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. We didnt think wed able to compete with that.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 3, 2013

As soon as they had designed the product, they found a contract manufacturer to build the product in China. They outlined their retail channel and PR strategy and told me about the type of consultants they wanted to hire. What if a buyer asks, can you make a custom version of your product? Hiring PR Agencies.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Andy Cunningham , founder and CEO of Cunningham Collective. Joining me in the Stanford University studio were. Andy Cunningham. They don’t know what you do.

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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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Steve Blank

APRIL 30, 2009

Customers went into the store either looking for the SuperMac product by name (if our demand creation activities had been effective) or went in unsure of which brand of board to buy. And the product that “talked to me&# , the loudest and most seductively, was the one that went home with me.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

You get increasing growth by optimizing the viral loop , and you get revenue as a side-effect, assuming you have even the most anemic monetization scheme baked into your product. Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth.

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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. Many of them get hung up on understanding how to select the right minimal viable product. Your mission is your baby.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Andy Cunningham , founder and CEO of Cunningham Collective. Joining me in the Stanford University studio were. Andy Cunningham. They don’t know what you do.

Washington 120

Washington Entrepreneur Silicon Valley Cofounder 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Thanks to Suns amazing PR blitz, there was tremendous demand for experts on Java, and I did my best to convince people that I was one of that mythical breed. Every startup has a chance to change the world, by bringing not just a new product, but an entirely new institution into existence. I will come back for more.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

“My engineers say our website is old school, and we need to be on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, my VP of Sales says we’re wasting our marketing dollars not targeting the right people and my board keeps giving me their opinions of how we should describe our product and company. Who’s the user of product? with a strategy.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Startups needed millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product out the door to customers. A hardware startup had to equip a factory to manufacture the product. VC’s went back to basics, to focus on building companies while their founders worked on building customers.

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David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

Signal is a fundraising tool for founders run by NFX Guild, which identifies the most relevant VCs for you. . HOF Capital is currently developing a proprietary sourcing tool to automatically filter for potential deal prospects that fit our criteria. Pitchbot.vc is an AI bot which helps companies refine their sales pitch to VCs.

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ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

Back in 2016, I read a book called Sprint by Jake Knapp, founder of Google Ventures. Knapp talks about focusing on only the essential activities for shipping new products and testing new ideas. And so, the concept for a digital PR service was born. About 18 months later, we pivoted our messaging to evolve beyond digital PR.

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Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2009

Yet we hadn’t shipped a single product. All this activity occurring before we actually shipped a product. Believing Your Own BS is Toxic Lots of noise and smoke before a product ships seems to be a toxic byproduct of enthusiastic entrepreneurs. Which at this stage of the company was marketing and financing.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

Its latest product was an oscilloscope, the HP 150a. That year HP introduced its first computer, the HP 2116A , as an instrument controller for HP’s test and measurement products. The original Hewlett Packard which made test and measurement products was spun-out and renamed Agilent. It was still a year away from its IPO.

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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?

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

The higher the vanity ratio, the more effective the PR. Paul quotes one of his founders like this: “Thats the actual beauty in the off-the-record-ness: you hear just how screwed up most of these successful startups were on the way up.&# Failures, pivots , and crappy minimum viable products are generally elided.

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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. Who would buy your product?

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

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Thanks to those of you who were willing to fill out the survey, I learned my net promoter score (about 25) as well as some clear other segmentation insights: about 80% of you are founders of or work at a startup, you read many of the same other blogs, and many of you would like to engage with Lessons Learned in formats and venues beyond this blog.

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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. Product launch) In todays world, there is no reason you have to do these two things at the same time. Do some Customer Development instead.

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ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 17, 2011

As you know, the Google productivity apps portfolio is getting very good traction within enterprises, and through our Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing series , we've heard from various CIOs who are moving from Lotus Notes or Microsoft Exchange to Google's Office suite. And in comes the Google App Engine as Google's offering in this context.

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

This "success theater" is occasionally useful for PR or getting through a tough board meeting. Establish baseline metrics by building the minimum viable product — the minimum required to measure the response of early adopters. Then, in each development cycle, use the insights gained by studying customers to make improvements.

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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. Take a look and let me know what you think.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

Take a look at The App Store after the gold rush - FierceDeveloper : According to a recent BusinessWeek feature , the flood of new games, productivity tools and related iPhone software is making it difficult for the vast majority of apps to crack the consumer consciousness. Acqusition competition is how new apps get new customers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

And Red Room founder/CEO Ivory Madison on popular metrics that everyone should stop using. And Sincerely’s Matt Brezina on the secrets of developing mobile apps quickly. Others are new voices in putting Lean Startup techniques to use and have great case studies to share. We also have a small number of tickets for the general public.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

I liked the flattering Venture Hacks commentary so much Ill just quote it: Many founders believe that early stage startups are endeavors of execution. The customer is known, the product is known, and all we have to do is act. The customer is unknown, the product is unknown, and startups must be built to learn.

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The Next Web

JANUARY 27, 2013

Amazed at all the beautifully designed products that came out of only 76 hours. One of the things I found most valuable from participating in the Founder Institute was a lesson about the Golden Circle by Simon Sinek. One of the darkest moments as an entrepreneur for me was to have co-founders leave the company. Mind the overlap.

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Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

We Don’t Need Domain Experts When I looked around at our executive staff, there wasn’t a single founder who was a gamer. Customer Development There was nothing wrong about Rocket Science having a vision radically different than the conventional wisdom. Nor was there anyone with game experience on our board. Make sure they are.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

The full formula works like this: runway = cash on hand / burn rate # iterations = runway / speed of each iteration Very few successful companies ended up in the same exact business that the founders thought theyd be in (see Founders at Work for dozens of examples). So how many iterations do you have left?

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This is going to be BIG.

SEPTEMBER 21, 2010

If you’re a non-technical founder, while your team is building and refining your product, you’ve got to figure out what to do with your time. I find that first time CEOs often find themselves doing two things, neither of which is productive. If you’re going to do product, do product.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

In fact, I remember sending him and his obscure-to-me co-founder (aka Reid Hoffman ) a bug report early-on, instead of taking them up on their offer of an in-person meeting. I managed to be envious of dozens of other companies, founders, and colleagues who seemed to be having tremendous success but later turned out to be a mirage.

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Listen to this episode if you want to hear about a founder who has a product and users and paying customers … and is trying to figure out how to take his company to the next level and grow faster. We started with the product about three years ago, development, a year later we released it. Edwin: May I.

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crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

The science of how temperature and lighting impacts our productivity | The Buffer – [link]. Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Money matters: why women founders struggle in Silicon Valley | The Verge – [link]. – [link]. Remain Teachable – [link].

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Engineers are offenders in this category too, but so is any gender-segregated activity, like an all-female PR or marketing team. One last suggestion, which is a technique I learned from my IMVU co-founder Will Harvey. The work product is a more realistic test, although it requires much more work on the part of the candidate.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

There are often counter-intuitive changes in customer behavior that depend on little details. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. Over many years, we’ve learned a lot about what customers want.

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