Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 3, 2009 Employees should be masters of their own time Every startup should have a culture of learning. The rule is simple: every employee is 100% responsible for how they spend their time. The suggestion is that you implement one single company-wide rule. I asked why.

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Employee San Francisco Lean Software Review 146

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. What good are these metrics if they dont help guide product or business decisions?

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Insist on the incredibly high-IQ employees and hold them to incredibly high standards. Build a truly mainstream product. It never generated positive returns for its investors, and most of its employees walked away dejected. This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development. Mission accomplished.

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San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 16, 2013

But we couldn''t have identified this without having clear metrics (that high bug count) to assess our development process. On Customer Development in a growing company, Wyatt offered the following advice: Wyatt: We''ve employed a number of systems in the organization that keep all of us close to the customer.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. As a result, potential customers are being turned away; they can only afford to engage with the customers that are best qualified.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. They measure their success on metrics that reflect success in execution, and they reward execution.

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IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

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. I think Drucker said it best.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. No vanity metrics should be looked at. No vanity metrics should be looked at.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

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.

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Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP. This is the simplest version of your product minus the frills and frosting. It’s a particularly popular strategy in the world of product development and is used to quickly and quantitatively test a product or a product feature.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said.

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CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

For example, I often cite a real example of a problem that has as its root cause a new employee who was not properly trained. I pick that example on purpose, for two reasons: 1) most of the companies I work with deal with this problem and yet 2) almost none of them have any kind of training program in place for new employees.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

Customer Development : a disciplined approach to finding out if there is a market for your product before its too late. Customer Development Engineering : techniques for accelerating your product development. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. Instead, five whys kept leading to problems caused by an improperly trained new employee, and wed make a small adjustment. why did that code get written?

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2009

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. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

On the one hand, it gives you insight into what kind of employee the candidate might be. The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. Still, a startup product development team is a service organization.

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San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. Good luck, engineering manager. It was painful for a lot of people.

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Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Also SJ's obsession with better taste (positively) contributes to the overall product development process. There are some good anecdotes about Chief Engineers in the Toyota Product Development Book. Some of these reaffirm that they do indeed validate assumptions through interaction with customers.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

The same has been true of an unfortunate number of startups, they manage to generate a lot of hype, raise a lot of money, and sometimes make some of their investors, employees, or founders rich. bigs : @ericries says Stealth dev is a (undesirable, failure-presaging) customer-free zone. Use some customer development to find out.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

With 21 employees today, kaChing is devoted to recruiting professional managers and finding product/market fit , first for money managers, then for consumers. With 21 employees today, kaChing is devoted to recruiting professional managers and finding product/market fit , first for money managers, then for consumers.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

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. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

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Lean San Francisco Web Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Every startup has a chance to change the world, by bringing not just a new product, but an entirely new institution into existence. That institution will touch many people in its life: customers, investors, employees, and everyone they touch as well. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

We eventually discovered (via five whys ) that we also had to get each new employee acculturated to a fearless way of thinking. Because this was such a big cultural change for most new employees, we didnt leave them to sink or swim on their own. For one, it required us to keep our developer sandbox setup procedure simple and automated.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

They assume that each person on the team is genuinely interested in testing their work and ideas against the reality of what customers want. Anyone who has worked in a real-world product development team can tell you how utopian that sounds. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

We pitch to potential partners, vendors, publishers, conferences, employees, and even lawyers. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Usually we think of pitches in the context of raising money, but that is only one of many pitch situations.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

How many employees would a medium-sized business have in your definition? Jason: If I’m managing my whole business with this tool, I don’t have 100 employees. I do think that most of my customers are small/medium businesses. They have many, many man-years of development and customer development in them.

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Do some Customer Development instead. They spend so much of their time trying to convince everyone around them that their idea is great and the company is doing well: employees, investors, partners, friends, family, significant others - its a long list. Know what the success metrics are for the launch.

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San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

AgileZen – project management visually see and interact with your work Kanbanery – Simple online team or personal kanban board LeanKit Kanban – Great for visualizing work of product development Kanban Pad – “Nice and lean” and free online Kanban tool Banana Scrum – A tool simple as Scrum itself.

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Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

It has to balance competing goals of establishing clear ownership, while avoiding talented employees getting stuck. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Thats all helpful for recruiting, retaining, and ramping-up a new employee. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? They have a certain amount of trust based on having been part of a common mission, and they share a passion for the projects goals.

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Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 13, 2010 The Superbowl ad test I am a firm believer in the danger of vanity metrics , numbers that give the illusion of progress but often mask the true relationship between cause and effect. Vanity metrics are generally bigger. Vanity metrics. The solution? Is that really news?

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San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Sometimes, a great hacker has the potential to grow into the CTO of a company, and in those cases all you need is an outside mentor who can work with them to develop those skills. At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization. Does this sound familiar?

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Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

Not to be outdone, the technologists on the team had also brought their big guns, and the meeting was packed with employees of every level – from VP’s all the way down to me. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ▼ June (3) What is a startup? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

These are facets that are conspicuously missing from the lives of employees in most organizations I would speculate but with this agile/scrum type methodology these can be the "juice" that keeps the team engaged and productive. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

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. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

It isnt until a customer actually clicks or calls to place an order that TPGTEXs developers will build the software. "We We do not develop a product until we get a paying customer," says Orit Pennington , who co-founded the six-employee company with her husband in 2002. Read the rest. Read the rest.

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San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 137

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Over-communicate with employees, investors, customers. Ive also used the voluntary salary reduction tool - its particularly useful as a way to get passionate employees who dont have a lot of personal expenses to buy into the mission of the company at a deep level. Pay attention to where your cash is. Dont sugar coat.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121