped build in my career as an entrepreneur and investor, I think the thing I’m most proud of is the network of amazing entrepreneurs, investors, and mentors around TechStars.

Boston 82

Boston Cofounder Software Engineering Acquisition 82

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

Brant and Patrick undertook a difficult challenge: to provide a generally accessible introduction to Customer Development, without diluting its impact or dumbing-down its principles. The Entrepreneur’s Guide is an easy read. Many “airport business books&# urge entrepreneurs to never give in. I think theyve succeeded.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2015

Successful Innovation Outposts typically develop over a period of time through three stages. Silicon Valley, Boston). In the second stage, it moves into Investing, Inventing, Incubating and Acquiring technologies and companies, and in the third stage building product(s ). Startups, entrepreneurs, and management teams.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Incubator Acquisition Business Model 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

So far, I have found "lean startup" works better with the entrepreneurs Ive talked to than "agile startup" or even "extreme startup.") The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. What are the characteristics of a lean startup?

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, January 15, 2010 Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Harvard Business Review) The next part in the series I am writing for Harvard Business Review is online. This time, Im discussing the challenge for corporate CFOs and VCs alike in holding entrepreneurs accountable. Read the rest here.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

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

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

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 want to add one last idea, even though I recognize it is controversial, bordering on the boundary between the CTO and VP Engineering. Heres my take.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Lean Startup Circle - a mailing list of dedicated and helpful entrepreneurs. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco.

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Labels: product development Speed up or slow down?

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

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

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.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

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.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

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?

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Lean Startup Circle - a mailing list of dedicated and helpful entrepreneurs.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

I was an engineer on the engineering team. For one, the engineers consider the artists stupid; the artists consider the engineers arrogant. The engineering team would then build that feature, mimicking the UI as close as they could using the current primitives supported by the system. The meeting was tense.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Refreshing to finally see lean and agile thinking emerge in product/business-floors and not only in technology. Critical also, as the lean company/start-up can not be lean by just using lean principles in IT and not in Product Development/Management - a common misinterpretation of the Toyota Production System.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

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.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

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. Bring your questions.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

Finding great engineers is hard; figuring out whos good is even harder. The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. I have found this quite rare in engineers. Thats OK, were not trying to hire a therapist.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

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. my startup is Blank Label (www.blank-label.com), which is a provider of custom dress shirts that empowers consumers to become the designer of their own product.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

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]

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

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. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

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

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Lean Startup Circle - a mailing list of dedicated and helpful entrepreneurs.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Also SJ's obsession with better taste (positively) contributes to the overall product development process. 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 12, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Lean Startup Circle - a mailing list of dedicated and helpful entrepreneurs.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? 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

JANUARY 30, 2009

Even though some aspects of the product were eventually vindicated as good ones, the underlying architecture suffered from hard-to-change assumptions. After years of engineering effort, changing these assumptions was incredibly hard. This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

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. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

We started with a simple wiki page with a few bullet points of things that new engineers had tripped over recently. In response to Five Whys that noticed that not all new engineers were reading the list, we expanded it into a new engineer curriculum. We never set out to build a world-class engineering-training process.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

But theres no denying the level of support for entrepreneurs that we enjoy. They take common stock, not preferred, a fact that the entrepreneurs mentioned to me many times. And every year, it looks as if one or two entrepreneurs from the program decide to stay. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

A discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students. Come to TS in Boston! The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Tickets are available now and include dinner. Stay tuned for more details.)

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Lean Startup Circle - a mailing list of dedicated and helpful entrepreneurs.

Open Source 107

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

The more work youve sunk into a product or vision, the harder it is to let it go. 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.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Our bias as technologists is to over-focus on the product part of the problem, and five whys tends to counteract that tendency. 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. One last comment.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167