Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? For software, we have many - you can enjoy a nice long list on Wikipedia. Our goal in product development is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers. If I get sales I will expand on the site. It slices, it dices.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

They just assumed it was the way software companies worked. In teams that follow the "pick two" agenda, which two has to be resolved via a power play. Unfortunately, threats work a lot better at incentivizing people to CYA than getting them to write quality software. I couldnt see that we were managing to pick even one.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

The idea of leverage is simple: for every ounce of effort your product development team puts into your product, find ways to magnify that effort by getting many other people to invest along with you. So we tried to craft a strategy that would give us the product development leverage we needed to serve all customers.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Sometimes, a great hacker has the potential to grow into the CTO of a company, and in those cases all you need is an outside mentor who can work with them to develop those skills. At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization. I am basically a one-man shop.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94