Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 3, 2009 Employees should be masters of their own time Every startup should have a culture of learning. The rule is simple: every employee is 100% responsible for how they spend their time. The suggestion is that you implement one single company-wide rule. I asked why.

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Austin Startup

JANUARY 25, 2020

So after the prototype, I took my rideshare & delivery earnings (I had taken up driving on the side before and after my after-school job to fill the money blanks) and threw it into product development to get something truly functional, a test version. That’s when I began to think of New York. it was now clickable!

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David Teten

AUGUST 19, 2019

I’ve been a traditional equity VC for 8 years, and I’m now researching new business models in venture capital. RBI normally requires founders to pay back their investors with a fixed percentage of revenue until they have finished providing the investor with a fixed return on capital, which they agree upon in advance. Decathlon Capital.

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Duct Tape Marketing

APRIL 27, 2022

Prior to joining Facebook, he was the president of Digital, News, Business, and Sports Properties at Time Inc. John also spent several years at The New York Times Company at NYTimes.com running strategy, marketing, and operations. There is a founder called Priscilla side. John Jantsch (02:08): Yeah. Very early on.

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mashable.com

JUNE 11, 2013

Perhaps the team is working on a product that really isnt that great or useful. Or maybe the co-founders have a poisonous relationship that will hinder the companys growth. Maybe they never thought about product-market fit. Check out the tips below from founders, CEOs and investors alike. Leave it in the comments.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Insist on the incredibly high-IQ employees and hold them to incredibly high standards. Build a truly mainstream product. It never generated positive returns for its investors, and most of its employees walked away dejected. This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development. Mission accomplished.

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Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 24, 2017

As we continue to grow as a company, we will strive to remain a great place where our employees love to work. I’m no stranger to startups, having launched my digital marketing agency Creative Click Media from the ground up in 2011, but tackling an ecommerce yoga business was a completely new entrepreneurial adventure for me.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. I believe this is one reason why the myth of the dictatorial startup founder has such enduring appeal.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Customer development is a parallel process to product development, which means that you dont have to give up on your dream. Our goal in product development is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers. Instead, we do everything possible to validate the founders belief.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. In fact, this company hasn’t shipped any new products in months.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Ever since that time, I have struggled to explain how the feedback loop in customer development should interface with the feedback loop in product development. In a project like that there are lots of big questions that need to be answered in order to build a working product. Thats pretty clear.

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David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

incubators, e.g., the many options in New York. intrapreneurs, e.g., the employee of GE who is tasked with launching a new business. What are the terms of their relationship with the founder? mentor VCs, e.g., most VCs. accelerators, e.g., Dreamit, ER Accelerator, Techstars, Y Combinator. What are the timelines?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

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. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

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. So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?"

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I am convinced one of Joel Spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the Joel Test , a checklist of 12 essential practices that you could use to rate the effectiveness of a software product development team. Do new candidates write code during their interview?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

Andy Mathieson, a founder and managing member at Fairview Capital , was particularly supportive. With 21 employees today, kaChing is devoted to recruiting professional managers and finding product/market fit , first for money managers, then for consumers. The response was surprisingly positive.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

For example, I often cite a real example of a problem that has as its root cause a new employee who was not properly trained. I pick that example on purpose, for two reasons: 1) most of the companies I work with deal with this problem and yet 2) almost none of them have any kind of training program in place for new employees.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

The same has been true of an unfortunate number of startups, they manage to generate a lot of hype, raise a lot of money, and sometimes make some of their investors, employees, or founders rich. Use some customer development to find out. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 19, 2009 Support the Startup Founders Visa with a tweet Its been an exhilarating first day here in Washington DC for the Geeks on a Plane tour. We can remedy it by creating a special visa for startup founders. I think the benefits are a no-brainer. 2gov.org will take care of the rest.

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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. Good luck, engineering manager. It was painful for a lot of people.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

On the one hand, it gives you insight into what kind of employee the candidate might be. The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. Still, a startup product development team is a service organization.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

The full formula works like this: runway = cash on hand / burn rate # iterations = runway / speed of each iteration Very few successful companies ended up in the same exact business that the founders thought theyd be in (see Founders at Work for dozens of examples). A checklist of practices in the new Joel Test for Startups.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Every startup has a chance to change the world, by bringing not just a new product, but an entirely new institution into existence. That institution will touch many people in its life: customers, investors, employees, and everyone they touch as well. Your thoughts resonate and I enjoy much your writing style.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Anyone who has worked in a real-world product development team can tell you how utopian that sounds. They had their own private forum, and a company founder (aka me) personally ran the group in its early days. Anyone who has worked in a real-world product development team can tell you how utopian that sounds.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2009

► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Join the Lean Startup discussion at Web 2.0

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

We eventually discovered (via five whys ) that we also had to get each new employee acculturated to a fearless way of thinking. Because this was such a big cultural change for most new employees, we didnt leave them to sink or swim on their own. For people we hired from larger companies especially, this was challenging.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

We pitch to potential partners, vendors, publishers, conferences, employees, and even lawyers. Its different from selling a product, because it is not part of our regular business practice, is not something that relates to our core competence, and tends not to happen in a repeatable and scalable way. is this team the one to back?

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. I think Drucker said it best.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

For startups that are tempted to mimic this behavior, I suggest reading the great account of the early Apple in Founders at Work.) Also SJ's obsession with better taste (positively) contributes to the overall product development process. The videos are Steve explaining the company's path forward to Next employees.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

When we finally did launch the company, even though our product had grown and changed significantly, Wired didnt cover it. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, the works. Founders push for it. In some ways, founders are even worse. Combining agile development with customer developm.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Join the Lean Startup discussion at Web 2.0

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mashable.com

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

I’m now in my second founder/CEO role, having raised more than $18.5 For example, my company decided early on to hire a UI designer, which has helped tremendously with our product development. In fact, I encourage everyone — even my own employees — to target a business passion that will make them happy and wealthy.

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bhargreaves.com

MARCH 7, 2010

Many capable founders aren’t developers, and I frequently meet with entrepreneurs that have taken a very different path. Most disturbingly, I’ve occasionally found myself agreeing with an entrepreneur’s decision to hire a development shop to build their product. link] Michael Schubert @Nivi I concur.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. Instead, five whys kept leading to problems caused by an improperly trained new employee, and wed make a small adjustment.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Thats all helpful for recruiting, retaining, and ramping-up a new employee. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. You dont have to guess who their mentor will be.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

They are leaders, visionaries, founders and managers having tremendous success. Not to be outdone, the technologists on the team had also brought their big guns, and the meeting was packed with employees of every level – from VP’s all the way down to me. Yet talent organized improperly can lead to failure.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

It has to balance competing goals of establishing clear ownership, while avoiding talented employees getting stuck. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

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