Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. 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.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

As a reminder, the Dot Com bubble was a five-year period from August 1995 (the Netscape IPO ) when there was a massive wave of experiments on the then-new internet, in commerce, entertainment, nascent social media, and search. Lean was designed to inform the founders’ vision while they operated frugally at speed. The result?

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Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link].

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 105

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

the wave of semiconductor startups in the 1960’s/70’s, the emergence of venture capital as a professional industry, the personal computer revolution in 1980’s, the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s and finally. the wave of internet commerce applications in the first decade of the 21 st century. Consumer Internet Driving Innovation.

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Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

VC Cafe

JULY 26, 2020

Ditch the business plan and when assumptions are proven wrong, pivot Customer Development: Build a product your customers want (vs. what you think they might need) by talking to customers and testing every aspect of the product features, pricing, etc.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

70% of Chinese Internet users are under 30. Internet penetration in Beijing is greater than 70% while it’s less than 25% in Yunnan, Jiangxi, Guizhou and other provinces. However, there’s a growing belief that the “design preferences” of Chinese consumers are just bad design. New Rules for China.

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China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 324

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 8, 2009 Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and whats changed since then) My recent article on technical debt and its positive uses generated a fair bit of controversy. 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 Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. If your business is managing contracts and patents, it makes sense, but the CLO for most startups is LegalZoom on the Internet.

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CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 252

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

We’re now in the second Internet bubble. Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development. Startups could now get a first version of a product out to customers in weeks/months rather than months/years. Carpe Diem. Tools in the New Bubble.

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Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

I’ve watched the Valley go from Microwave Valley – to Defense Valley – to Silicon Valley to Internet Valley. the wave of semiconductor startups in the 1960’s/70’s, the emergence of Venture Capital as a professional industry, the personal computer revolution in 1980’s, the rise of the Internet in the 1990’s and finally.

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Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 227

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 20, 2011

We taught them the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. This methodology forces rapid hypothesis testing and Customer Development by getting out of the building while building the product. And since the rest of the slides were about Customer Development, I taught those.

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Incubator Government Silicon Valley Lean 303

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 250

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

70% of Chinese Internet users are under 30. Internet penetration in Beijing is greater than 70% while it’s less than 25% in Yunnan, Jiangxi, Guizhou and other provinces. However, there’s a growing belief that the “design preferences” of Chinese consumers are just bad design. New Rules for China.

China 216

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 216

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development.

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 220

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. If your business is managing contracts and patents, it makes sense, but the CLO for most startups is LegalZoom on the Internet.

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CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

Everybody and their mom uses the internet to discover new brands, influencers and ultimately to buy new products and services. Big brands have the advantage of a strong reputation and a crew of professional designers behind their sites. Custom development. WordPress DIY. This can require some technical knowledge.

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Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 30, 2008 Refactoring for TDD and interaction design In TDD , we follow a rhythm of “test-code-refactor.&# This basic pattern is useful in all aspects of product development. The same process works in Interaction Design. Take a look and let me know what you think.

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Software Review San Francisco Design Continuous Deployment 74

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 19, 2017

A survey conducted by Harris Interactive in 2011 , revealed that 89% of consumers would move on to another company due to a poor customer service and that 25% of consumers would gladly pay more for a pleasant customer experience. Here are some of the practical and creative ways to improve your customer’s online experience: 1.

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Software Review Technical Review Retention Channel 133

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

So bowing to popular demand the 2009 blog posts are now available on Amazon on a portable device which provides instant and random access to any post and does not require power or an internet connection. After I retired, I began teaching Customer Development , a theory of how to reduce early stage risk in entrepreneurial ventures.

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Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 209

The Equity Kicker

SEPTEMBER 24, 2014

That has resulted in a number of policies designed to stimulate startup activity of which the most important is the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and it’s younger brother the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS). Both of these schemes use the tax code to make it more attractive for high-net-worth individuals to invest in startups.

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Early Stage Development Team Review Technical Review Software Review 119

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. If your business is managing contracts and patents, it makes sense, but the CLO for most startups is LegalZoom on the Internet.

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. If your business is managing contracts and patents, it makes sense, but the CLO for most startups is LegalZoom on the Internet.

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

Last night I had the great privilege to interview Bill Gross , one of the Internet’s true pioneers. He took out an ad in the Yellow Pages (it was the early 80′s, pre Internet), which cost him $1,000 / month for a half-page ad. If it worked in the Yellow Pages, why not on the Internet? Cars Direct / Internet Brands.

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Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Steve Blank

AUGUST 13, 2009

It took me 8 startups and 21 years to get it right, (and one can argue success was due to the Internet bubble rather then any brilliance.) No internet, no blogs, no books on startups, no entrepreneurship departments in universities, etc. It’s what my textbook on Customer Development describes. I was an idiot.

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Silicon Valley RSS Technical Review Lean 185

SVPG

OCTOBER 14, 2014

” We were big practitioners of what we now call Customer Development, and our customer was typically the IT organization of large companies. I remember being immediately struck by how different we designed and built technology, versus how our customers did. In any case, the Internet happened.

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Product Technical Review Engineer CTO Hire 91

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Because of the vagaries of how floating point units in computers were designed, your average IBM mainframe of the day would take forever to run a simulation application. Now I guess it’s “never bet against the Internet,&# with all that implies. A supercomputer could be a 100x faster. What Markets?

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Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 151

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

I think this concept is necessary in order to answer the truly vexing startup questions, like: “Should startups charge customers money from day one?&# Let’s begin with the four customer currencies. I had a lot of use for this concept back when I worked on game design and virtual worlds. Sorry about that.)

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Venture Capitalists on your board developed the expertise to get your firm public as soon as possible using whatever it took including hype, spin, expand, and grab market share because the sooner you got your billion dollar market cap, the sooner the VC firm could sell their shares and distribute their profits.

Silicon Valley 223

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 223

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Meanwhile my partner was in heaven working with his newly hired group of game designers directing and producing our first games. Stop annoying our game designers and start working on selling and marketing the games.” Think of the Microprocessor, Personal Computer, Internet, Twitter, Youtube, Facebook, Google, the iPhone.

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Silicon Valley RSS Video San Diego 212

Steve Blank

JULY 6, 2016

That’s what you had to do then before the Internet. Next on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere : Jessica Mah , founder of InDinero and Peg Burke , founder of 1185 Design. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. That was a powerful way of spreading ideas. Want to be a guest on the show?

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North Korea SEC Silicon Valley Entrepreneur 132

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

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Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

You go onto the Internet and can control what people hear on terrestrial radio. It offers Internet radio targeted advertising and is growing really well. Quirky - Platform facilitating collaborative design of consumer products through an online community. I especially like Jelli , which is user power radio.

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Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

Present at the Creation It was early 1991 and Apple’s software development team was hard at work on QuickTime , the first multimedia framework for a computer. At the time no one (including Apple) knew exactly what consumers were going to do with multimedia, it was still pre-Internet. It was fun watching it happen.

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Video Silicon Valley RSS California 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The new design improved on the old one in several ways, but these improvements didnt translate all the way through the funnel. Usually, I think that means youve lost some good aspect of the old design. The designers might be telling you that the new design looks much better than the old one, and thats probably true.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. Welcome to the Internet bubble.) See part one for the first time it happened. Good stuff too.

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Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 232

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

Since there was very little documentation my time was split between the design engineers who built the system and the test and deployment team getting the system ready to go overseas. Reply 7thpixel , on June 29, 2009 at 10:23 am Said: My first start up in 1999 I was employee #10 or so and signed up for a Graphic Designer position.

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Agile Silicon Valley RSS California 251