Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

for Harvard Business Review) Over at Harvard Business Review, Ive been building up a series designed to introduce the Lean Startup methodology to a business-focused audience. This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Labels: product development Speed up or slow down?

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

If engineers want more time to spend making their old code more pretty, they are invited to do so on the weekends. The idea is that once we move to the new system (or coding standard, or API, or.) The current code is spaghetti, but the new code will be elegant. Its become "legacy code" and part of the problem.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2012

Instead, buyers are checking out product and service information in their own way, often through the Internet, their social network, or just plain word-of-mouth or customer reviews. He was building a better enterprise software product, and to get the word out, he organized ‘City Tour’ events and neighborhood ‘street teams.’

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

It became harder and harder to separate how the software is built from how the software is structured. If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? If not, whos going to insist we switch to free and open source software? I dont think so.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

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. Firmness: A program should not have any bugs that inhibit its function.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

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. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. For software, the easiest batch to see is code.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Each specialist takes up his part of the spec (UI, middleware, backend) and cranks out code. So the product manager winds up actually having to use the software, by hand, updating the spec and helping create a new test plan. In exchange, the team agrees to show each piece of working code to the product manager for his approval.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

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. When a developer wants to check-in code, this is a very scary moment.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. They take things like unit testing, design documents and code reviews more seriously than any other company Ive even heard about. Three concepts I found particularly helpful: Process = discipline.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

But there is more to technical debt than just the interest payments that come due. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage. In particular, try these three things: Invest in technical debts that may never come due.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

These are just a few of the powerful, growth-fostering impacts “Rock Star” customers are creating for a variety of companies. And engaging customers in such ways is generally much less expensive than hiring costly employees or agencies. In the process, everyone understands that SAS Canada software was an important contributor.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Your natural tendency when an investor says yes will be to relax and go back to writing code. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? When an investor says he wants to invest in you, or an acquirer says they want to buy you, dont believe it till you get the check.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

ConversionXL

JULY 1, 2014

For example, if you wanted to use qualitative feedback to improve hiring practices, asking someone to rate the “Friendliness of Staff” on a scale of 1-5 wouldn’t tell you much about the personality attributes that lead to a positive customer experience. Were unsure if the program would work for them. Interpret the data.

Customer 76

Customer Design Software Review Lead Generation 76

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Now we needed to put the tactical programs in place to make this repositioning strategy happen. Since no benchmarks existed, we enlisted our engineering department in a serious software development effort and wrote our own. These were two of the questions I had asked on purpose when we first did the initial customer surveys.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 127

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

The team hired only the best and the brightest. I was the junior guy on a project team; I was called in to do some technical due diligence for reasons that were obscure to me, because the team already had much more senior engineers assigned to it. The team hired only the best and the brightest.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

And a special thanks is due to all of our presenters, panelists, and mentors. 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. We all owe him our thanks for persevering.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Check your assumptions, what went wrong?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, February 11, 2009 The free software hiring advantage This is one of those startup tips Im a little reluctant to share, because its been such a powerful source of competitive advantage in the companies Ive worked with. This approach gives you an edge in hiring.

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, May 14, 2009 The Lean Startup Workshop - now an OReilly Master Class My rate of posting has been much lower lately, and this is mostly due to preparations for the upcoming Lean Startup Workshop on May 29. What will be covered in the full-day program? For now, Id like to ask a favor.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

And, as one entrepreneur put it to me, "we understood that a big part of our responsibility in the program was to make sure the mentors have a good experience, by taking their advice to heart and giving them a feeling of being part of our evolution as a company." And do your customer development.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

– The Torch Program. In size, scale and commercial results China’s Torch Program from MOST (the Ministry of Science and Technology) is the most successful entrepreneurial program in the world. They provide consulting, promotion, product testing, hiring, training and incubation services to startups.

Programming 284

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 284

ConversionXL

MARCH 28, 2014

If you’re a B2B software company you’ll be happy to know a Forbes study titled “Video in the C-Suite” revealed that 59% of C-Suite executives would prefer to watch video over reading text if both are presented on a page. What if it turned out that other invoice software companies saw similar results?

Video 122

Video Software Review Cofounder Metrics 122

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

– The Torch Program. In size, scale and commercial results China’s Torch Program from MOST (the Ministry of Science and Technology) is the most successful entrepreneurial program in the world. They provide consulting, promotion, product testing, hiring, training and incubation services to startups.

Programming 176

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 176

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. For example, the best book reviewers only review books published by the best publishers, which only accept manuscripts from the best agents. And how could they possibly review a blog? Is that a lot? Is that good?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

A new bit of code contained an infinite loop! why did that code get written? 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. Most engineers would ship code to production on their first day.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Integration risk is the term I use to describe the costs of having code sitting on some, but not all, developers machines. It happens whenever youre writing code on your own machine, or you have a team working on a branch. It also happens whenever you have code that is checked-in, but not yet deployed anywhere.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

I was having coffee with the CEO of a new startup, listening to her puzzle through how to communicate to potential customers. She was an academic on leave from Stanford now selling SAAS software to large companies, but was being inundated with marketing communications advice. “My Filed under: Customer Development , Marketing.

Marketing 316

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 316

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

When I want to know about some concurrency issues between services in his cluster, he doesnt blink an eye when I suggest we get the source code and take a look. Hes just as comfortable writing code as racking servers, debugging windows drivers, or devising new interview questions. He throws off volumes of code, and it works.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Our code pushes take another six minutes. Since these two steps are pipelined that means at peak we’re pushing a new revision of the code to the website every nine minutes. On average we deploy new code fifty times a day. Code reviews and pairing Great practices. Throwing out a lot of code.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

The reason feedback - specifically from actual customers - is usually chosen is because it is more on the science side than the art side, but I surely cant knock those people and teams that can deliver product excellence due to vision, luck or art. -- arrel 215 days ago | link. The article and HN are concerned with software.

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

It connects to the internet to automatically download the necessary codes. Heres a representative view from an actual Amazon customer review : We all know how to operate our own entertainment center, but what happens when you have to explain it to your babysitter, mother-in-law, or your wife? They want to do activities.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

These problems can be anything: development mistakes, site outages, marketing program failures, or even internal missed schedules. For example, a site outage may seem like it was caused by a bad piece of code, but: why was that code written? Any time something unexpected happens, we could do some root cause analysis.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

Getting features and fixes into hands of users was the greatest priority - a test environment would just get in the way and slow down the validation coming from having code running in production. As the product matured, they were able to ratchet up the quality to prevent regression on features that had been truly embraced by their customers.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 17, 2010

When your customers expect a turd sandwich and you deliver a turkey club with chipotle mayonnaise, you earn major bonus points, like users twittering about your service , people switching to your service because of tech support, or customers not only following your Tweets but instructing their followers to do the same.

Technical Review 245

Technical Review Sales Turkey Software Review 245

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

After quitting my job and starting Sorced , I spent a few months validating my business concept by creating the product mockups and doing customer development. My delusions of coding grandeur quickly subsided and realized that I was not going to hack it. You might as well hire an outsourced team.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Lets start with a distinction between shipping new software to the customer, and changing the customers experience. The idea is that often you can change the customers experience without shipping them new software at all. From one point of view, web browsers are a horribly inefficient platform.

Continuous Deployment 68

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

My experience is in Enterprise Software - where we are forced to chunk features into formal releases. While it is still possible - and recommended to experiment with customers in order to determine the minimum that they need, the exercise is bit more complicated due to the formality of the release process.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168