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Lessons Learned: Customer Development Engineering

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Ive attempted to embed the relevant slides below. Talk about waste.

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Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Startup Lessons Learned

In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc. For example, its always nice to have someone constantly optimizing your SEM accounts, driving down your CPA. But its not really viral growth, even when its exponential.

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Lessons Learned: The lean startup

Startup Lessons Learned

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

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Lessons Learned: Test-Driven Development as andon cord

Startup Lessons Learned

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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?

Startup Lessons Learned

When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. If not, whos going to insist we switch to free and open source software?

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The Cost Equation for a Startup is Better Than Ever

Startup Professionals Musings

Now, with open source software components, and low-cost development tools, the same job can be done by one good hacker for a few thousand dollars. Do basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Marketing (SEM) yourself. Skip the IT consultants and build an entry website yourself to save $50K. Sales and marketing costs.

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Lessons Learned: Just-In-Time Scalability

Startup Lessons Learned

After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Seth Godin: How often should you publish?