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. Yet startups rely on collective learning in order to find their way. I understand this fear.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

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.

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

It was one of those brilliant startup brainstorms that comes to the team in a flash, with a giant thunderclap. We spent weeks working on this new product, racing the clock so it would be done in time for the real presidential debates. So, if youre interested in helping avoid mistakes like that, here are the steps: Get a domain name.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. Jim Murphy is a long-time agile practitioner in startups. But startups sometimes have trouble applying agile successfully. Enter Jims post.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

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. First of all, why split-test?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

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 batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now A great checklist of techniques and tools for making your development more agile, written from a Rail perspective. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

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.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

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.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

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.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

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. Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing. Its now a technique I recommend for any web-based startup. I just came across this post. Expo SF (May. .

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

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?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

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. Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 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.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

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. You can learn about customer development, and quite a bit more, in Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Heres the catch.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

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. First, a caveat.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

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. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. That’s right.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

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 ?" He doesnt put out crappy, buggy products and then ask for feedback. So how do you reconcile his success with the lean startup, which seems to suggest the opposite?" And he doesnt shy away from big-bang launch events.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage. In a startup, we should take full advantage of our options, even if they feel dirty or riddled with technical debt. Leverage product development with open source and third parties.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

The key to successful integration of customer feedback is to make each kind of collection part of the regular company discipline of building and releasing products. Anyone who has worked in a real-world product development team can tell you how utopian that sounds. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

Advisory Board 151

Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

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.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Even with only a few months of development, third parties have crammed every single category in the store full of apps. 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?

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Ironically, meetings like this had given data and experimentation a bad name inside this company. Why was a team this smart, this disciplined, and this committed to waste-free product development creating so much waste? Ironically, meetings like this had given data and experimentation a bad name inside this company.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Fundamentally, lean startups do more with less, because they systematically find and eliminate waste that slows down value creation. I want to talk specifics, and when you come right down to it, most technology startups dont have a very interesting cost structure. As a mentor of mine always says, "Startups dont starve, they drown."

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

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.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

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.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 68

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? Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. In fact, in most situations its a bad idea for startups to synchronize these events.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

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.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

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. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

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.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

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.

San Francisco 118

San Francisco DC Startup Lean 118

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.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158

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

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 132

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.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Startup Continuous Deployment 68

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?

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

In the summer of 1999, I started working on a startup from my college dorm. All the good domain names were taken, all the good ideas were being implemented. If Id bought just a handful of the "best of the rest" domain names that were available at the time (for a whopping $70 each), I probably could have just retired right then.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94