Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

for Harvard Business Review) Over at Harvard Business Review, Ive been building up a series designed to introduce the Lean Startup methodology to a business-focused audience. This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Labels: product development Speed up or slow down?

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

We talked about some simple design rules and I remember him thanking me for coming, saying we were the only chip company who cared enough to call on him (little did he know.) Long gone from Zilog I saw the picture of the original Macintosh design team. I thought nothing about the meeting until years later.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Metrics – Mine is Bigger Than Yours The first thing SuperMac needed to do was to change how our potential color desktop publishing customers viewed our products versus our competitors’ products. As hokey as it is, when confronted with uncertainty or unknowns, human beings like to be reassured by comparative metrics.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Occam's Razor

APRIL 8, 2013

To win in business you need to follow this process: Metrics > Hypothesis > Experiment > Act. We are far too enamored with data collection and reporting the standard metrics we love because others love them because someone else said they were nice so many years ago. That metric is tied to a KPI.

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Metrics Analytics Lean Churn Rate 156

andrewchenblog.com

MARCH 10, 2010

Coupled with A/B testing, customer development, and thinking through business problems in a scientific, hypothesis-driven way, you end up with a powerful cocktail of techniques to build a modern startup in the most iterative way possible. However, there’s the other side of the coin, which is the product design.

Technical Review 47

Technical Review Design Las Vegas Product 47

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

When we looked at the color graphics board market, our competitors had defined the market as one measured by technical metrics: screen resolution, number of bits of color, screen refresh rates, acceleration, etc. Our company’s graphics boards were designed to speed up a key part of the Macintosh graphics operating system called QuickDraw.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Read the rest of The Five Whys for Start-Ups. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Read the rest of The Five Whys for Start-Ups. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much?

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

conversionxl.com

FEBRUARY 4, 2014

note: If you’re a startup, you’ll want to use customer development questions for your page to resonate with future traffic). All of this is to inform a landing page design that’s in-line with your target market expectations which plays a huge role in reducing the amount of friction it takes for them to convert.

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Analytics Software Review Conversion Video 98

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

And the rest is history: Google Maps was a huge success. This is precisely the dilemma that the doctrine of minimum viable product is designed to solve. When people start using quality, reliability, or design as an excuse to delay, it used to make me nervous, even when these suggestions were well intentioned. Ship it.&#

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

The design was actually a negative drag on selling anything off a retail shelf. From grumbling skeptics, they all became packaging design converts. And for sure they were never going to win any design awards. So we not only sent everyone through packaging school, we also brought the packaging design in-house.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Behind this analysis is a spreadsheet model, complete with detailed metrics for a set of customer behaviors that show just how valuable the new product will be. They are long-term bets on the development of a new line of business, a new technology platform, or the creation of a new market. Read the rest here.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

SoCal CTO

JUNE 9, 2010

If you can just be friendly enough and get your users to party with you, the rest is really easy. They’re deep into Customer Development ,” he said. Klout Puts Metrics Into Social Media Management - Tim Berry's Blog - Planning Startups Stories , May 21, 2010 I really like klout.com for three good reasons: 1.)

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Fractional CTO Startup Venture Capital Cofounder 248

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. Entrepreneurs should always communicate their business’ very latest stage of customer development as part of their investor presentation.

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Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 311

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 8, 2010 Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Review) The next article in my series on entrepreneurship for Harvard Business Review is live today. Once again, we revisit the topic of Actionable metrics and their nemesis: Vanity metrics. Remember "metrics are people, too."

Metrics 121

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 121

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Don’t share the details of your manufacturing process with customers until you’ve locked up your intellectual property.” Government Regulations I turned to the class and said, “The rest of you can keep building your company and shipping your product because you don’t need to worry about government regulations.

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Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 153

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

I met one recently that is working on a really innovative product, and the stories I heard from their development team made me want to cringe. The product manager was clearly struggling to get results from the rest of the team. These specs are handed to a designer, who builds layouts and mockups of all the salient points.

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San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. There are financial metrics (Return on Investment, Hurdle Rate, etc.)

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

In the Fall of 2008, the credit crisis wiped out mergers and acquisitions as a path to liquidity as M&A collapsed with the rest of the market. My own metric is that you need experience >= 1.5 Theme: Digg 3 Column by WP Designer. So what’s left? Warning sign? Say 40 years = 20 years real direct experience. At best. ~

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Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 225

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

but rest assured they would be. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

Read the rest at The Conversation - Harvard Business Review. Read the rest at The Conversation - Harvard Business Review. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

Luckily for the rest of us, he was able to find his path to a green card, and now employs 24 Americans in West Lafayette, Indiana. Read the rest of The New Startup Arms Race at Huffington Post. Luckily for the rest of us, he was able to find his path to a green card, and now employs 24 Americans in West Lafayette, Indiana.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. Thats what business is designed to do.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. What is customer development?

Demand 167

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

You can read the rest of his posts on his blog : Introduction , Part 1 , Part 2.) When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. You can read the rest of his posts on his blog : Introduction , Part 1 , Part 2.) We all owe him our thanks for persevering.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

No experiment can affect more than a specified number of customers (usually expressed as a % of total). Every experiment has to be evaluated based on a single standard report of 5-10 (no more) key metrics. Either way, the team learns immediately whether their assumptions about how customers would behave were correct.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

My guess is they have lots of people constantly working on interesting new tools for their designers to play with. Discover whats in customers heads, and tackle problems where design is a differentiator. Companies that abdicate to customers will fail, as will companies that don't listen and respect experience.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

So if youre new, consider not paying any attention to the rest of this post, and just diving into the archives, if you havent already. Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? November 25, 2009 9:54 AM Danny Wong said. hey eric, love the blog.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

This technique rests on three things: identifying the kinds of work that need to get done, creating the right type of teams for each kind, and steering the company by allocating resources among them. Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

But, as any startup can tell you, this opens up a tremendous set of opportunities for the rest of us. Unfortunately, this content-less decision-making process is inhibiting the ability of media companies to develop interesting new content at the very time when this supposed expertise should serve as their one true competitive advantage.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

.&# In 2002 I became exposed to the idea of “agile software development&# and subsequently was a first round investor in Rally Software which is now the market leader in Agile application lifecycle management software. Read the rest. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.) There are few courses which teach aspiring entrepreneurs the skills (business models, customer and agile development, design thinking, etc.) In contrast, startups search for a business model. (Or

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Wiki Lean Management Business Model 315

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 16, 2009 Continuous deployment with downloads One of my goals in writing posts about topics like continuous deployment is the hope that people will take those ideas and apply them to new situations - and then share what they learn with the rest of us.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 68

OnlyOnce

AUGUST 12, 2013

The authors define Customer Experience as “how your customers perceive their interactions with your company,” and who doesn’t care about that? ” one suggestion the book had for weaving the customer experience into your culture (if it’s not there already) is to invite customers to speak all-hands meetings.

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usersknow.blogspot.com

APRIL 30, 2010

Is this feature usable, and is the UX reasonably consistent with the rest of my product? You need to have some sort of plan for testing to see how it’s affecting key metrics , whether those are revenue, retention, registration, user happiness, or some other number you care about. What is the expected ROI for this feature?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

For the rest of us, there is an alternative: to create credibility by building a lean startup. The core of the article is my first attempt to articulate the key metrics (in graph form) that I believe demonstrate customer value. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2010

This is just like a startup to me, complete with distribution and product development challenges, ecosystem design and many, many customers. As you face new challenges, successes and failures - please share what you learn with the rest of us. My realization for 2010 is that Im already in the game. Lets get 2010 underway.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Instead of waiting for that to happen, make sure there is a mechanism for sharing refactoring lessons with the rest of the team. I would also suggest, and the engineers will almost certainly hate this suggestion, that the decision-maker asks for hard metrics to justify the refactoring effort in the first place. Practice five whys.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79