Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 31, 2015

The following is a guest post by Kirsten Cluthe and Ritika Puri from The Lean Startup Conference team Wondering what’s new in the Lean Startup community? Every year, our team conducts more than 500 customer development calls to understand what challenges the community is facing. Here are some of our favorites: 1.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 3, 2009 Lean Startup fbFund wrap-up Last week I had a real blast meeting with the companies at the fbFund incubator at Palo Alto. The Lean Startup fbFund Edition View more documents from Eric Ries. We tend to equate startup success with making money, but that is a poor choice.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. Communism being a bad science experiment) ESL’s founder Bill Perry was moving the chess pieces. And in the tradition of great startups, on the way out Perry took 6 of his best managers with him. There were no venture investors.

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Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

The founder of this 1964 Silicon Valley startup was Bill Perry. His work at ESL made him one of the 10 founders of National Reconnaissance. However, the downside is that one of failure modes of teams (and startups) is a team that doesn’t jell. Dr. Perry eventually became the 19th secretary of defense. It’s a ton of work.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Bring in an expert CEO with outstanding business credentials and startup experience to focus on relentless execution. Build the product in stealth mode to build buzz for the eventual launch. I had the privilege, and the misfortune, to be involved with a startup that executed this plan flawlessly. Stealth is a customer-free zone.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. A Lean Startup methodology offers entrepreneurs a framework to focus on what’s important: Business Model Discovery.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

One day, we became convinced that a killer app for IMVU would be to sell a presidential debate bundle, where our customers could put on a Bush or Kerry avatar, and then engage in mock debates with each other. It was one of those brilliant startup brainstorms that comes to the team in a flash, with a giant thunderclap.

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