Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

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? ) Eric, I landed upon your blog when I was searching for the path to CTO a couple of months back and I have been a frequent to the site since then. Your "startup-lessons-learned" are very valuable.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Check your assumptions, what went wrong?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

If you havent seen it, Pascals recent presentation on continuous deployment is a must-see; slides are here. “Everybody felt the burden of supporting all those transactions every day,&# says Pascal-Louis Perez, kaChing’s CTO. “It took a ton of our time, and just wasn’t contributing to our long term vision.&#

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I am convinced one of Joel Spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the Joel Test , a checklist of 12 essential practices that you could use to rate the effectiveness of a software product development team. He wrote it in 2000, and as far as I know has never updated it.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

If that’s you, by all means hire a VP of Sales with a great rolodex and call on established mainstream companies – and ignore the rest of this post. It’s one of the subtle distinctions that at times gets lost in the process. Market Type But most startups aren’t in existing markets.

Silicon Valley 140

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 140

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

So one of the first things we did was to hire an Oracle expert and get to work. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? I was building a new startup in 1999, and wanted to do it right.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The leadership art is to balance the needs of the present with the needs of the future. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

San Francisco 76

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 16, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

As a shoestring entrepreneur with a SaaS (well, not really, but sort of) offering that we present to very large companies (think 10K+), I love your common sense suggestions about metrics and testing. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? I subscribed after this post.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 Thoughts on scientific product development I enjoyed reading a post today from Laserlike (Mike Speiser), on Scientific product development. I agree with the less is more product development approach, but for a different reason. Now that is fun.

Product Development 68

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. Call it facts for hire. It would be a bit like the hired gun in the old west, but more suited for today’s times. What went wrong?

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time! Even with the highest standards imaginable, theres no way to hire just genius hackers. Hire a CTO or VP Engineering. Worst of all, your teammates are constantly wanting to have meetings.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. IMVU had a roughly two-month-long development cycle. At this meeting, we would present our goals for the cycle, all the raw results wed managed to collect, and our conclusions about what was next. Heres what it looked like.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

For people we hired from larger companies especially, this was challenging. When a new engineer started at IMVU, I had a simple rule: they had to ship code to production on their first day. where an initial bad impression affects a significantly larger percentage of potential customers. May 11, 2009 9:42 PM Artem said.

Continuous Deployment 131

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, September 5, 2008 Great open source scalability tools from Danga If you are trying to build a scalable LAMP service, its always best to start with the original and still quite relevant presentation, from Brad Fitzpatrick when he was at LiveJournal. You can find the 2005 version here.

Open Source 107

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Those rates gave us a map that told us a lot about our customers; insights that proved stable even when the company grew orders of magnitude bigger. Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

They cant present much information, unless you take the box off the shelf and look at it. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

A much better solution, I think, would be to have each project leader be in charge of physically printing out a one-page report every week with the relevant stats for their project, and present it to the whole company. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. ► May (3) Thank you Philosophy Helps Start-Ups Move Faster (WSJ on the.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

But six months in, you’re gonna cry when you see someone else put out that same product you’re pitching me right now. Like I said, forget everything else and just get your product out the door. Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. I don’t know any developers. No phone system.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

" => I have not bothered to put up a landing page, survey to test customer demand, or done any customer development whatsoever. However, I do spend a lot of time daydreaming. "Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life?" "I am a creative guy with a startup idea."

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

Direct mapping of outputs to inputs : URLs to files, code and presentation intermixing. PHP encourages one of the worst programming heresies of all: intermixing code and presentation logic in a giant mish-mash. Which makes them exactly the kind of programmers companies should want to hire. As always, Paul is right.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Smart teams understand quickly that all three skills are essential - if you can't recognize the need, you won't be able to hire for it or value it. Saul Klein • Nov 16, 2010 > Laksham - sure thing, see: "The ideal startup has two of the three founders, but all three skills are present between them."

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51