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Praying to the God of Valuation

Both Sides of the Table

The browser and thus the WWW and the first Internet businesses were born circa 1994–95 and there was a golden period where anything seemed possible. And then in the late 90’s money crept in, swept in to town by public markets, instant wealth and an absurd sky-rocketing of valuations based on no reasonable metrics. It was 1991.

Valuation 466
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Why vanity metrics are dangerous

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why vanity metrics are dangerous In a previous post, I defined two kinds of metrics: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. In this post, Id like to talk about the perils of vanity metrics. My personal favorite vanity metrics is "hits."

Metrics 167
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Founder personalities and the “first-class man” theory of management

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 9, 2010 Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# theory of management At any given time, something like four percent of the US population is engaged in some form of new-company-creation. Are we solving the right problem? We can do better by focusing on process instead of personality.

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Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond"

Startup Lessons Learned

► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco. The visionary’s lament The Superbowl ad test Lo, my 57692 subscribers, who are you?

Agile 99
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Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Startup Lessons Learned

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

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The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business Review)

Startup Lessons Learned

As start-ups scale, this agility will be lost unless the founders maintain a consistent investment in that discipline. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Techniques from lean manufacturing can be part of a startups innovation culture. Speed up or slow down?

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Lessons Learned: The lean startup

Startup Lessons Learned

I am somewhat of an expert in this having created one of the first pioneering labs and incubators in the Internet era, from N AZ where the normal course of action was to prove lean ventures with our retirement only to see them copied by deeper pockets on the coasts when we went searching for capital. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco.

Lean 168