Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 26, 2009 A real Customer Advisory Board A reader recently asked on a previous post about the technique of having customers periodically produce a “state of the company&# progress report. Many companies seek to involve customers directly in the creation of their products.

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Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 11, 2020

The pre-class assignment was to watch Safi’s video about Loonshots. I’ve extracted and paraphrased a few of Safi’s key insights and urge you to read the entire transcript here and watch his video. Conversely, the things you measure well, with easily understood and visible metrics, tend to improve without much extra push.

Technical Review 322

Technical Review Taiwan Technology Design 322

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 8, 2011

Every day on the crowdSPRING Twitter account and on my own Twitter account , I post links to posts or videos I enjoyed reading or viewing. These posts and videos are about logo design , web design , startups, entrepreneurship, small business, leadership, social media, marketing, and more! Empire Avenue Strikes Out – [link].

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Social Media Small Business Design Media 96

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Every board meeting, the metrics of success change.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. The breakthrough idea of agile is that software should be built iteratively, with the pieces that customers value most created first. Enter Jims post.

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Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

The term “Growth Hacking”, invented by Sean Ellis , and made popular by Andrew Chen , a Silicon valley marketer and entrepreneur, is a combination of two disciplines – marketing and coding: Growth hackers are a hybrid of marketer and coder, one who looks at the traditional question of “How do I get customers for my product?”

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API Viral Startup Retention 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 14, 2008 How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people Frequency is more important than talking to the "right" customers, especially early on. Youll know when the person youre talking to is not a potential customer - they just wont understand what youre saying.

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San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Below youll find the video of my remarks as well as the full slides embedded below. First, a definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. But I wanted to say a few words first.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

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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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

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San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 27, 2013

Eric’s chat with Kent Beck was among our most entertaining webcasts ( video ; iTunes ; SoundCloud ). But the truth of any program is, it requires teams, and customers, and it''s this complicated ecosystem…. The conversation centered around a few key topics: customers, bureaucracy, and MVP. Just, you know, with my bare hands.

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Lean San Francisco Cofounder Programming 165

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? ▼ April (11) Video update on the Startup Visa Act Lean Enterprise Institute webinar, April 28 Four myths about the Lean Startup Sneak preview, KISSmetrics (and more) Sneak preview, Grockit The Lean Startup Intensive at Web 2.0 Expo SF (May.

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Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

Restaurant owners and employees are being treated extremely poorly by many customers since service has changed with the lack of staffing. It requires instant customer service through social media and chatbots. Without these key metrics, employees will be free agents and looking for better work culture. Photo Credit: Tyler Rice.

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Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Technical Review Security 109

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

Defective prototype code was as often thrown out (because customers didnt want it) as it was fixed (when customers did). Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ▼ June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said. September 11, 2008 2:06 PM Editor said. Expo SF (May.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

In my experience, the majority of changes we made to products have no effect at all on customer behavior. The report is set up to show you what happened to customers who registered in that period (a so-called cohort analysis ). This report is set up to tell you about new customers specifically. First of all, why split-test?

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

I used to think that investments in metrics were a form of waste. Customers dont care if you have good metrics, only if you have a good product. The only reason we learned the art of metrics-based decision making at IMVU was out of necessity. that justify decisions already made. I think it was $350 the next, and so on.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, June 9, 2009 The Lean Startup Tokyo edition I had a blast speaking at Startonomics Tokyo , which was organized to foster ties between the startup cultures in Japan and Silicon Valley. benjaminjoffe : early adopters of buggy product are visionary customers, sometimes smarter than founders!

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Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

If you watch the video/audio below, youll get to see some of the questions I was asked after my presentation. And do your customer development. These quotes are, as is my custom, straight from twitter. Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. Articulate, inspirational.

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San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Continuous Deployment 113

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 8, 2010 Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Review) The next article in my series on entrepreneurship for Harvard Business Review is live today. Once again, we revisit the topic of Actionable metrics and their nemesis: Vanity metrics. Remember "metrics are people, too."

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 121

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Behind this analysis is a spreadsheet model, complete with detailed metrics for a set of customer behaviors that show just how valuable the new product will be. They are on-schedule and on-budget, but their gross metrics are way off. They are on-schedule and on-budget, but their gross metrics are way off.

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Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Here are a few: We know what customers want. By hiring experts, conducting lots of focus groups, and executing to a detailed plan, the company became deluded that it knew what customers wanted. But that was two full years before any customers were allowed to use it. Stealth is a customer-free zone.

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San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Sean Murphy has an excellent and comprehensive roundup of resources about the conference: all of the slides, videos, summaries, notes and write-ups are listed on his blog here. All video from the conference is available for free at Justin.tv If not, youd better watch video of his talk ASAP. And then you can buy a t-shirt.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Scalable systems are no exception - if your assumptions about how many customers youll have, or how they will behave are just a little bit wrong, you can wind up with a massive amount of wasted code. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. Some startups avoid getting customer feedback for precisely this reason: they are afraid that if early reactions are negative, theyll be "forced" to abandon their vision. One such practice is to pivot from one vision to the next.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, May 3, 2009 Videos galore Two new videos are online from recent speeches. This also gives me a chance to clarify that I am no relation to the author of the classic book on positioning , Al Ries ) Next up, heres the video from my talk with Steve Blank at startup2startup. Expo SF (May.

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Video San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 104

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? ► April (11) Video update on the Startup Visa Act Lean Enterprise Institute webinar, April 28 Four myths about the Lean Startup Sneak preview, KISSmetrics (and more) Sneak preview, Grockit The Lean Startup Intensive at Web 2.0 Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Rather than use boring section headers, I thought Id just quote from actual customers, in their own words. Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

The larger-account division wanted to move the pricing in just the other direction – making the low-end products more expensive, so their large customers would have an increased incentive to upgrade. Many custom reports had been created for this meeting, and the data warehouse team was in the meeting, too.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. 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.

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San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

When you have an infinitesimal number of customers, it can be embarrassing. But as long as your ego can take it, there are huge advantages to having a small number of customers. Most importantly, you can get to know those few customers in a way that people with zillions of customers cant. You can even meet the friend.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133

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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SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

My most recent startup created a marketplace for customers to buy and sell virtual goods for their 3D avatar. My most recent startup created a marketplace for customers to buy and sell virtual goods for their 3D avatar. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? ► April (11) Video update on the Startup Visa Act Lean Enterprise Institute webinar, April 28 Four myths about the Lean Startup Sneak preview, KISSmetrics (and more) Sneak preview, Grockit The Lean Startup Intensive at Web 2.0 Expo SF (May.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. We finally settled on a $1.99 Setup a simple website.

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Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167