Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2013

This post was written by Sarah Milstein, co-host of The Lean Startup Conference. The Lean Startup Conference is an event by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs—except that our definition of “entrepreneur” may be different from the one you have in mind. So what kinds of talks do all these entrepreneurs find valuable?

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Steve Blank

JULY 29, 2013

There’s been a lot written about the individual characteristics of what makes a great founder , but a lot less about what makes a great founding team and how that’s different from a great founding CEO. In doing so we’ve failed to help founders understand what it takes to build a great founding team. Here are my definitions.

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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. for my more expansive definition). What motivates all these entrepreneurs?

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

First, a definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration. Definitely highlights the beauty of the web.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. I have counseled innumerable entrepreneurs to change their focus to revenue, and many companies who refuse this advice get themselves into trouble by running out of iterations. And what of the product development team?

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

To give you a better idea of what entrepreneurs in this industry are thinking about during each phase of the startup process, I interviewed SaaS entrepreneurs from all over the world, including our own COO Noah Parsons. Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. “If How to Do Market Research.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

Yet, I think this definition is too important to leave out. 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. They often get blurred by entrepreneurs! Iterating at whiteboard !=

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. I believe this is one reason why the myth of the dictatorial startup founder has such enduring appeal.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This theory has become so influential that I have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. You can learn about customer development, and quite a bit more, in Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Heres the catch.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

We lack a consistent and clear definition of the job. When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. What made them exceptional?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown, and the key to success is building an integrated team that includes product development in the feedback loop with customers. 2008 09 06 Eric Ries Haas Columbia Customer Development Engineering View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

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View from Seed

NOVEMBER 18, 2014

Of the NextView-backed founders have have tried to raise this round, over 70% have done so (compared to a mean success rate in the industry of around 27%, according to some sources ). Higher founder salaries, which some investors view as a sign of being less hungry or aggressive, did not affect how quickly a startup raised its Series A.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Examples of this are well-known, and (in my definition) include any product that causes new customers to sign up as a necessary side-effect of existing customers normal usage: Facebook, Myspace, AIM/ICQ, Hotmail, Paypal. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

This builds on a lot of great thinking that has come before, like the agile movements insistence that only the creation of working code counts as progress for a software development team. But lean startups cant afford to be satisfied with just that definition, because there are situations where working code is itself a form of waste.

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techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

It is the first in a series of posts he’s writing about the decisions a young entrepreneur needs to make when she/he is first starting a business. So for this first post, here’s the best advice I can give you: join an awesome founding team and get your product out the door ASAP. and Google. link] Shaleen Shah Great post Seth.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Its not good enough to hit product milestones and conduct usability tests. sachinrekhi : "Visionary customers are as smart if not smarter then the founders" #leanstartup Theres no skipping the chasm. At IMVU, I remember spending an incredible amount of time iterating on the model that would power our third-party developer economy.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

But I will tell you not to have too little or too much, because those definitely ruin the food or product. This was an effective approach to discovering a business by using a sequence of product prototypes to get early customer feedback. It would be hard to argue against this product development strategy, in general.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

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. Leverage product development with open source and third parties.

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Genuine VC

MARCH 24, 2014

And in seeing that process unfold numerous times, I’ve picked up that there are really four main distinct playbooks which a Founder/CEO can run in the subsequent 12-18 months following a Seed round in preparation for the next round of financing. The four winning strategies for startups to go from Seed to A are: Build Scale/Momentum.

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www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Non-Technical Co-Founders Co-Founders Technical Co-founders Finding Co-Founders Startups & "How Important Are Ideas?" " Web Development Startups Solo Founders I am a creative guy with a startup idea.

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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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Designmantic Blog

MARCH 6, 2018

Here are some of the most interesting facts about female founders as well as startups. Rebekah Radice is an accomplished entrepreneur with a marketing experience of over 20 years. She had over 15 years doing product management and corporate management before she became an entrepreneur. Background Image: Unsplash/Rawpixel.

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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.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

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. Still, a startup product development team is a service organization. Labels: hiring , product development 5comments: TedHoward said.

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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. I think where we get into trouble is we have many definitions of quality.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Most of the times I have seen pitches fail, it is not because they are poorly written, or that the entrepreneur lacks passion. Now there was nothing wrong with their analysis: anyone who invents a technology as sophisticated as The Transformers is definitely going to make a lot of money. can the team bring the product to market?

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Some companies definitely should. Others definitely shouldn’t. Let’s look at some examples: In a traditional business, customers pay money for a physical artifact (a product) or a service. Take the minimum viable product , for starters. Minimum viable product is a tactic for mitigating risk.

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maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

If you’re an Entrepreneur, you can do it from any place in the world. what are the most crucial steps to be taken by a new tech startup when outsourcing major part of the tech to IT firms or outsourcing “product development” eg new social media website project? If you’re a young entrepreneur, than congrats!

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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.) Also SJ's obsession with better taste (positively) contributes to the overall product development process. Maybe Steve Jobs just has a different definition of "viable"?

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Definitely interested in the perspective of the open-source contributor solicited with a job offer. 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.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Because, unless you are working in an extremely static environment, your product development team is learning and getting better all the time. Most importantly, I encouraged the leaders of the company to bring awareness of the business challenges to the product development team. Great post, Eric. Balance is important.

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infochachkie.com

SEPTEMBER 24, 2011

Hands-on startup advice for emerging entrepreneurs. One of the best things about being an entrepreneur is that there are no rules. One of the worst things about being an entrepreneur is that there are no rules. The lack of rules and structure causes many entrepreneurs to work incessantly. infoChachkie. Uncle Saul.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Their old product prioritization meetings may have been a battle of opinions, but at least they understood what was going on. Now they first had to go through a ritual that involved complex math, reached no definite outcome, and then proceeded to have a battle of opinions anyway! Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Through case studies, exercises, and discussions, Eric Ries will guide entrepreneurs of all stripes through the key areas that determine success for startups: product, engineering, QA, marketing, and business strategy. This workshop presents a new methodology that will allow you to bring new products -- and companies -- to life.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 18, 2010 Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases non-events The following is a case study of one entrepreneurs transition from a traditional development cycle to continuous deployment. Users will naturally ask for more stuff and your MVP by definition is minimal and needs more love.

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steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

AgileZen – project management visually see and interact with your work Kanbanery – Simple online team or personal kanban board LeanKit Kanban – Great for visualizing work of product development Kanban Pad – “Nice and lean” and free online Kanban tool Banana Scrum – A tool simple as Scrum itself.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Unfortunately, most decisions that confront startups lack a definitive right answer. Sometimes an early negative result from an experiment is a harbinger of doom for that product, and means it should be abandoned. Just because entrepreneurs tend to forget about these models doesn’t mean their investors do.

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