Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

For example, say that your business model calls for a 4% conversion rate – as ours did initially at IMVU. After a few months of early beta at IMVU, we discovered that our actual conversion rate was about 0.4%. If it costs $0.10 to acquire an early adopter, how much should it cost to acquire a mainstream customer?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

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. These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process. Our cost to acquire a customer on AdWords was only a few cents.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

We can choose to continue paying the interest, or we can pay down the principal by refactoring the quick and dirty design into the better design. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future. The human tendency to moralize about debt affects engineers, too. One last thought.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

I thought we were having a successful conversation. 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." Back to my conversation with the company I met recently.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

Beyond just those who will be hearing about the lean startup for the first time, Im expecting to shake a lot of hands and have a lot of interesting side conversations. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Im especially curious to gauge the reaction of the civilian and military representatives of our government.

DC 90

DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

So I generally feel right at home in these conversations. As the costs of production fall, it’s getting easier and easier to send in a proposal or even a complete work. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. In other words, they are facing conditions of extreme uncertainty, just like startups.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, December 7, 2008 Getting started with split-testing One of the startup founders I work with asked me a smart question recently, and I thought Id share it. If youre a founder or top-level executive, have the courage to be wrong in a very public way. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 132

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

a guide for hackers) (This post was inspired by a conversation with Nivi from Venture Hacks , but is otherwise not his fault) There has been a proliferation of frameworks and metaphors lately that are designed to help startups avoid the all-too-common fatal mistake of failing to find a market. Resegmented market (low cost variety).

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Ruby Lean 89

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

For founders, I think it also has another big attraction: the ability to avoid a lot of " free vs paid " arguments. Do it right, and your conversion rates might be as high as 20%. When the goals not clear, I think you wind up with situations that are essentially value-destroying, where free users are actually driving up costs.

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 22, 2009

If your startup is growing (or aspires to grow), then the costs of a mistake are always going up. Since the cost of failure is monotonically increasing, it actually makes sense to fail sooner, not later. This is the thinking that allowed us to overcome our fear of continuous deployment at IMVU. Keep up the great work.

Lean 76

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

This single decision wound up costing the company significant revenue and over the course of several months sent its customer growth into decline. In the end, we managed to repair the damage, but only after losing a lot of time and at significant opportunity cost. We were totally unprepared for the magnitude of what happened.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

We were trying to broaden the conversation beyond just viral customer acquisition. But if your new positioning message improves your engagement loop by more than the cost to your viral loop , you have a net win on your hands. Share your stories, and well incorporate them as we continue to flesh out this theory.

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Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140