Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 13, 2008 SEM on five dollars a day How do you build a new product with constant customer feedback while simultaneously staying under the radar? In a mature company with a mature product, the goal is to pay for lots of people to come to your website. SEM is a simple idea. chatted once?

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SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Every startup has a chance to change the world, by bringing not just a new product, but an entirely new institution into existence. Your blogs are full of rational thoughts and has nuggets of information. It is encouraging to know someone with your reputation and connections is evangelizing truly valuable information for start-ups.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

When we build products, we use a methodology. We know some products succeed and others fail, but the reasons are complex and the unpredictable. a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit." The theory of Product/Market Fit is one key component of customer development, and I highly recommend Marcs essay on that topic.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

The cost of creating new companies is falling rapidly, and access to markets, distribution, and information is within the reach of anyone with an Internet connection. The result is a profound democratization of the digital means of production. [.] We will not lose on their products -- after all, most of them are global.

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San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

In most agile development systems, there is a notion of the "product backlog" a prioritized list of what software is most valuable to be developed next. But, over the years I’ve realized that the toughest problem - the one that matters most and was consistently the most challenging - was figuring out what the product backlog should be.

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Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 8, 2009 Datablindness Most of us are swimming in a sea of data about our products, companies, and teams. I had it all set up to a jury-rigged SurveyMonkey - PayPal minimum viable product. So the product development team was busy creating lots of split-tests for lots of hypotheses.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2009

Before I close, let me quote just one additional bit of twitter feedback from one of the video beta-testers: bmeschke : @ ericries This is such GREAT information. Say you're not creating a product but doing a service? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Take a look and let me know what you think.

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Lean Video San Francisco Continuous Deployment 115

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Its different from selling a product, because it is not part of our regular business practice, is not something that relates to our core competence, and tends not to happen in a repeatable and scalable way. Most important slide: lessons learned Working product Key questions: what does the product do? whats the launch plan?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

But that team may also include product marketers or other in-house customers who can give insight into the impact that solution trade-offs might have on customers. Its not good enough to hit product milestones and conduct usability tests. Heres the promo; more information is available on their site. Register here.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, June 5, 2009 It’s a startup, not a spreadsheet Some people, when they start to realize the power of using data to inform their decisions, become obsessed with optimization. Sometimes an early negative result from an experiment is a harbinger of doom for that product, and means it should be abandoned.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2010

The cost of creating new companies is falling rapidly, and access to markets, distribution, and information is within the reach of anyone with an internet connection. The result is a profound democratization of the digital means of production. The result is a profound democratization of the digital means of production.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 122

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If the CEO wants to completely change the product in order to serve a new customer segment, you need someone in the room who can digest the needs of the new (proposed) business, and lay out the costs of each possible approach. Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said. Very good and informative.

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CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

He doesnt put out crappy, buggy products and then ask for feedback. My normal answer is that I dont really think thats how Apple products are built. Thats what so many techniques that I advocate are all about: customer validation , minimum viable product , vision pivots , and even throwing away working code.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

One of the topics that raised heated debate was whether I had conflated technical design with product design , because I made the admittedly counter-intuitive claim that sometimes good technical design actually leads to increased technical debt. The argument itself got me thinking a lot about design and its role in building products.

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Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

It wont even get passed the registrant information screen to even get to selecting what you want to register for. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ▼ 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Ill be there! Nope, no love.

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Lean San Francisco Web Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Many of them have really cool products shipping or about to be released, and I wholeheartedly agree with my friends at the iFund that the next generation of applications is going to be amazing. They cant present much information, unless you take the box off the shelf and look at it. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 27, 2009

Sorry about this being out of context but I wonder if youve read "What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services". The presentation was informative, insightful, and humorous - as you pointed out the many ridiculous assumptions we make as entrepreneurs! Thanks for an enjoyable evening.

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Lean Austin San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

The art team would often be involved in the specification phase of a new feature, since they were responsible for the look-and-feel of the product. When the art team would review the final product, they were inevitably outraged – it deviated from the spec in ways they considered major. Here’s why.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 3, 2009

And if youre giving them all of the information they need to understand the companys strategy, customers, and processes, you can be confident that theyll be able to apply that understanding to their current responsibilities. Take a failed product launch. I continue to believe youre reading more claims into my post then I have made.

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Employee San Francisco Lean Software Review 146

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Because of the incredible array of information available, we have a desperate need for filtering mechanisms. Mass blasts of information are ineffective, because the broadcast channels are suffering from information overload (even in social media). There are too many products clamoring for attention. No longer.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

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. Unfortunately, customers hated that initial product.

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Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

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. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. In fact, this company hasn’t shipped any new products in months. What’s going on?

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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. He has a good team, and theyve shipped a working product to many customers.

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Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

You can find out what it would take for them to adopt your product, and then follow up a week later and see if they did. Same with finding out what it would take to get them to recommend your product to a friend. I agree with the other comments, more information on yourself and what topics youll focus on would be helpful.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Now, whenever I screen resumes, I ask the recruiter to black out any demographic information from the resume itself: name, age, gender, country of origin. The work product is a more realistic test, although it requires much more work on the part of the candidate. For more on this subject, take a look at The product managers lament.

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San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. And we’ve validated that learning by being able to demonstrate that when we change the product as a result of that learning, the key macro metrics improve. Let me illustrate.

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San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

They have a product that has a moderate number of customers. Still, theyre not really hitting it out of the park, because their product isnt growing new users as fast as theyd like, and they arent making any money from the current users. On the other, they already have a team fully engaged on making their product architecture better.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I usually recommend a three-part board, where the left column is where the scrum-style "product backlog" is maintained in priority order, the middle represents tasks in progress, and the right column is for tasks recently finished. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Take a look and let me know what you think.

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San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Today, Id like to spend some time on two techniques: the problem presentation and learning what channels of information reach customers. If this was a startup, Id be asking it of a sample of customers even more often, because getting a regular tracking result is helpful for informing your decision loop. Thats an early adopter.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

In this scheme, all of the data related to a specific feature of a product are stored on the same machines. You need to store two kinds of information. This information is normally maintained by your operations team. hi, your artical and information is able to help me. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

These decisions are critical to the success of any high-engagement product, and they take place entirely inside the minds of customers. Its the ultimate high-engagement product. Your product has become part of a customers daily ritual, like Facebook has for a lot of people. Impressive. And yet, WoW never sends me emails.

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 19, 2009 Inc Magazine on Minimum Viable Product (and a response) Inc Magazine has a great new piece up about the increasing use of the Minimum Viable Product by businesses (and not just startups). Like many companies, TPGTEX rolls out new products several times a year.

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San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 137

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I'll add two ideas: The modern structure of university patent licensing and technology transfer works really well in the life sciences and other fields with expensive product development processes. For more information see [link] September 10, 2009 9:53 AM John Seiffer said. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

When we started IMVU in 2004, we could rely on a staggering amount of open source software that jumpstarted our initial product offering. Add onto that the incredible amounts of infrastructure code that we reused, and we were able to bring our product to market months earlier. In most cases, simple changes are simple to make.

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PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

In order to make an informed decision, the team needs a process of gathering and combining their opinions without having anyones voice stifled. 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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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

Observe At the end of each day, wed laboriously enter data, updating the campaigns voter database with information about every voter contact we accomplished that day. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. In the small field office that I volunteered at in Colorado, here was the rhythm of our daily existence.

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Campaign San Francisco Lean Agile 84

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 24, 2010

And, in the survey that was attached, I learned a lot of useful information about how to make this blog better. I sometimes use these surveys to test new product ideas and even to engage in some customer validation. And, in the survey that was attached, I learned a lot of useful information about how to make this blog better.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 104