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.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

View from Seed

MARCH 19, 2015

He’s dubbed the approach “ pretotyping ,” and it shares many of the same principles as both its similar-sounding (if later-stage) cousin, prototyping, as well as the more well-known lean startup movement. NVV: Lots of entrepreneurs reading this will think about the lean startup movement when they hear about pretotyping.

Product 120

Product Technical Review Marketing Lean 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 15, 2014

Our Stanford and Berkeley Lean LaunchPad classes are over for this year, and as usual we learned as much from teaching the teams as the teams did from us. — Have each team talk to 10 customers before the class starts. Could we get the teams to come into class having already talked to 10 customers? The result?

Lean 273

Lean Due Diligence Business Model Video 273

Steve Blank

JULY 13, 2021

Analyzing a case in the classroom, removed from the realities of a new venture, adds little to an entrepreneur’s preparation for the chaos, uncertainty, and conflicting customer responses that all entrepreneurs face. The reality is that most business plans don’t survive first contact with customers. experiential.

Lean 436

Lean Agile Business Model Business Plan 436

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 17, 2009 Join the Lean Startup discussion at Web 2.0 Expo for free Im honored to announce that my Lean Startup session at the Web 2.0 Everyone else can register to come to both sessions for free, including the Lean Startup talk in the main conference. What does this mean for you?

Lean 76

Lean San Francisco Web Continuous Deployment 76

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 17, 2009

Gathering real-world feedback from customers is a core concept of Customer Development as well as the Lean Startup. When I asked him if he actually had personally left the building and talked to these potential customers, or even had gotten them on the phone, he sounded confused. Customer needs are non-deterministic.

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Metrics Customer Customer Development Lean 242

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!

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Japan Continuous Deployment 60

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 13, 2011

Not only were the pages just ugly, they were peppered with database errors and CSS blowups: Just look at us now , sporting a grayscale 1950′s automotive motif playing off the “engine&# concept using the latest in CSS3/HTML5 trickery: It was such a contrast, customers emailed us saying “Thank God you fixed that horrible website.

Design 253

Design Lean Database Cofounder 253

ConversionXL

AUGUST 11, 2021

This will help sponsors quickly identify if your audience matches their target market. However, matching demographics alone doesn’t guarantee ROI. To uncover audience problems and motivations, call on your brand market research or customer service data. Lean on your professional networks too. Start with demographic data.

Audience 139

Audience Social Media Email Ruby 139

The Next Web

DECEMBER 4, 2013

Metrics on keywords, follower profiles and competitors all help define your target listener. Locate your core customers, and prioritize your efforts to reach them where they are. As a startup, you’re working with limited resources and a lean business model. Research your solution, sector, industry and competition.

Social Media 158

Social Media Media Viral Startup 158

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 12, 2019

Sooner or later, relying on new customers will break you. To offset these costs, you need to earn more repeat purchases from existing customers. In marketing, cohorts are groups of customers who exhibit similar behaviors during a certain time span (e.g. The temporal tipping point signals a customer’s motivation for buying.

Retention 126

Retention Analytics Campaign eCommerce 126

ConversionXL

MARCH 19, 2020

Greater discipline during boom times offered more flexibility during lean years. And getting it right during the lean years, Bain reports , has a massive impact on companies’ growth rate after things improve: ( Image source ). They do more of the same with less, often lowering quality and customer satisfaction. Promotion.

Marketing 121

Marketing Campaign Non-Compete Lean 121

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

This feedback is a nasty trap, and it’s just how this room full of otherwise rational adults wound up in a screaming match about rounded corners. Because the art team was considered an internal customer (and “friendly&# to boot), we didn’t waste a lot of time making the tools easy to use. It was painful to watch.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 23, 2014

It happened recently when a group of educators came to the ranch to learn how to teach Lean entrepreneurship to K-12 students. They need to learn to find answers to questions like: who are my customers, what product features match customer needs, how do I create demand and what metrics matter?

Lean 290

Lean Cleveland Balance Sheet Ohio 290

Austin Startup

FEBRUARY 1, 2018

Product management is fundamentally about thinking on your feet, staying one step ahead of your competitors, and being able to project yourself into the minds of your colleagues and your customers. Commit to observing and interacting with your customers on a weekly, if not daily basis. invest time into your customers.

Management 85

Management Product Technical Review Software Review 85

OnlyOnce

JULY 9, 2013

The book has been described by a few CEOs who read it and commented early for me along the lines of “The Lean Startup movement is great, but this book starts where most of those books end and takes you through the ‘so you have a product that works in-market – now what?’ questions”. Writing a book is a LOT harder than I expected!

Startup 95

Startup Advisory Board Elevator Pitch Forecast 95

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. They’ve found product/market fit (what products customers want to buy). Lessons Learned.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

While we sometimes cut the price of graphics boards, it was only because we offered our customers no compelling reasons to buy one that was priced equivalently to the market share leaders. If we tried to match them on their playing field we’d never catch up. And we lost money when we did so.

Silicon Valley 157

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 157

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 30, 2014

Waste in a startup is any activity that absorbs resources, but creates no value or competitive advantage in the eyes of customers. Much has been written about this subject in the world of manufacturing, stemming primarily from the 1990’s work by Taiichi Ohno, called the Toyota Production System (“Lean”).

Entrepreneur 287

Entrepreneur Lean Metrics Matching 287

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 8, 2018

Waste in a startup is any activity that spends resources, but creates no value or competitive advantage in the eyes of customers. Much has been written about this subject in the world of manufacturing, stemming primarily from the 1990’s work by Taiichi Ohno, called the Toyota Production System (“Lean”). Defective products and services.

Lean 130

Lean Metrics Matching Small Business 130

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

You delight customers just like before. In a subscription business, maybe your attrition starts matching your acquisition, balancing like magic. In an eyeballs business, you just cant seem to acquire or activate that next step-up of customers. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. You listen and learn.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

ConversionXL

JUNE 2, 2022

Account-based marketing is an approach where marketing and sales work together to nurture target accounts and convert or retain customers. Sales finds aligned accounts and works with marketing to create customized journeys. Sales and marketing collaborate until a deal is closed and beyond to secure long-term customer retention.

Customer 98

Customer Marketing Channel Acquisition 98

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

Five Easy Pieces – The Marketing Mission After a few months of talking to customers , talking to our channel and working with sales we defined the marketing Mission (our job) was to: Help Sales deliver $25 million in sales with a 45% gross margin. Two paragraphs, Five bullets. It didn’t take more. I couldn’t care less about those.

Silicon Valley 269

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 269

Up and Running

OCTOBER 30, 2017

Use this time to make sure that you are matching the business you want to start to your personal aspirations. How easy is it (and how much will it cost you) to acquire a customer? Milestones and Metrics. Be sure to take our quiz to find out if you’re entrepreneur material , too. Analyze your industry. Target Market.

Venture Capital 166

Venture Capital Business Plan Limited Liability Company Finance 166

Duct Tape Marketing

FEBRUARY 10, 2022

You can spend on as a risk without putting you outside of the metric. Jason Blumer (09:15): So, and that's kind of leaning them into the accrual world versus cash reporting. So the sky is never the limit HubSpot's reporting dashboard gives you a satellite view over your marketing sales and customer service performance.

CPA 71

CPA Technical Review Revenue Forecast 71

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Over the same 30 years, Venture Capital firms have honed their skills and strategies to match Wall Streets needs to achieve liquidity for their portfolio companies. In this time, building a successful business meant building a company that had paying customers quarter after quarter. My own metric is that you need experience >= 1.5

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 3, 2015

We use the lean planning methodology to figure this out. Define your ideal customer. How easy is it to acquire a customer, and how much will it cost? Interview potential customers to ensure that they have the problem you are trying to solve. Determine if your initial price points will work for your customers.

Elevator Pitch 60

Elevator Pitch Startup Balance Sheet Forecast 60

OnlyOnce

AUGUST 12, 2013

Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business , by Harley Manning and Kelly Bodine from Forrester Research, was a good read that kept crossing back and forth between good on the subject at hand, and good business advice in general. “Customer Experience is a journey, not a project. .”

Lean 94

Lean Agile B2B Metrics 94

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Are there customers for what you are building? How many are there? Can it scale?”

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 13, 2015

Waste in a startup is any activity that spends resources, but creates no value or competitive advantage in the eyes of customers. Much has been written about this subject in the world of manufacturing, stemming primarily from the 1990’s work by Taiichi Ohno, called the Toyota Production System (“Lean”). Defective products and services.

Startup 120

Startup Lean Metrics Matching 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 26, 2012

We'll be discussing the Lean Startup movement, the upcoming conference, and whatever else you decide you want to ask about. Throughout the hour (from 10am-11am) we'll be picking people to win free tickets to the Lean Startup Conference on December 3. There are several ways to tune in: In the Bay Area, tune your radio to 88.5

Lean 159

Lean San Francisco Houston Engineer 159

Steve Blank

MAY 3, 2011

The Stanford Lean LaunchPad class was an experiment in a new model of teaching startup entrepreneurship. Last week the teams tested their Revenue Models hypotheses: what are customers willing to pay for? After a week of hectic customer discovery , the team further refined their new business model. Importance of cash flows?

South Dakota 232

South Dakota Business Model Lean United States 232

Up and Running

JUNE 23, 2015

She was initially drawn to Wirth’s passion for the cause of maternal health, but she also came to see that the two of them were well-matched for a business partnership because their skill sets were so complementary. They interview customers about their experiences; what worked, what didn’t, and what products they wish they had.

Cofounder 60

Cofounder Sweat Equity Social Media Business Model 60

Up and Running

APRIL 29, 2019

You’re looking to increase potential customers’ awareness that you exist. Then think about the other end of your sales funnel—retaining your customers. If a marketing tactic doesn’t match your overall branding or sales goal, put it on the back burner for another time. Step 3: Map out your customer base.

Marketing 142

Marketing Social Media Lean Campaign 142

Ben's Blog

MAY 15, 2020

What are those metrics? Andrew : If you are a travel company right now, I think you’re seeing very specific metrics dropping. As a result of that, all of those metrics go up. You see companies both with headwinds and tailwinds doing that, and that’s because this has been an injection of weird customer behavior.

Founder 36

Founder Conversion Technical Review Cash Position 36

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 3, 2009 Minimum Viable Product: a guide One of the most important lean startup techniques is called the minimum viable product. Its power is matched only by the amount of confusion that it causes, because its actually quite hard to do. It certainly took me many years to make sense of it.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

leananalyticsbook.com

AUGUST 19, 2012

Lean Analytics Book. The One Metric That Matters. One of the things Ben and I have been discussing a lot is the concept of the One Metric That Matters (OMTM) and how to focus on it. That doesn’t mean there’s only one metric you care about from the day you wake up with an idea to the day you sell your company.

Metrics 58

Metrics Clickthrough Lean Analytics 58