Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a key lean startup concept.

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Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 25, 2014

The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions – crowdspring.co/1nHT6tS. The Ultimate List of Customer Development Questions – crowdspring.co/1nHT6tS. Legal Contracts for Software Developers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template to use today) – [link].

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 6, 2014

Customer Development 101) – crowdspring.co/1pNIOcD. Crowdsourcing Your Way To What Customers Really Want | Fast Company – crowdspring.co/1oNJIZp. Customer Development 101) – crowdspring.co/1pNIOcD. 20 Killer Resources for Web Designers and Developers | 1stwebdesigner – crowdspring.co/1pNoB6P.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Software Review 94

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Since no benchmarks existed, we enlisted our engineering department in a serious software development effort and wrote our own. And we made sure that instead of some artificial numbers, the benchmarks truly measured performance on these four key applications our customers told us were important. You don’t delegate life and death.

Silicon Valley 124

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 124

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring PR Agencies. Bettina said, “We want to drive customer demand into our channel.” That’s smart I thought, a real clear charter for PR. The same is true for hiring the PR agency. They learned a ton.

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PR China Channel Lean 314

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. Hiring PR Agencies. Bettina said, “We want to drive customer demand into our channel.” That’s smart I thought, a real clear charter for PR. The same is true for hiring the PR agency. They learned a ton.

PR 206

PR China Channel Lean 206

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Talented product developers. If you can harness the knowledge, natural enthusiasm, and peer influence of your very best customers — I call them “Rock Star” customers — they’ll market, sell, and help develop breakthrough products for your firm better than your internal resources can do, and often at a fraction of the cost.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 7, 2010

Wait a minute, what about the rest of Customer Development ? Aren’t you going to validate your hypotheses by first getting some customers?”. Now I was confused, and I asked, “Well what do you guys believe – Customer Development or launch on a schedule?” Filed under: Ardent , Customer Development.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

Andy continued to work with Steve for several years and has developed marketing, branding and communication strategies for game-changing technologies and companies ever since. — Andy explained that, years ago, a PR person’s was to turn so-called influencers like journalists and analysts into advocates for your client.

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Washington Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Cofounder 285

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth. In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Hopefully you and your co-founders are experts in one or two parts (agile development, SEO/SEM, etc.) But the rest; sales, marketing, bus dev is actually customer development that the founder needs to understand. Or by a VP of Marketing who talks “branding&# , SEO/SEM, PR agency, etc.

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SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2011

This site aggregates and filters content from thought leaders who talk about topics such as Marketing , Sales , Design , Revenue , Hiring , Social Media , Business Models , Metrics , PR , Venture Capital , Angel Investors , Bootstrapping , Incubators , Agile and many others.

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Intellectual Property Aggregator Startup IP 175

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 22, 2012

It must cross boundaries, working cooperatively with other divisions in your business such as sales, marketing, social media, PR, product development, and the like. These may include references, referrals, testimonials, serving on advisory boards, and participating in your customer communities, he explains.

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Programming Customer Social Media Advisory Board 145

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

While one could argue that a trade show is just another demand creation activity akin to advertising or PR, trade shows are the closest eyeball-to-eyeball contact you’re company is going to have with customers, competitors and partners. What didn’t? Go to trade shows like it matters.

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ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 19, 2013

Talk to your customers or prospects. You have only 10 customers? No customers at all? If you’re starting out, what you need is customer development, not conversion optimization. If your answer is “I’m sure my developers tested it”, you’re probably losing money. No problem!

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Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Startups built every possible feature the founding team envisioned (using “Waterfall development,”) into a monolithic “release” of the product taking months or years to build a first product release. Customer Development , Agile Engineering and the Lean methodology enforced a process of incremental and iterative development.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

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Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

The Startup Toolkit

DECEMBER 12, 2012

For example, succeeding at PR before you have retention is actively unhelpful. Customer Development and UX both have good tools for doing this. You need to decide which questions matter to your particular business, and then obsess about answering those. When you talk to your team or VCs, bring them back to your own questions.

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Lean Startup Metrics Retention 54

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

Andy continued to work with Steve for several years and has developed marketing, branding and communication strategies for game-changing technologies and companies ever since. — Andy explained that, years ago, a PR person’s was to turn so-called influencers like journalists and analysts into advocates for your client.

Washington 120

Washington Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Cofounder 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

Founders ask me all the time whether they should hire a PR agency. information chain”), but once you’ve done a first pass of the audience > message > media > messenger, a competent PR firm can add tremendous value. Customer Discovery Never Stops. Filed under: Customer Development , Marketing.

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ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

And so, the concept for a digital PR service was born. Using my existing skills and resources (including an old domain name), I tested a productized digital PR offer. About 18 months later, we pivoted our messaging to evolve beyond digital PR. Conduct client development interviews. Image source ).

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Whats striking about these stories, if you get past the PR hype, are two very important themes: These prodigies were self-taught, and had a fundamental fascination with technology from a very young age. But its not very open, and not very programmable, unless you have an expensive Mac and an approved developer license.

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Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

produced this analysis of engineering representation within VC firms: Selected VCs with Highest Representation of Developers in Workforce. HOF Capital is currently developing a proprietary sourcing tool to automatically filter for potential deal prospects that fit our criteria. VC Firm. $ Tech % of workforce. Google Ventures (GV).

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Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

AUGUST 24, 2009

While I love TechCrunch, the post and the quote about the PR agency (“one PR firm has discovered a dynamite strategy, throw ethics out the window&# ) left me wondering; how do PR agencies interact with TechCrunch and other blog and review sites? Is this behavior an outlier or is it the norm in the PR industry?

Silicon Valley 184

Silicon Valley PR Technical Review RSS 184

This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010

I’m a big believer that the right kind of business development deals can lead to fantastic results for a company—if planned well, appropriately simple, and executed correctly. The Standard Deal The “standard deal” is minimum viable product for business development. Simplifying the deal means short legal contracts.

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Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

The Message Sitting around a conference room table brainstorming messages that might resonate with customers, or worse having a PR agency doing that for you, is a firing offense in a small company. You should be brainstorming messages with current and potential customers. Plus tips on overall trade show strategy.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

Instead of bemoaning the demise of an old company we should be celebrating new companies that develop new helpful technologies. However, the CEO as the “Rock Star&# always reminded me of why I fired any PR agency that was getting more press than the company it represented. DO NOT develop a computer!&# carry on reading.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

The higher the vanity ratio, the more effective the PR. It helps companies with PR. And companies crave positive PR and control over their message – all for rational reasons. The higher the vanity ratio, the more effective the PR. It helps companies with PR. It sells newspapers and magazines.

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San Francisco Lean Metrics PR 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

In a startup, these channels of communication are critical to understand for advertising, launch and PR purposes. But beyond the obvious, its also important to know where customers go to get answers to pressing questions. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

Currently, when enterprises switch to Google's productivity suite, they still need to make provisions to move the large portfolio of home grown long tail productivity apps that have been developed around the previous system - Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange. And in comes the Google App Engine as Google's offering in this context.

Entrepreneur 114

Entrepreneur India Silicon Valley Massachusetts 114

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

This "success theater" is occasionally useful for PR or getting through a tough board meeting. Then, in each development cycle, use the insights gained by studying customers to make improvements. This is the source of validated learning — proof that the customer insights translate into tangible metrics improvements.

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 121

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. Do your customers really read TechCrunch? Do some Customer Development instead. Spend your time with renewable sources of customers and iterate.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. It’s easy to simply buy customers, but only real value makes them stay. Other branches.

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Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 17, 2010

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? 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 107

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Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Our VP of Business Development had no problems getting meetings and fund raising was easy. Not being able to hear negative customer input is an extremely bad idea. Out of the Ashes A few of the key tenets of Customer Development , came from the ashes. Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing.

Silicon Valley 122

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2009

military had to develop new ways to collect intelligence. They developed the National Intelligence Estimate – a series of reports which summarized their judgment about the size of the Russian threat. And the way we were going to do it was with electronic/signals intelligence. political leadership with a much bigger picture.

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