article thumbnail

Why Build, Measure, Learn – isn’t just throwing things against the wall to see if they work

Steve Blank

Best practices in software development started to move to agile development in the early 2000’s. This methodology improved on waterfall by building software iteratively and involving the customer. But it lacked a framework for testing all commercialization hypotheses outside of the building. Lessons Learned.

Lean 120
article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Startup Lessons Learned

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?)

Insiders

Sign Up for our Newsletter

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

article thumbnail

Pitch Deck Month: “Is It Working?” (aka the “Traction” Slide)

View from Seed

But here’s some examples or frameworks to consider. You’re obviously not showing charts of user growth, number of customers, or revenue. Pre-launch customer development data is another way, sometimes in the form of user surveys for consumer companies or interviews with potential beta customers for B2B businesses.

article thumbnail

Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Startup Lessons Learned

Some products have relatively obvious monetization mechanisms, and the real risks are in customer adoption. Products can find sources of validation with impressive stats along a number of dimensions, such as high engagement, viral coefficient, or long-term retention. Labels: agile , customer development 15comments: Scott Shapiro said.

Customer 167
article thumbnail

A Path to the Minimum Viable Product

Steve Blank

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. In other words, you prove retention. With both growth and retention, you earn the right to build more. Be patient.

Product 436
article thumbnail

Pivot, don't jump to a new vision

Startup Lessons Learned

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. In a customer problem pivot, we try to solve a different problem for the same customer segment. When doing intense customer development, the problem team can attain a high level of empathy with potential customers.

article thumbnail

A new model for understanding the stages of a startup

The Startup Toolkit

Growth is acquisition plus retention. Acquisition and retention tend to be inseparable from the product. You shift from qualitative feedback (customer development) to quantitative feedback (metrics). In cases like that, you can just tick off that bit of the model and move on to other questions.

Startup 55