Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. Analytics spark more questions and discussion than almost any other aspect of the Lean Startup method. Alistair and Ben, co-authors of the book Lean Analytics, will help you sort it out in our next webcast, Lean Analytics for Non-tech Companies.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

Others emphasize how to build a product. If you’ve read any of my previous posts, you know I believe that: 1) a product is just a part of a startup, but understanding customers, channel, pricing, etc. Therefore we developed a class to teach students how to think about all the parts of building a business, not just the product.

Wiki 312

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 312

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. 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

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May. .

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Occam's Razor

APRIL 8, 2013

This thought was in my mind as I was reading Lean Analytics a new book by my friend Alistair Croll and his collaborator Benjamin Yoskovitz. In this post, we’ll look at each of the four steps in the Lean Analytics Cycle in more detail. If it's the number of invites sent, it's virality. But it is not routine.

Metrics 156

Metrics Analytics Lean Churn Rate 156

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Lean Startups/Back to Basics (2000-2010): No IPO’s, limited VC cash, lack of confidence and funding fuels “lean startup” era with limited M&A and even less IPO activity. Startups needed millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product out the door to customers.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

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. And Jennifer is now my co-instructor in the Stanford Lean LaunchPad class.). The MVP Tree. The MVP Tree.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

Others would go even further and say it is better to launch half a product than a half-assed product. The Four Steps to the Epiphany (highly recommended book by Steve Blank) preaches for customer development before product development, advocating a quick launch with a minimal feature set rather than a full fledged product offering.

Lean 120

Lean Customer Development Audience Viral 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. At a high level, anything that drives virality should be free. To take your specific example about virality - why do we want to have more users sign up? Is it that they act as free advertising for our premium product?

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

If you ask an expert in Facebook apps to come help build yours, youll usually hear the same advice: build your app for virality. Thats sensible advice; most people who have made a business on Facebook rely on the viral driver of growth. If you have a virally-growing app, you dont need the extra installs.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment 68

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.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Many of them have really cool products shipping or about to be released, and I wholeheartedly agree with my friends at the iFund that the next generation of applications is going to be amazing. The store determines which products sit on which shelves, and which yours sits next to. On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. Step 1: Start with a lean plan. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

In most applications, most of the time, customers return to use the application not in response to a notification or event, but under their own volition. These decisions are critical to the success of any high-engagement product, and they take place entirely inside the minds of customers. Impressive.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

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.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join. Synthetic notifications.

Viral 140

Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem) Lean startups don’t optimize. Instead, we try to accelerate with respect to validated learning about customers. There are often counter-intuitive changes in customer behavior that depend on little details.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 11, 2009 Innovation inside the box I was recently privy to a product prioritization meeting in a relatively large company. The team spent an hour trying to decide on a new pricing strategy for their main product line. It was fascinating. The whole process had taken.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

crowdSPRING Blog

MARCH 15, 2013

Lean Business: Capacity Management, Overhead, and Your Business – [link]. The science of how temperature and lighting impacts our productivity | The Buffer – [link]. Bad Customer Development Questions and How to Avoid My Mistakes – [link]. Crowdsourced Workforces Rising | Xconomy – [link].

Social Media 105

Social Media Small Business Design Media 105

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Maybe two different developers made changes to the same underlying subsystem, but in incompatible ways. Maybe operations has changed the OS configuration in production in a way that is incompatible with some developers change. As with many lean startup practices, its getting started thats the hard part.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

In a few cases, they are clearly smart people in a bad situation, and Ive written about their pain in The product managers lament and The engineering managers lament. The "just fix it" mentality is counter-productive here. This is one of the bedrock practices of any lean startup , and so its a common piece of advice I give out.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Question 1: When youre adding features to a product used by an existing user base, do you still do split testing to determine usage patterns? Sometimes, testing with existing customers is more complicated than with new customers. If youre worried it, either run the test against new customers or run it for longer than usual.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, December 6, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part three Those startups that manage to build a product people want have to deal with the consequences of that success. Having early customers means balancing the needs of your existing customers with the desire to find new ones.

San Francisco 74

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

January 2, 2009 9:15 PM Post a Comment Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Subscribe via email Blog Archive ► 2010 (48) ► October (3) Case Study: Rapid iteration with hardware The Lean Startup Bundle Stop lying on stage ► September (4) Good enough never is (or is it?) Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

” April, 2012 – Andrew Chen writes Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing , which goes viral (2.4K September, 2012 – Andrew Chen, who currently does growth at Uber , writes You don’t need a growth hacker , which encourages companies to really consider whether they have product-market fit before hiring a growth hacker.

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

The Equity Kicker

MARCH 5, 2014

Yesterday Kissmetrics blogged A recipe of viral features used by the fastest growing startups. It’s a good read for anybody who wants to increase the number of free customers they are getting. In other words virality is science not art. Who wouldn’t want that? It’s a design principle. It’s not a result of good luck.

Viral 92

Viral Lean SEO Software 92

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Is the company growing because of an amazing viral loop paired with a strong engagement loop? Most of the article is about the features – new and old – of the product. For understanding what’s really going on with a product, this alternate form is far superior. Hopefully, that’s not the case.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

grasshopperherder.com

FEBRUARY 19, 2011

Q: “What will be your best channel for customer acquisition?&# We’re testing a viral loop, direct sales, and affiliate marketing.&# &# A: “I don’t know, I’m targeting a six month schedule.&# A: “I don’t know. Those are answers I respect, because you don’t know everything and neither do I.

Cofounder 47

Cofounder NDA Founder Sweat Equity 47

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Split-testing, like almost everything in a lean startup , requires judgment. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Expo SF (May. .

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 132

Steve Blank

MAY 30, 2016

Lean methodologies have changed the way science is commercialized in the U.S. government has embraced Lean methodologies to reinvigorate its innovation efforts was the focus of the latest episode of my SiriusXM radio show, Entrepreneurs are Everywhere. That research is the building block to innovative products. How the U.S.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Washington Government 120