Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 22, 2009 Pivot, dont jump to a new vision In a lean startup , instead of being organized around traditional functional departments, we use a cross-functional problem team and solution team. Thats not the goal of a lean startup. It increases the runway without additional cash.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 15, 2008 The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time Split-testing is a core lean startup discipline, and its one of those rare topics that comes up just as often in a technical context as in a business-oriented one when Im talking to startups. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, January 4, 2009 Sharding for startups The most important aspect of a scalable web architecture is data partitioning. Imagine you want to store data about customers, each of whom has "last name" field in your database. But startups rarely have either luxury. Give each entity a name.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 13, 2009 The Principles of Product Development Flow If youve ever wondered why agile or lean development techniques work, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. For example, take the lean dictum of working in small batches.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

Yet startups rely on collective learning in order to find their way. I believe this is one reason why the myth of the dictatorial startup founder has such enduring appeal. Lean manufacturing , agile software development , and Theory of Constraints are all examples of this idea in action. The latter is actually more dangerous.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

(Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

The basic idea is to extend agile, which excels in situations where the problem is known but the solution is unknown, into areas of even greater uncertainty, such as your typical startup. Can this methodology be used for startups that are not exclusively about software? Talk about waste.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, July 2, 2009 How to conduct a Five Whys root cause analysis In the lean startup workshops , we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the technique of Five Whys. My intention is to describe a full working process, similar to what I’ve seen at IMVU and other lean startups.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Jim Murphy is a long-time agile practitioner in startups. But startups sometimes have trouble applying agile successfully. Embedded in that assumption is why startups fail. Notice that the unit of progress changes as we move from waterfall to agile to the lean startup. Enter Jims post.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

One of the most common questions I get about the lean startup methodology is, "but what about Steve Jobs ?" So how do you reconcile his success with the lean startup, which seems to suggest the opposite?" Plus, the premise of the question misunderstands the lean startup, too. It just wasnt great.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, June 5, 2009 It’s a startup, not a spreadsheet Some people, when they start to realize the power of using data to inform their decisions, become obsessed with optimization. Unfortunately, most decisions that confront startups lack a definitive right answer. But this is wrong, too.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

It’s also not a new technique here, we’ve been practicing continuous deployment for years; far longer than I’ve been a member of this startup. But, unfortunately, startups cant afford to adopt that standard. In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. But it worked.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

We would pretty much bid on any phrase that was "[name of competitive product] chat" and variations like that. Its now a technique I recommend for any web-based startup. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

For startups (and other innovators ), that’s a decisive advantage. The work itself, especially in startups, depends primarily on intelligence, communication, creativity and empathy. Their recent article suggests that startups led by women are actually more successful, on average, than those led by men.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

Since then, PHP (as part of the LAMP stack ) has really been the dominant development platform, at least in the free software and startup worlds. Some of them are probably still cursing my name, because - lets face it - PHP can be pretty painful. As a language, its inelegant. This post is about why.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This theory has become so influential that I have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. I highly recommend this book for all entrepreneurs, in startups as well as in big companies. Heres the catch. Theory of market types.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

It’s easy to overestimate the impact of this kind of traffic because it just feels good to have your name and company featured. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. It strokes your ego. Expo SF (May. .

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Of the techniques he mentioned, I think four are fundamental and critical for any lean startup: TDD (or the even more politely named TATFT ) Continuous integration Automate your deployments Collect statistics The tools to help you do these things are getting better and better every day, but dont confuse tools with process.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned quite a few of these, including these most important ones: having engineers post on the forums in their own name when they make a change routinely split-testing new changes routinely conducting in-person usability tests and interviews Net Promoter Score Each of these techniques is fundamentally bottoms-up.

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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. After all, our startup is on a fixed budget.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

I hope to show why lean and agile techniques actually reduce the negative impacts of technical debt and increase our ability to take advantage of its positive effects. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage.

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Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem) Lean startups don’t optimize. When people (ok, engineers) who have been trained in this model enter most startups, they quickly get confused. In Google’s case, often in the millions of people.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue?

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# A successful startup strives for this latter case. Successful startups don’t.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? In fact, in most situations its a bad idea for startups to synchronize these events. Most startups arent so fortunate. My answer is almost always the same: dont.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Ash Maurya is the founder of WiredReach , a bootstrapped startup that he has been running for seven years. Recently, he was bitten by the lean startup bug and has started writing about his experiences attempting to apply lean startup and customer development principles. Expo SF (May.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

All I see is a name, an icon, a price, the developers name, and a review star-rating. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Ironically, meetings like this had given data and experimentation a bad name inside this company. Ironically, meetings like this had given data and experimentation a bad name inside this company. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What a waste. And who can blame them?

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

When I work with startups on improving engagement, I really try to emphasize the importance of their most powerful lever: positioning. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 You dont need as many tools as you think Im always excited to see someone else writing about lessons learned from their startup, and wanted to link today to Untitled - Startup Lessons Learned -- Take it with a grain of salt. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

No, I am the troll who who stood proudly on the APC until a man who was nothing more than an egotistical and maniacal bully named Clifford Hicks proved once and for all that IMVU only cared about IMVU - and not its community. It's nice to "see" that human beings are actually behind a name. I'm not just any troll.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, February 7, 2010 Tell your Startup Visa story Ive been promising big Startup Visa -related news on Twitter for a few weeks. Weve created a place where you can tell your Startup Visa story anonymously if youd like. There is news, its very exciting, and I still cant share it. Soon, I promise.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Or take a recent TechCrunch article about a startup I wont name: “X billion messages sent since June 2009.&# Or take a recent TechCrunch article about a startup I wont name: “X billion messages sent since June 2009.&# The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, December 7, 2008 Getting started with split-testing One of the startup founders I work with asked me a smart question recently, and I thought Id share it. Split-testing, like almost everything in a lean startup , requires judgment. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 132

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 6, 2015

When I counsel startup entrepreneurs I give them my blunt dose of reality, “If you can’t easily identify target leads who have a problem you can solve then hang up your cleats – you’re not going to succeed.” I think that’s where many startups and even VC funds go wrong. Why Buy Anything ?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 31, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 31, 2009 A new way to recruit for (and find) startup jobs In my work, I come across a lot of great startups. Similarly, I get pinged by many colleagues, friends, and fans who are looking to find a job with a startup. Great startups are always hiring, if the fit is right.

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