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.

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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!&#

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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.

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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. Or should you focus on user engagement or virality?

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San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

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. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

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Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

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!

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Startup Social Media RSS Social Network 79

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.

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San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 31, 2018

The awards focused on achievement in product development in the following areas: Deck Equipment & Hardware. Outboard Engines. Take advantage of the viral effects of digital marketing. Mechanical Systems. Electrical Systems. Boatyard and Dealer Hardware and Software. Propulsion Parts, Propellers. OEM Electronics.

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Social Media Viral Advertising Social Network 100

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially. Unfortunately, the challenges of scaling a business, and making it profitable, often last longer than the product development phase. Continually add new marketing and distribution partners.

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Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 120

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 28, 2010

It’s true that the carrier then gets their huge slice for being the billing and payment engine but the idea is that you as a website more than make up for this in terms of customer conversion. It is a platform to help brands building viral marketing campaigns. The investment will be used for product development initiatives.

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Venture Capital Cofounder Spain San Diego 270

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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.

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Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

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.

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

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. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

mashable.com

MARCH 7, 2011

Mashable | The Social Media Guide Viral Topics Twitter YouTube Facebook iPhone Google Video About Mashable Company About Us Advertise Submit News Contact Us Announcements Resources Guidebooks Lists How To Trending Twitter List Directory Mashable Awards Subscriptions Partners W3 EDGE Rackspace Concentric Sky Dynect DNS Intridea Welcome to Mashable!

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Developer HTML API Ruby 93

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.

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Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

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. Eric -- This is a pretty interesting idea.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

If you're working on the Sticky Engine of Growth , you're focused on very different metrics from those that you care about in the Viral Engine of Growth. Similarly, a two-sided marketplace cares about different things from a traditional e-commerce product. to 3% a month.

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Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

In existing companies, the goal of traditional product management and marketing is to develop a market-requirements document (MRD) for engineering that contains the sum of all possible customer feature requests, prioritized in a collaborative effort among Product Management, Marketing, Sales and Engineering.

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Customer Advisory Board Engineer Cofounder 119

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. Product development also occurs in small iterations or changes.

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Bootstrapping Global Startup Hungary 85

mashable.com

MAY 24, 2011

May 23, 2011 by Christina Warren 20 Share on Tumblr email share Share on Tumblr email share The Mobile App Trends Series is supported by Sourcebits , a leading product developer for mobile platforms. Sourcebits offers design and development services for iOS, Android, Mobile and Web platforms. ); // Welcome to Mashable!

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Mobile Web Social Media Software Review 90

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

Money to be used for hiring and additional product development. A social analytics platform for Facebook app developers and publishers that provides detailed demographic and engagement data. Offers virality optimization tools and A/B testing inside Facebook. -Currently has 1.8mm users and adding about 15,000 users/day.

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San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

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. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Seth Godin: How often should you publish?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

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. Tell us what youve learned in those different contexts.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

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. 90 Things I’ve Learned From Founding 4 Technology Companies. Traction begets more traction if you are able to jump on it.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

And a few words about Persistent Systems, an outsourced software product development (OPD) company that is navigating its next phase of evolution are also warranted. The game has started getting some traction already, and has a good virality index. It certainly will be a better way to bootstrap the company. SOCO Games.

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Dilution Revenue Finance Entrepreneur 114

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). .”

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Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

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. But this is incredibly hard to do, and most sites cannot do this at scale. Marketing first.

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Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

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. But this is incredibly hard to do, and most sites cannot do this at scale. Marketing first.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

Why vanity metrics are dangerous ► November (1) ► October (7) ► September (9) ► August (8) ► July (8) ► June (7) ► May (8) ► April (5) ► March (11) ► February (10) ► January (10) ▼ 2008 (59) ▼ December (6) Assessing fit with the Wisdom of Crowds Engagement loops: beyond viral (..)

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San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP. This is the simplest version of your product minus the frills and frosting. It’s a particularly popular strategy in the world of product development and is used to quickly and quantitatively test a product or a product feature.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

He , Srikanth Narayan , Ben Werdmuller von Elgg , Jo Vi Ko , Justin Lee , Giovanni Tardini , David de Weerdt , Vineet Thanedar , Ryan Brideau , Jonathan Meiri , Rob Weedn , Krzysztof Kowalczyk , Greg Pilling , Kevin Leland , Parham Michael Ossareh , Dan Loewenherz , Mary Specht , Engin Erdo?an "I am a creative guy with a startup idea."

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Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

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.

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San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Software By Rob

AUGUST 5, 2010

The knowledge that you need 10,000 hours to master a subject, that certain trends become viral after the 412th person adopts it, or that you should make your product remarkable, is not going to help you launch. Nor will it save you a single minute during product development, or sell one more copy of your application.

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Founder Startup Software Review Software 78

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

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. If the viral coefficient is 0.9, And if your product doesnt retain customers, whats the point of driving a bunch of them to use it? Pay attention to your fundamental driver of growth.

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San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

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?

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Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

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? January 28, 2009 1:54 AM startupcfo said. Thanks for adding to the discussion on freemium these days.

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