Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a key lean startup concept.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

Of course, their answer is that the second intends to get to market faster, but every engine has limits regardless the fuel applied. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. Social media is not rocket science. The timing of cash flow is everything.

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Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 223

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. This engineering manager is a smart guy, and very experienced.

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Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 21, 2018

by Saeju Jeong, CEO and Co-founder of Noom Coach. Here, I outline five principles all co-founders must agree on before working together. It’s important for co-founders to each have their own personal strengths in a business so they can divide the responsibilities and succeed in their respective roles.

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YoungUpstarts

MARCH 24, 2014

by Adam Root, founder and CTO of Hiplogiq. The same rule applies to product and app development. Launching a new product can be costly, but adding features to a successful existing product can be even more costly if the additions take away from your product’s unique focus. A DUI lawyer? Didn’t think so.

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Fractional CTO Product CTO Hire Merger 228

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

You can’t be an effective founder or in the C-suite of a startup if you don’t hold any. Here’s how I learned why they were critical to successful customer development. I was getting feedback from customers, and I’d pass on every list of what customers wanted to engineering and tell them that’s the features our customers needed.

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Business Model Product Development Early Stage Customer Development 305

Version One Ventures

MAY 3, 2023

But India is such a welcoming country that it only took a few weeks of preparation to fill a weeklong schedule with meetings – from a dinner arranged by Shiva with approximately 15 founders in Delhi to a talk about crypto at Builders Circle in Bangalore. group pic from meet-up w/ Delhi founders

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View from Seed

NOVEMBER 6, 2014

Isaac Cambron is co-founder and CTO of Zensight.co , whose pre-launch product enables sales reps to find and use their best content to close more deals. Below, he answers questions about developing products from scratch, as well as the difficult technology choices and tradeoffs CTOs must make.

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Technology Ruby Startup Engineer 334

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. In most agile development systems, there is a notion of the "product backlog" a prioritized list of what software is most valuable to be developed next.

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Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Of course, their answer is that the second intends to get to market faster, but every engine has limits regardless the fuel applied. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. Social media is not rocket science. The timing of cashflow is everything.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 17, 2018

by Felix Winstone, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Talkative. As a startup co-founder with a growing team, here are the recruiting tips I’ve learnt over the last couple of years. Robert Metcalfe, co-founder and CEO of 3Com, says you need to think about it as “recruiting, not hiring”. Hiring = Sales. Be Specific.

Cofounder 164

Cofounder Elevator Pitch Hiring Dividend 164

Steve Blank

APRIL 23, 2018

If you’re following Tesla, you might be interested to know that Sloan wasn’t the founder of GM. Where are the charitable foundations, business schools, and hospitals named after the founder of GM? The founder of what became General Motors was William (Billy) Durant. And a founder of Neuralink a brain-computer interface startup.

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Michigan Cofounder Stock Forecast 268

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 19, 2017

by Steve Owens, Founder and CTO of Finish Line Product Development Services. In this article we explore the unique challenges of a lean start-up and how Outsourced Product Development (OPD) can be used to overcome them. Reducing product turn time. Extending the runway. The Lean Start-Up Environment.

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Product Development Lean Developer Product 153

femgineer.com

JULY 18, 2010

HOME About the Femgineer Speaking Engagements Reading List Recruiting Startup Engineers With the startup market taking off, there is always a clamor to find good engineers, developers, and designers. Engineers love to build, solve tough problems, and make progress. When to start recruiting? Sweat equity or salary?

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Engineer Software Review Startup Technical Review 41

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 6, 2013

Quick summary: Be careful not to have too many co-founders. I don’t think VCs care as much about co-founders & economics as people think. Engineering is critical but it is not everything. Without strong PMs you build crappy products that nobody needs or that real people can’t use. For the wrong reasons.

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Cofounder Early Stage Startup Silicon Valley 388

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

But, you need to build that first product right. On the other side of the equation, there are a growing number of design, development, and digital media shops who are hungry to expand, or swap focus, to building a company that’s more than just a service shop. Others think the model can work.

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Software Developers Software Development Software Developer 60

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

Waterfall Development. While it sounds simple , the Build Measure Learn approach to product development is a radical improvement over the traditional Waterfall model used throughout the 20 th century to build and ship products. Waterfall Development was all about execution of the requirements document.

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Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? When we build products, we use a methodology. Steve Blank has devoted many years now to trying to answer that question, with a theory he calls Customer Development. a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit." Theory of market types.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Enter “ The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses “, a New York Times bestseller by founder of IMVU (creator of 3D avatars) Eric Ries. There are principally three engines of growth in any startup. This reduces guesswork, time, money and effort.

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Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Of course, their answer is that the second intends to get to market faster, but every engine has limits regardless the fuel applied. For example, a software development startup raising $250,000 from angel investors better be able to operate on $25,000 per month. Social media is not rocket science. The timing of cash flow is everything.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 1, 2019

by Gaurav Gupta , Founder of Square Boat. But wanting to materialize a product or service and sustaining its operations are two different things. also lets you chart your product roadmaps by setting a product strategy, collaborating with the product and engineering teams, and creating visual roadmaps.

Software Review 113

Software Review Startup Azure SEO 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. I have personally sold many copies of his book, and continue to recommend it as one of the most important books a startup founder can read.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink. Is it that some CEOs are better than others? Are their people smarter?

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Incubator Lean Agile Business Model 402

Mucker Lab

MAY 28, 2020

This post originally appeared in TechCrunch back in 2015, written by our co-founder and managing partner Erik Rannala. Like a teenager with a million-dollar allowance and an identity crisis, a startup with too much capital and no product-market fit will become capable of making larger mistakes. How do you know you have it? It’s an art.

Startup 78

Startup Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Review 78

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. What I saw reminded me of some of the best and worst things I did as a founder. We’re building the wrong product!” Some of the engineers figuring if the founder was declaring they were toast in 90 days were updating their resumes.

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Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 316

The Next Web

DECEMBER 2, 2013

Could $100,000 and the right developer skills make you an overnight billionaire? How much does it really take to build a product like Twitter or Instagram? But a good developer could make it quicker.”. Werdelin equates building a successful product to building a nightclub. 1) Twitter. 3) Facebook.

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Cost San Francisco New York City Ruby 168

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 19, 2015

That’s why I recommend that they find a co-founder who loves business challenges, including marketing and finance. I usually envision a 50-50 ownership split for their efforts, but every engineer believes the technology side deserves the majority share. Most founders bootstrap product development.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Intellectual Property Cofounder Bootstrapping 120

View from Seed

MARCH 24, 2021

” Below are our favorite pieces from the past few years, divided in to a few key categories: fundraising, company building, product development, industry trends, and the life of a VC. Doing Reference Checks on VCs “Try to speak to at least one founder that the investor has worked with in a failed investment.

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Seed Stage Hiring IPO Analytics 177

blog.wepay.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

» 6 Things a Non-Engineer Should Know Before Founding a Web Startup By Rich Aberman Despite the obvious look of shock and panic on the faces of my WePay teammates, I recently committed my first lines of production code. I’m not trying to become a developer. So, without further ado, what I’ve learned: Don’t be Helpless.

Engineer 53

Engineer Software Review Web Technical Review 53

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 13, 2009 The Principles of Product Development Flow If youve ever wondered why agile or lean development techniques work, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen is the book for you.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. It consists of a highly intelligent and opinionated founder – Nick Halstead. In his spare time he raised nearly $30 million. Always seek input.

Advisory Board 365

Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Version One Ventures

AUGUST 26, 2016

With that said, here are some general guidelines I have developed over the years for building a management team. Founders should focus their time and efforts on the areas that create the most value. When debating whether to hire in one area versus another, you should prioritize based on founders’ interest/knowledge in certain areas.

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Part-Time VPE Management Finance Vertical 60

blog.wepay.com

APRIL 28, 2010

» 6 Things a Non-Engineer Should Know Before Founding a Web Startup By Rich Aberman Despite the obvious look of shock and panic on the faces of my WePay teammates, I recently committed my first lines of production code. I’m not trying to become a developer. So, without further ado, what I’ve learned: Don’t be Helpless.

Engineer 53

Engineer Software Review Web Technical Review 53

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 9, 2010 Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# theory of management At any given time, something like four percent of the US population is engaged in some form of new-company-creation. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

ConversionXL

APRIL 13, 2017

Jonathan Price wrote on the same Quora thread that he believes growth marketing to differ from regular marketing because it “is technology-centric and it blurs the boundary between marketing and product development.” A growth team, however, is largely overlapped with product, engineering, and design as well.

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Analytics Engineer SEO Channel 99

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 28, 2022

My wife and I both worked as mechanical engineers, so we wanted a name that paid tribute to our profession. Momentum is a term that is highly related to engineering, as it relates to motion and dynamics. Our business name is a product of an online naming contest back when we were still starting. 9- A merger of two companies.

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Naming Entrepreneur Jordan Merger 144

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 1, 2008 Test-Driven Development as andon cord You cannot control what you cannot see, and the hardest part of managing software projects is that the final product is so intangible. These tests are written by the engineers themselves, and they must all pass every time.

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San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68