Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. I have counseled innumerable entrepreneurs to change their focus to revenue, and many companies who refuse this advice get themselves into trouble by running out of iterations. And what of the product development team?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

If its part of a viral loop, its probably trying to get them to invite more friends (on average). This gets me into trouble, because it conjures up for some the idea that product development is simply a rote mechanical exercise of linear optimization. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

This partnership speaks to a core philosophy of the program where we encourage entrepreneurs to get as much customer validation as possible before raising too much money, use other people's channels if you can get to them, don't burn too much cash, and all that good fiscal conservative stuff. LetsGiftIt. SOCO Games. Photo by nosheep.

Dilution 114

Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. Seems like a fairly low-cost method of gauging customer interest for a would-be product. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 29, 2020

There has never been a viral outbreak of such magnitude before. Your data will be ordered and structured into information based on specific niches like engineering and construction, finance, technology, and business. A solopreneur is essentially an entrepreneur who does not hire any staff. Draw up a budget.

Bootstrapping 85

Bootstrapping Global Startup Hungary 85

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

He didn’t tell it in the video but, ever the entrepreneur, Scott started a business to take couples up on a “mile high club&# flight on airplanes as a way of getting all of his miles logged to get his next class of airplane license that required a certain number of hours logged. It’s part of what makes him so likable.

San Francisco 248

San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth. There are a number of other variables here like virality (the chances of a user referring another user), but I don’t want to overcomplicate things. Apr-15: Head of Marketing (growth team). .”

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Unit economics are something I’ve found most entrepreneurs (and investors!) As always, there are exceptions: if you build a viral consumer product (such as an Instagram) where people are just coming to your site / app in droves at no cost to you, then you’ve got a great business. Product second.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

Unit economics are something I’ve found most entrepreneurs (and investors!) As always, there are exceptions: if you build a viral consumer product (such as an Instagram) where people are just coming to your site / app in droves at no cost to you, then you’ve got a great business. Product second.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

This model has not translated well to the world of social networking, because customers of social networks engage sites in a different way than customers of search engines. If you ask an expert in Facebook apps to come help build yours, youll usually hear the same advice: build your app for virality. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

In a previous post , I covered the three main drivers of growth: Paid, Sticky, and Viral. A minimum viable product in this category must answer the question: does my media content or channel command the attention of a valuable audience? Let’s look at a viral growth company, like Facebook. As soon as possible!&#

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join.

Viral 140

Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

At a high level, anything that drives virality should be free. To take your specific example about virality - why do we want to have more users sign up? Is it that they act as free advertising for our premium product? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. If your app has strong word-of-mouth or viral components, your retention drives new acquisition, and its not so important to have good placement in the store. Labels: iPhone , search engine marketing 3comments: Th.Khangs said.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive. Those companies who have learned to build apps that optimize the viral loop dominate in every category where they compete. So far, I dont see any apps that have much in the way of viral distribution. Labels: iPhone , search engine marketing 3comments: Blake Engel said.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

” April, 2012 – Andrew Chen writes Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing , which goes viral (2.4K Now, people begin defining growth hacking as a process, a systematic approach, a “viral loop”, etc. An Epic List of 100 Growth Hacks for Startups by Search Engine Journal. How Is Growth Hacking Defined Today?

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

This is a common problem that results from viral-loop optimization. By copying the exact same registration flow as every other successful viral app, many viral apps completely lose their positioning. Heres why I dont think engagement loops are that helpful: unlike viral loops, its not bad if its not self-sustaining.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

The first few changes, like a price change, may not require a lot of engineering effort. But they require coordination across departments – engineering, marketing, customers service. The team was adept at responding to changes in direction from the product owner, and always delivered quality code.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. When people (ok, engineers) who have been trained in this model enter most startups, they quickly get confused. I understand and respect why optimizers want to do tests like that.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

In a few cases, they are clearly smart people in a bad situation, and Ive written about their pain in The product managers lament and The engineering managers lament. And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time! Hire a CTO or VP Engineering.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

To give you a better idea of what entrepreneurs in this industry are thinking about during each phase of the startup process, I interviewed SaaS entrepreneurs from all over the world, including our own COO Noah Parsons. Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. Keep core development in-house.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Theoretically, i can visualize the Continuous Integration as RAD ( Rapid action development) along with iterative method, which we used to study in Software Engineering's Process model. We, the s/w engineer have to rethink about the solution, the code which need to change, which would reflect the right change.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Many great engineers Ive worked with (especially the type I talked about in the hackers lament ) seem to think that if they get along well with someone in an interview, theyll be a good addition to the team. I experienced this when I was the engineering manager at a small company. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Either way, you would have been better off focusing your split-test on high level metrics that measure how much customers like your product as a whole. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

mashable.com

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

While all of these factors are true to an extent, the truth of the matter is that the reduced costs of hardware and software are easily offset by the expense of engineers and experienced business people. Nearly all of your costs will be headcount, primarily in the engineering department. Sign in with Facebook or Twitter to get started!

Startup 79

Startup Social Media RSS Social Network 79

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

" Web Development Startups Solo Founders I am a creative guy with a startup idea. Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life? 5 Comments 30 Answers Tristan Kromer , I help entrepreneurs find co-founders. Developer, engineer, CTO, or technical co-founder? Rockstar v.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Figuring this out takes time, and few entrepreneurs have the patience to wait it out, because the business plan does such a good job of explaining what customers are going to think. If the product needs to be tweaked just a little bit in order to convert users into customers, you want to figure that out before the launch.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

Editor's note : This is the second in a two-part excerpt from the book The Startup Owner’s Manual , a step-by-step how-to guide for entrepreneurs. Marketing or Product Management hosts focus groups, analyzes sales data from the field, and looks at customer feature requests and complaints. They understand they have a problem.

Customer 119

Customer Advisory Board Engineer Cofounder 119

Software By Rob

AUGUST 5, 2010

Join nearly 6,000 startup entrepreneurs by subscribing to my RSS feed. The Gladwell Effect Every entrepreneur has read at least one book in the “ Gladwell / Godin &# genre. Nor will it save you a single minute during product development, or sell one more copy of your application. Also a student of reading.

Founder 78

Founder Startup Software Review Software 78

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

It has been awesome, flattering, and humbling to see that post went viral and has been seen by so many thousands of people — mainly aspiring entrepreneurs — and has been translated into many languages. I write this stuff in hope that it helps other entrepreneurs. If you cannot gain traction in 1 year, pivot.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

I see that as an important producer of "energy" and can push up productivity. Perhaps you should think of putting these posts, when they have grown, together into an ebook, a manifesto for growing entrepreneurs? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 74

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Since I first started writing about vanity metrics , I’ve met more and more entrepreneurs who are struggling with a simple question: how can I tell a vanity metric when I see it? Even worse, entrepreneurs are faced with a constant barrage of vanity metrics from competitors and other companies engaged in PR. Is that really news?

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Lean Startup Circle - a mailing list of dedicated and helpful entrepreneurs. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 132