SVPG

NOVEMBER 22, 2013

But one of the real advantages from a product point of view is that there’s no legacy to drag along, there’s no revenue to preserve, and there’s no reputation to safeguard. Protect Revenue and Brand. Or we’ll utilize our Customer Development Program customers that are under NDA.

Product 67

Product NDA Continuous Deployment Reputation 67

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. We’d always cringe as we admitted that, no, we really only had a few thousand customers and a few thousand dollars in monthly revenue. Retention cohort analysis. I am chugging along.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. When the numbers started to go down, they started to investigate.

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. And if you neglect maintenance, you may not have a business left at all.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Learning is better than optimization (the local ma.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Just like in the world of startups, we can start to use micro-scale pilot programs, executed in lean fashion, to gather real facts for making ROI decisions about new project investment. What is the right revenue model? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. In other words, what is the minimum viable product

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Not just about expenses, about increasing revenue. Voluntary salary reduction program. Make sure for planned revenues you have "leading indicators" to know if you will hit it. This can take the form of a traditional sales pipeline or a registration-activation-revenue chart. Offer equity instead of cash.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down?

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

Realizing it had taken a wrong turn, SlideShare rethought its approach to premium accounts and ultimately performed what we’d call a value capture pivot , one where the company changes the way it collects revenue from customers. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. for Harvard Business Revie.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 1, 2009

One of my personal heroes, Kent Beck , the creator of Extreme Programming and a truly wonderful writer was logged in and twittering, too. I covered a few of them on twitter already: Q: "Do you reccomend removing features that youve launched but dont movethe needle on engagement or revenue?" "unknown problem" was an eye opener for me.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

These problems can be anything: development mistakes, site outages, marketing program failures, or even internal missed schedules. I pick that example on purpose, for two reasons: 1) most of the companies I work with deal with this problem and yet 2) almost none of them have any kind of training program in place for new employees.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ▼ 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

To increase the number of iterations you have left, you can either increase cash on hand (by raising money or increasing revenues), reduce burn rate, or increase the speed of each iteration. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. The key is to be able to refute as many major hypotheses as you can. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Amazon PostRank

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Not even if its generating revenue. Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Amazon PostRank

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Now, Andrew’s excellent piece that I quoted from above correctly diagnoses two situations where consumer internet companies often get in trouble: They focus too much on short-term revenue, getting caught in a local maximum via constant optimization. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

In fact, in the early days, when IMVU would experience unexpected surges of revenue or traffic, it was inevitable that every person in the company was convinced that their project was responsible. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. If you dont make predictions ahead of time, theres no way to call you on it.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Revenue is always my preferred measure, but you can use anything that is important to your business: retention, activation, viral invites, or even customer satisfaction in the form of something like net promoter score. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Learning is better than optimization (the local ma.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Should you charge from day one, testing the revenue model first? Their speed should be measured in validated learning about customers, not milestones, features, revenue, or even beautiful design. Should you charge from day one, testing the revenue model first? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

Collecting the answers Once you have the survey up and running, you need to design a program to have customers take it on a regular basis. The whole episode cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. In fact, it was the revenue trends that eventually alerted us to the magnitude of the problem.

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

They asked for my advice, and we went through a number of recommendations that readers of this blog will already be able to guess: adding revenue opportunities, engagement loop optimization, and some immediate split-testing to figure out whats working and whats not. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

This single decision wound up costing the company significant revenue and over the course of several months sent its customer growth into decline. I cannot sink any more money into a program that is still having community problems. So we felt confident that removing them wouldn’t have too big an impact. No gain without pain.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158