Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

If you havent seen it, Pascals recent presentation on continuous deployment is a must-see; slides are here. Yet there’s a lot of mystery around pivots, and entrepreneurs ask all the time how you know it’s time to commit to a new direction. in fact only five people converted into paying customers.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. Instead, five whys kept leading to problems caused by an improperly trained new employee, and wed make a small adjustment. why did that code get written?

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Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Insist on the incredibly high-IQ employees and hold them to incredibly high standards. It never generated positive returns for its investors, and most of its employees walked away dejected. Here are a few: We know what customers want. But that was two full years before any customers were allowed to use it.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

But if you want to practice rapid deployment, you need to be able to deploy that build in one step as well. If you want to do continuous deployment, youd better be able to certify that build too, which brings us to. For more on continuous deployment, see Just-in-time Scalability. Can you make a build in one step?

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Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2013

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. What if your company is concerned that emerging customer pressure and local laws will make disposable razors difficult, if not impossible, to sell in the U.S.

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Lean Technical Review Startup Software Review 165

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. November 25, 2009 9:54 AM Danny Wong said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

And so Deming’s contribution was especially prescient, as he saw that “the customer is the most important part of the production line.&# This means that quality is defined in the eye of the customer, not necessarily by arbitrary standards loved by insiders to the production process. How will they define quality?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

When customers are affected, try to have someone who experienced the customer problem first-hand, like the customer service rep who took the calls from angry customers. For example, I often cite a real example of a problem that has as its root cause a new employee who was not properly trained.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Thats all helpful for recruiting, retaining, and ramping-up a new employee. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Expo (and a call for he.

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Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

We pitch to potential partners, vendors, publishers, conferences, employees, and even lawyers. Most of the times I have seen pitches fail, it is not because they are poorly written, or that the entrepreneur lacks passion. Most important slide: hockey stick Micro-scale results Key questions: who is the customer, and how do you know?

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2009

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Towards a new entrepreneurship ▼ 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

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. bigs : @ericries says Stealth dev is a (undesirable, failure-presaging) customer-free zone. They often get blurred by entrepreneurs!

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

When I try to unpack what people mean by the question, heres my best take on what they are asking: "Look, Steve Jobs doesnt go out and ask customers what they want. He tells customers what they want, and he gets it right. When a customer tells you how they feel about your ideas, that doesnt tell you anything about your ideas.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

The problem is that the most authentic innovators and entrepreneurs are in the Valley. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Bring your questions.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. In particular, a marketing launch can help you do three things (courtesy, as is most of my marketing advice, of The Four Steps to the Epiphany ): Drive customers into your sales pipeline. Do your customers really read TechCrunch?

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

Customer Development : a disciplined approach to finding out if there is a market for your product before its too late. Customer Development Engineering : techniques for accelerating your product development. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

On the one hand, it gives you insight into what kind of employee the candidate might be. For a marketing job, for example, its reasonable to expect that a candidate will have done their homework and used your product (maybe even talked to your customers) before coming in. and 2) can they get excited about what your company does?

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San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

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. The most common need is becoming more customer-centric.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

Not to be outdone, the technologists on the team had also brought their big guns, and the meeting was packed with employees of every level – from VP’s all the way down to me. Because the art team was considered an internal customer (and “friendly&# to boot), we didn’t waste a lot of time making the tools easy to use.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

If I have some budget for outside help, should I hire a vendor to help us drive down our payment fraud rates by 1% (ROI easy to predict), or hire a market research firm to give us insights into potential customers (ROI hard to predict)? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

Having early customers means balancing the needs of your existing customers with the desire to find new ones. And still being a startup means continuing to innovate as well as keep the lights on. Perhaps you should think of putting these posts, when they have grown, together into an ebook, a manifesto for growing entrepreneurs?

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

He has a good team, and theyve shipped a working product to many customers. But they are pushing for the things that matter to customers - features. And they are cognizant that their funding is limited, and if they dont find out which features are absolutely critical for their customers soon, they wont be able to survive.

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Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Plus, we saw some of the intrinsic limitations of supporting such a large staff: slower cycle times, higher cost basis, and - most importantly - the ability to serve only a limited number of customer segments. So we tried to craft a strategy that would give us the product development leverage we needed to serve all customers.

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Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Ive previously written about the advantages of having a pathetically small number of customers , and how to get started with customer segmentation. it seemed time to return to the subject of investigating who my customers are. Thats a common pattern to gaining customer insight. Customer knows they have a problem.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

In most applications, most of the time, customers return to use the application not in response to a notification or event, but under their own volition. These decisions are critical to the success of any high-engagement product, and they take place entirely inside the minds of customers.

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

It exists to serve the needs of customers, and it does this by offering its capabilities to other functions in the company, and partnering with them. Our online media company is small, we have 6 employees, great proven leaders, great talent, great cashflow. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

But it also seems like it could severely limit your long-term options: Once youve actually managed to make it through the first couple years and build up a customer base, you now have to invest thousands of man-hours into aggressively refactoring, and replace reams of PHP code with code thats secure, maintainable, and reliable.

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PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

There are many articles by many experts ( myself included ) extolling the virtues of listening to customers. In fact, there are so many of these propaganda pieces that this question might naturally cross your mind: if listening to customers is so great, why do we need so much propaganda? We did not take this step lightly.

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Community Management Lean Software Review 158

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Since I first started writing about vanity metrics , I’ve met more and more entrepreneurs who are struggling with a simple question: how can I tell a vanity metric when I see it? Even worse, entrepreneurs are faced with a constant barrage of vanity metrics from competitors and other companies engaged in PR. Is that really news?

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San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

The tips are based on advice JD solicited from great KPCB entrepreneurs. Over-communicate with employees, investors, customers. And even for those employees who cant afford to take much reduction, its sobering to go through the exercise of deciding if they believe in the company enough to put their own money into it.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 23, 2009

Customers say,&# Give me feature X,&# “Give me feature Y,&# and sometimes you do what they want, maybe sometimes you’re going to do what you want, and then they get mad at you. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? We’re not moving in the right direction.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Audio 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 19, 2009

In a previous post , I asked readers for suggested topics that the US government needs to know about startups and entrepreneurs, and got some really interesting responses. In fact theyd cause there to be more jobs for Americans, because the companies they started would hire more employees as they grew.

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San Francisco Founder DC Washington 150

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Whether youre a US citizen or an immigrant, entrepreneur or investor, founder or employee, theres something you can do. Whether youre a US citizen or an immigrant, entrepreneur or investor, founder or employee, theres something you can do. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Soon, I promise.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

But this cinematic view of entrepreneurs is flawed in many ways. Yet, the real stories of successful startups are full of activities that can rightly be called institution-building: hiring creative employees, coordinating their activities, and creating a company culture that delivers results. Let’s start with the most basic.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 23, 2009

Priority will be given to employees of companies participating in the fbFund REV program, but I am confident that there will be room for members of the general public who want to attend. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 74

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Unfortunately, after months or even years of development, many companies discover that customers arent willing to buy their new wares. Thats why some entrepreneurs are trying another approach to product launches: marketing a product online before spending much on research and development or inventory.

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San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 137