Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

While it sounds simple , the Build Measure Learn approach to product development is a radical improvement over the traditional Waterfall model used throughout the 20 th century to build and ship products. Waterfall Development was all about execution of the requirements document. Microsoft Windows 3.0). Lessons Learned.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. We were lucky to learn about Customer Development early on in the life of our startup. More importantly, we’d witnessed Customer Development’s massive success at another local startup. So how did Customer Development fail us?

Customer Development 230

Customer Development Developer Customer California 230

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.

Customer Development 242

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 242

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

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

Nick Kim , Crosscut’s Head of Platform, in his presentation at the 4th Annual VC Platform Summit, shared their Platform development methodology, which he viewed as an exercise in product development. For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. Customer Development. AskAnything.VC

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

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). The investors, founders, and “community” are all super excited about ASC. Heads down on product, they say.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money. Would you mind sharing them? Order Here.

Silicon Valley 125

Silicon Valley RSS Venture Capital Customer Development 125

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. In fact, this company hasn’t shipped any new products in months.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Our mystery keynote is now revealed and I couldnt be more excited.

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. ———– Whether your venture is a new pizza parlor or the hottest new software product, beware: These nine flawed assumptions are toxic.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

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. Please leave feedback!) Do you fix bugs before writing code?

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

We wanted an agile approach that would allow us to build our software architecture as we needed it, without downtime, but also without large amounts of up-front cost. After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes. Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, February 20, 2009 Work in small batches Software should be designed, written, and deployed in small batches. I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. For software, the easiest batch to see is code. This is easiest to see in deployment.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

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. They just assumed it was the way software companies worked. Sound good?

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

It is becoming easier and cheaper for companies to bring products to market, leveraging free and open source software , cloud computing, open social data (Facebook, OpenSocial ), and open distribution (AdWords, SEO). Agile software development. Agile allows companies to build higher quality software faster.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

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.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" It became harder and harder to separate how the software is built from how the software is structured. If not, whos going to insist we switch to free and open source software? Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

This case presents a further complication: desktop software. Without being able transparently modify the software in situ, is it still possible to deploy on a continuous basis? Ash Maurya is the founder of WiredReach , a bootstrapped startup that he has been running for seven years. Read on to find out.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Its inspired by the classic OODA Loop and is really just a simplified version of that concept, applied specifically to creating a software product development team. There are three stages: We start with ideas about what our product could be. Were a software company, so what we do everyday is turn ideas into code.

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

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.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

In fact, at the time (1996-1997) we offered both a downloadable product, that our customers could install on their own servers, and a “hosted-offering”, which came to be known as “On-Demand”, then the “ASP” (Application Service Provider) model, and today we call it “SaaS” (Software as a Service).

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

I thought Id share a little bit of that, too: I’ve been interested in different approaches to software development going back to 1987 when – in my first company Feld Technologies – my partner Dave Jilk and I started talking about “semi-custom software development&# (way ahead of its time).

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

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. I know many people who think that software works like magic, but to me it actually was magic.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. But its helpful to take a detailed look inside the highly agile process used by Google to ship software. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 2, 2008 On deployment My favorite question to ask a software development team is "how do you do a release." How long does the software sit un-deployed? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? How fast do they iterate?

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? Most startups fail. image source.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Of all the tactics I have advocated as part of the lean startup , none has provoked as many extreme reactions as continuous deployment , a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. One is used by engineers to refer to the process of getting code fully integrated into production.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage. The biggest source of waste in new product development is building something that nobody wants. Leverage product development with open source and third parties.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. Kent Beck is deservedly famous for his many contributions in the software industry. When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 1, 2008 Test-Driven Development as andon cord You cannot control what you cannot see, and the hardest part of managing software projects is that the final product is so intangible. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

The Lean Startup is a practical approach for creating and managing a new breed of company that excels in low-cost experimentation, rapid iteration, and true customer insight. It uses principles of agile software development, open source and web 2.0, Labels: events 2comments: Andrew Meyer said. Check out what I am doing at.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Web Advisory Board 68

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

So the product manager winds up actually having to use the software, by hand, updating the spec and helping create a new test plan. But first I think we need to save the product manager from that special form of torture only a waterfall product development team can create.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Or, phrased more hopefully, "I see how you can use continuous deployment to run an online consumer service, but how can it be used for B2B software?" That mission critical customers wont accept new releases on a continuous basis. That continuous deployment leads to lower quality software than software built in large batches.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

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. What are the timelines?

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60