Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

So if youre new, consider not paying any attention to the rest of this post, and just diving into the archives, if you havent already. Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 16, 2009 Continuous deployment with downloads One of my goals in writing posts about topics like continuous deployment is the hope that people will take those ideas and apply them to new situations - and then share what they learn with the rest of us.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

My most recent startup created a marketplace for customers to buy and sell virtual goods for their 3D avatar. Read the rest at The Conversation - Harvard Business Review. My most recent startup created a marketplace for customers to buy and sell virtual goods for their 3D avatar.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. We finally settled on a $1.99 Setup a simple website.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

The product manager was clearly struggling to get results from the rest of the team. The VP Engineering spends all of his time trying to make sure the programmers understand and implement the spec. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Frustration is mounting.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

but rest assured they would be. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Behind this analysis is a spreadsheet model, complete with detailed metrics for a set of customer behaviors that show just how valuable the new product will be. Read the rest here. Read the rest here. For a little while, the team can resort to the last defense of entrepreneurs in trouble: the promised hockey-stick.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

I thought Id share a little bit of that, too: I’ve been interested in different approaches to software development going back to 1987 when – in my first company Feld Technologies – my partner Dave Jilk and I started talking about “semi-custom software development&# (way ahead of its time). Read the rest.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

You can read the rest of his posts on his blog : Introduction , Part 1 , Part 2.) When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. You can read the rest of his posts on his blog : Introduction , Part 1 , Part 2.) We all owe him our thanks for persevering.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

We spent the rest of our time pretending to work on the assigned homework, but really trying to do interesting side projects, like sending juvenile messages across the school network or building primitive video games. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo (and a call for he.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

For the rest of us, there is an alternative: to create credibility by building a lean startup. Despite that, we were able to establish credibility, because we used those early numbers to demonstrate that our customers were getting real value from our product and, more importantly, that we understood how to build more of it.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Heres my favorite part: If youve got a team, part of the team should obsess about the backlist, honing it, editing it and promoting it, while the rest work to generate (as opposed to promote) the frontlist. You have customers, they are using your product, and you are trying to help them. I see startups struggle with this all the time.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

But, as any startup can tell you, this opens up a tremendous set of opportunities for the rest of us. Customers will get to consume the content they want, and support the producers of that content directly, rather than having to rely exclusively on intermediaries. For established media empires, this is a scary fact.

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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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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 12, 2010

How do we know if customers will want the product we’re building? This program is designed for people who have a stake in creating great products: engineers, designers, product managers, marketers and businesspeople—from companies of any size. Read the rest here. Read the rest here.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 11, 2010

Read the rest: For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? - Read the rest: For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? - 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.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

I spent some time with his company before the conference and discussed ways to get started with continuous deployment , including my experience introducing it at IMVU. Moreover, approaching the problem from the direction that I had intuitively is a recipe for never reaching a point where continuous deployment is feasible.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 5, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, May 5, 2009 More video "what to do if customers dont like your (initial) product" plus full webcast First up is an interview with Mixergy, about lean startups and what to do if customers dont like your (initial) product. So then the second customer comes in. Watch the rest here.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

Then, in each development cycle, use the insights gained by studying customers to make improvements. This is the source of validated learning — proof that the customer insights translate into tangible metrics improvements. Read the rest of Entrepreneurs: Beware of Vanity Metrics at The Conversation on Harvard Business Review.

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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. Read the rest of the interview at Venture Hacks. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

But in reality, most products fail because they are the Ice Cream Glove, that is, because there are no customers who will buy them. Read the rest (and be sure to watch the videos). Labels: customer development 3comments: Anonymoussaid. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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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. Then, the company spends no more than a few hundred dollars marketing the product through search engines and to the contacts in its sales database and LinkedIn. Read the rest.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 19, 2009

Recently, hes been engaged in a customer validation exercise around a new concept for a political action-oriented social network. 2gov.org will take care of the rest. Recently, hes been engaged in a customer validation exercise around a new concept for a political action-oriented social network. The Geeks are doing their part.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 17, 2009

What about the rest of us? There are so many engineers with bright ideas, but dont know how to start. The Lean Startup is a practical approach for creating and managing a new breed of company that excels in low-cost experimentation, rapid iteration, and true customer insight. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

This is a designated web2open hybrid session - which means you can attend for free even if youre not attending the rest of the conference. This is a designated web2open hybrid session - which means you can attend for free even if youre not attending the rest of the conference. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Journalists have the highest obligation to ask these kinds of questions, and conferences organized by journalists ought to be the exemplars the rest of us look up to. Journalists have the highest obligation to ask these kinds of questions, and conferences organized by journalists ought to be the exemplars the rest of us look up to.

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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

AUGUST 20, 2009

Heres the excerpt: Today’s high-tech entrepreneurs have at their command more than just the ability to invent new technologies — they have mastered the discipline and the methodology required to harness those technologies in order to serve customers. Its unit of progress is that of validated learning about its customers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 31, 2009

Know someone whod make a great engineer at a startup? I'm finding many people coming to me with jobs, not to offer to me necessarily, but to say, "hey do you know any good designer/engineer/product person looking for a new opportunity?" Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

And the rest is history: Google Maps was a huge success. After all, how would Craig Newmark’s life (and the rest of ours, too) be different today if he had waited to build something with a high-quality design before starting his famous list? They were impressed, even though the team considered it still an early prototype.

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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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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

If Id bought just a handful of the "best of the rest" domain names that were available at the time (for a whopping $70 each), I probably could have just retired right then. Instead, lets focus on building companies that matter , on creating real value for customers, and learning. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

The fact that the San Francisco Bay Area’s electronics industry began close to the turn of the Twentieth Century should lay to rest the notion that industrialization and urbanization on the scale of Silicon Valley can be quickly induced in other areas. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

The larger-account division wanted to move the pricing in just the other direction – making the low-end products more expensive, so their large customers would have an increased incentive to upgrade. Many custom reports had been created for this meeting, and the data warehouse team was in the meeting, too.

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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

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Many great engineers Ive worked with (especially the type I talked about in the hackers lament ) seem to think that if they get along well with someone in an interview, theyll be a good addition to the team. I experienced this when I was the engineering manager at a small company. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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