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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. Unfortunately, positioning our product as an "IM add-on" was a complete mistake.

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

Startup Lessons Learned

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." You get increasing growth by optimizing the viral loop , and you get revenue as a side-effect, assuming you have even the most anemic monetization scheme baked into your product.

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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. One that is powered by three drivers, each of which is a part of a major trend: The use of platforms enabled by open source and free software. What are the characteristics of a lean startup?

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Lessons Learned: What does a startup CTO actually do?

Startup Lessons Learned

So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering. But since I spent a long time in a hybrid CTO/VP Engineering role, I still have this nagging question. If not, whos going to insist we switch to free and open source software? I mean, have you seen other people? They might do anything ! Heres my take.

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eCommerce: A VC Story [guest post]

VC Cafe

They are accustomed to more frictionless buying, easier payments, smarter recommendation engines, sharper display (product images, 3D, HD), short fulfillment time, and excellent customer service. Just look at the history of computer hardware retail, for example, in considering the potential for other eCommerce sectors.

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The Cost Equation for a Startup is Better Than Ever

Startup Professionals Musings

I come from a high-tech software background, and only a few years ago, it would cost at least a million dollars ($1M) for a team of professionals to produce any commercial software product. 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.

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Lessons Learned: Just-In-Time Scalability

Startup Lessons Learned

Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? SEM on five dollars a day Andrew Chen: Growing renewable audiences Marc Prensky's Weblog: Cell Phones in Class A new version of the Joel Test (draft) Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your c. Seth Godin: How often should you publish?