Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Its a gross number, not per-customer: one hit each from a million people is a very different thing than a million hits from just one person. So its reasonable to ask: whats wrong with vanity metrics, at least as a proxy for customer behavior? Its just that the declining segments customers were more valuable.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. The core of the article is my first attempt to articulate the key metrics (in graph form) that I believe demonstrate customer value. Retention cohort analysis. I am chugging along.

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Seeing Both Sides

JULY 11, 2013

Before this occurs, the sales process is a craft or an art - custom-made by the founder or evangelist sales VP. You dive deep into a customer development process, working closely with a few customers who feed you requirements and are willing to trial an imperfect product that is evolving quickly. 1) Enterprise Sales.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. That’s because the model is based on assumptions about customers that are totally unproven.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

If we accept the verdict of customers instead of pundits, I think these claims are easy to dismiss. Another is used by marketing to refer to what customers see. In traditional batch-and-queue development, these two concepts are linked. All customers will see the new software as soon as it’s deployed.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

If you can start getting ROI on a feature in month one of a twelve month project versus waiting until the end, youve comparatively reduced the cost of development by the revenue generated by that feature over 11 months. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

That mission critical customers wont accept new releases on a continuous basis. Most customers of most products hate new releases. Even worse, the sad state of product development generally means that the new "features" are as likely to be ones that make the product worse, not better. Lets take each in turn. Another release?

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Customers will get to consume the content they want, and support the producers of that content directly, rather than having to rely exclusively on intermediaries. Now, helping potential customers discover new things they might like is the job of the discipline of marketing. What is the right revenue model?

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# Let’s begin with the four customer currencies. And this is true outside of games.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

It requires separating the product launch from the marketing launch (see Dont Launch ) as well as other staple Lean Startup tactics: minimum viable product, split-testing, customer development and the pivot. Those tools, combined with focused customer interviews, have turbo-charged the company’s ability to learn.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Not just about expenses, about increasing revenue. Make sure for planned revenues you have "leading indicators" to know if you will hit it. Over-communicate with employees, investors, customers. This can take the form of a traditional sales pipeline or a registration-activation-revenue chart. Offer equity instead of cash.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. In this model, your free users trade their time for the benefit of your paying customers. Other examples are user-generated content sites, where free users create content that is valuable to paying customers. Free trial.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

When I try to unpack what people mean by the question, heres my best take on what they are asking: "Look, Steve Jobs doesnt go out and ask customers what they want. He tells customers what they want, and he gets it right. When a customer tells you how they feel about your ideas, that doesnt tell you anything about your ideas.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 1, 2009

I covered a few of them on twitter already: Q: "Do you reccomend removing features that youve launched but dont movethe needle on engagement or revenue?" BTW great webinar, thanks for sharing your work :-) May 1, 2009 11:46 PM Sergi said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 13, 2008 SEM on five dollars a day How do you build a new product with constant customer feedback while simultaneously staying under the radar? Slowly, over time, we optimized (or eliminated) each step in the process of becoming a customer by giving us money. SEM is a simple idea.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

As Ive argued elsewhere , my belief is that startups (and anyone else trying to find an unknown solution to an unknown problem ) have to measure progress with validated learning about customers. In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. If a feature worked, wed keep it. If it didnt, wed trash it.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

To increase the number of iterations you have left, you can either increase cash on hand (by raising money or increasing revenues), reduce burn rate, or increase the speed of each iteration. Customer Development : a disciplined approach to finding out if there is a market for your product before its too late. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. Instead, lets focus on building companies that matter , on creating real value for customers, and learning. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

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. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

When customers are affected, try to have someone who experienced the customer problem first-hand, like the customer service rep who took the calls from angry customers. We just add up the revenue we've made in the past few months from Win98 users, and compare to the pain that Win98 has caused as identified in 5Ys.

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conversionxl.com

FEBRUARY 4, 2014

Conduct surveys & interviews to understand your customer’s pain points. note: If you’re a startup, you’ll want to use customer development questions for your page to resonate with future traffic). Directly addresses who your customer is, (Stripe = Payments for developers). image source.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Sometimes, testing with existing customers is more complicated than with new customers. Existing customers already have an expectation about how your product works, and its important to take this into consideration when adding or changing features. On the other hand, existing customers can be a testing benefit.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

In fact, in the early days, when IMVU would experience unexpected surges of revenue or traffic, it was inevitable that every person in the company was convinced that their project was responsible. Let me end with a challenge: see if you can find and kill just one myth in your development team. How did we combat this tendency?

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 22, 2008 Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to measure customer satisfaction Ive mentioned Net Promoter Score (NPS) in a few previous posts, but havent had a chance to describe it in detail yet. It does it all by asking your customers just one magic question.

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www.rocketwatcher.com

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

A good set of metrics will allow me to predict that if I spend $1 on a certain marketing tactic, I’m likely to get $X of revenue in Y days. Closed revenue – the actual value of the deal after it has closed. Opportunity Pipeline – the dollar value of the opportunity.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

They have a product that has a moderate number of customers. Its well done, looks professional, and the customers that use it like it a lot. Most of all, I encouraged them to start talking to their most passionate customers and running some big experiments based on that feedback. Only pay for benefits to customers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

There are many articles by many experts ( myself included ) extolling the virtues of listening to customers. In fact, there are so many of these propaganda pieces that this question might naturally cross your mind: if listening to customers is so great, why do we need so much propaganda? We did not take this step lightly.

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