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 same might be said of good software. Here we have the beginnings of a theory of design for software.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

This typically includes: Relationships with relevant service providers in your vertical, often with pre-negotiated discounts: coaches, lawyers, accountants, common software vendors, consultants. Real Ventures , an early-stage, Canadian-based fund, runs a two-day Founder Camp every six months. Customer Development.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

View from Seed

DECEMBER 8, 2015

We have a bias towards very early stage investing for a bunch of reasons, but it’s not easy. It’s often a good idea for founders to find a way to build something and get some early market validation before raising outside capital. I think this stage, more than others, is very dependent on the individual investor.

Product 120

Product Startup Early Stage Seed Capital 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

They had no model of who their own customers were and what it would take to make those customers bang down their doors to buy their products. While I was consulting for them, I got a call from a recruiter for a company called SuperMac, which made add-on products for the Macintosh. Nothing I couldn’t fix. I took the job.

Silicon Valley 146

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 146

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

His most recent company, Filtrbox, participated in the inaugural Techstars class (Techstars Boulder 2007) and was a win for all parties involved; Filtrbox was acquired in 2010 by Jive Software (NASDAQ: JIVE). Following is his advice to early stage entrepreneurs for creating structure in their company.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

In venture capital in particular, early-stage companies are often operating in frontier industries, where the rules are unpredictable and conventional analytic frameworks may be misleading. Sebastian Soler recently launched Knowledge.vc , which uses software and machine learning to enhance deal sourcing and diligence for VC firms.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

I’m a software engineer by trade, so I’m always interested in some better way to do things, whether they are in software or in business processes or organizations. I was between my 7th and 8th and final startup; licking my wounds from Rocket Science, the company I had cratered as my first and last attempt as a startup CEO.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Michael Eidsaune , co-founder of Carely , a software platform that facilitates communication among families caring for sick or elderly relatives. Michael Eidsaune. .

Cofounder 142

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 142

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. Early Stage Startups: The Biggest Killers | Forbes – crowdspring.co/1mtenKl. A 3-Day Weekend…Every Weekend? 1ijERL3.

Social Media 92

Social Media Small Business Design Media 92

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide. Michael Eidsaune , co-founder of Carely , a software platform that facilitates communication among families caring for sick or elderly relatives. Michael Eidsaune. .

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers. Business customers were starting to ask for “office automation solutions” – word processing, spreadsheets, graphing software on a desktop. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

JANUARY 20, 2014

When Customer Development and the Lean Startup were just a sketch on the napkin, Dino Vendetti, a VC at Bay Partners, was one of the first venture capitalists I shared my ideas with. Over the years we brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. Part 2: Early-stage Regional Venture Funds.

Silicon Valley 312

Silicon Valley Oregon Lean Venture Capital 312

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Never mind The first idea for our new company was a software product that looked something like Hypertext. Supercomputers get Personal Back in Sunnyvale my friend had not only been hired but had convinced the team that we should be building hardware – making a new class of computers not a software application.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

AUGUST 20, 2013

Early stage Venture Capital for medical device startups has dried up. Some startups in this field are actually beginning with Customer Development while others struggle with the classic execution versus search problem. Filed under: Customer Development , Lean LaunchPad , Science and Industrial Policy , Teaching.

Startup 294

Startup Venture Capital Lean IPO 294

Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. Victor Hugo.

Silicon Valley 281

Silicon Valley Business Model Early Stage Venture Capital 281

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies. Provide early seed capital, and be the ones to make those introductions. And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Continuous Deployment 113

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? But all things are never equal.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Since the term “cloud computing” was coined in 1996—at least as we have come to understand its meaning—the software as a service industry has exploded. If you use software like LivePlan, you can create this initial “lean plan” in under an hour and then spend your time where it really matters—on validating your idea. Wireframes.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 26, 2013

Doctors, researchers and Principal Investigators in this class got out of the lab and hospital talked to 2,355 customers, tested 947 hypotheses and invalidated 423 of them. We kept track of all this data by instrumenting the teams with LaunchPad Central software.). Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Life Sciences Teaching'

Lean 237

Lean Customer Development Video Early Stage 237

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 30, 2014

It will serve as a test bed for software, services and other technologies to improve the clinician/patient dynamic as well as improving workflows in the clinic. And probably the most important will be the Lean LaunchPad @ Life Science Angels class for early stage life science companies.

San Diego 261

San Diego North Carolina Chicago Lean 261

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. He was constantly in front of customers, listening, selling, installing and learning. I got to spend time inside his company while I was using their software to analyze early-stage ventures. And that’s where the problem was.

Founder 316

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 316

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 12, 2012

Robert Graham of WhiteTail Software (and this awesome guest post on cold calling ) asks: @whitetailsoft When do you stop #custdev efforts and build the product? Here are the details of both of those customer development experiences. I’ve been wrestling with the details of #leanstartup. Way #1: Go until boredom.

Customer 252

Customer Customer Development Dilution Engineer 252

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

A discounted price is available for early stage entrepreneurs and students. 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.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Steve Blank

MAY 22, 2009

If you’re in markets that still exhibit at them (semiconductors, communications, enterprise software, etc.,) Ignore This Post The same caveat applies as in the first post; If you’re selling via the web, and trade shows seem hopelessly anachronistic, ignore this post. this may be a useful read. Go to trade shows like it matters.

Silicon Valley 128

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 128

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 9, 2018

As an example, this is a diagram of the multiple beneficiaries and stakeholders that a software company developing math software for middle school students has to navigate. Most early stage startups don’t have the regulatory domain expertise in-house. The book Regulatory Hacking calls this diagram the Power Map.

Marketing 321

Marketing Startup Government SEC 321

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Should you co-found your company with a software development shop? I’ve talked with a number of software development shops who are eager to get into the business of cofounding companies, i.e., getting product revenue and equity instead of just consulting revenue. mentor VCs, e.g., most VCs. Our model at Casual Corp.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 15, 2011

Startups now understand what they should be doing in their early formative days is search for a business model. The process they use to guide that search is "Customer Development" ; and to track their progress startups now have a scorecard to document their week-by-week changes – the business model canvas.

Silicon Valley 118

Silicon Valley Startup Early Stage Business Model 118

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

Thirty years later we now realize that its one the causes of early startup failure. This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. Coming next Part 2: What’s Wrong with Product Development as a Model?

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2009

Reducing Risk – Simulation versus Customer Development If you remember the first part of this discussion, startups face two types of risk; invention risk and/or customer/market risk. The Customer Development Process I teach and write about is designed to do just that. However, for the Web 2.0

Vertical 128

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing RSS 128

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

LSC: Tell us about the customer development you did for your book: Alistair: We''ve been thrilled at how Lean Analytics seemed to resonate with founders. The beautiful thing about this, to someone who''s analytically minded, is that while humans are awful at recording things, software has no choice but to do so.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

My son is planning a software product that will take the mystery out of wikis and make the technology easier for consumers to use. Unfortunately, they are disinterested in doing the hard work to help early stage entrepreneurs and companies. Retention cohort analysis. Funnel averages over time. 3comments: Charles Crawford said.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

BeyondVC

MAY 5, 2004

In addition, I met a number of interesting companies, a couple of which were service businesses in the process of transitioning their models to become product-driven software companies. This makes a ton of sense as the entrepreneur gets to understand a particular market and pain point for customers.

Product 60

Product Software Review Technical Review Early Stage 60

www.ashmaurya.com

AUGUST 29, 2012

Robert has been working in software since 2005. You can learn more about his approach to developing customer relationships in his new book Cold Calling Early Customers. I run a software startup and I want to partner with you to improve your business.” He is a Ph.D.

Email 52

Email Customer Tennessee Software Review 52

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

Technical debt describes what happens when software or hardware is built quickly to validate hypotheses and find early customers. This quick and dirty development results in software that can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling. Lessons Learned.

Incubator 312

Incubator Curation Engineer Government 312

Steve Blank

MAY 21, 2009

If you’re in markets that still exhibit at them (semiconductors, communications, enterprise software, medical devices, etc.,) you know they’re expensive in time, dollars and resources. I wrote this “Going to Trade Shows Like it Matters&# memo as a board member after I saw our company at a trade show.

Silicon Valley 178

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 178

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.

Lean 244

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Steve Blank

JULY 9, 2009

Customers don’t care about your tools regardless of what business you’re in. Customers of software applications don’t say, “wow, elegant code base.” Don’t confuse your passion for your tools with why your customers will buy your product. Our tools group became as important as our content group.

Silicon Valley 139

Silicon Valley RSS California Video 139