Agile VC

JUNE 5, 2011

So Groupon obviously filed their S-1 the other day to formally being the IPO process. It also puts another chink in the armor of the meme that monster internet companies can only be built in Silicon Valley (LivingSocial, Kayak, Gilt Groupe, CSN Stores, et al doing damage here too). AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups.

North America 100

North America Chicago Boston Silicon Valley 100

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. ► 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.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

Reinertsen weaves together ideas from lean manufacturing, maneuver warfare, queuing theory, and even the architecture of computer operating systems and the Internet. If we showed the Toyota Production System to an Internet protocol engineer, it is likely that he would remark, "That is a tail-dropping FIFO queue.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 7, 2013

They’re using metrics that are often unworkable in the current business environment, causing growing businesses to look elsewhere for capital and increasingly towards alternative forms of financing. Case in point: It took Amazon six years to earn a dime, during which it consumed huge amounts of venture funding and issued an IPO.

Advisory Board 249

Advisory Board Entrepreneur Portland Oregon 249

500hats.com

AUGUST 2, 2012

While a flood of new VCs came into existence during the late 90’s internet boom, many had difficulty raising new funds after the crashes of 2000-2001 and 2008 , and as a result significantly fewer fund managers exist now compared to a decade ago. Mega VC, Micro VC.

Silicon Valley 74

Silicon Valley Early Stage Venture Capital Valuation 74

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. For my first time, it was scalability problems and our operations team. why didnt operations get paged? How do you get started with five whys?

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

reidhoffman.org

NOVEMBER 12, 2013

the consumer internet landscape in 2004 vs. today. In 2004, the consumer internet was just beginning to rebound. In 2004, investors regained interest in the consumer internet again. And remember, LinkedIn was a consumer internet play with moderate consumer traction and without a dime of revenue. Reid Hoffman.

Entrepreneur 111

Entrepreneur Revenue Viral Networking 111

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

► 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. The visionary’s lament The Superbowl ad test Lo, my 57692 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

That’s because many of our reports feed us vanity metrics: numbers that make us look good but don’t really help make decisions. Yet even among those who have access to good actionable metrics, I’ve noticed a phenomenon that prevents taking maximum advantage of data. Too much of this data is non- actionable.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

And instead of design, engineering, QA, and operations we have a solution team implementing a startup-centric version of agile development. dalelarson : "Metrics are people, too." leanstartup ericnsantos : #w2e #leanstartup Metrics should be Actionable, Accessible and Auditable. Metrics are a key questions startups face.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations. When operating with continuous deployment, its almost impossible to have integration conflicts. In my experience, a few hours of coding is enough to produce a viable batch and is worth checking in and deploying. Small batches reduce overhead.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Indeed the first thing I thought when I read the first paragraphs that the product manager was operating in a white tower and that the developers felt disenfranchised. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. ► 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.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

In management jobs related to operations – that is, the people tasked with actually making and distributing physical products – this kind of thinking is now considered ludicrous, thanks to a century of progress. Probably not; it’s much easier to blame the particular person who made the mistakes.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

► 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. The visionary’s lament The Superbowl ad test Lo, my 57692 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

► 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. The visionary’s lament The Superbowl ad test Lo, my 57692 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

This is another sub-optimization caused by incentivizing the wrong metric. For example, lets say you dont have an operations team, and so youre still getting paged late at night when servers crash. Is it time to make your first operations hire? This is a variant of the time-quality-money fallacy , and it is not necessarily true.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 22, 2008 Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to measure customer satisfaction Ive mentioned Net Promoter Score (NPS) in a few previous posts, but havent had a chance to describe it in detail yet. Of everything we measured, it was Net Promoter Score that plunged first.

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

I understand why people would think that a consumer internet service like IMVU isnt really mission critical. You can train your operations or customer service staff on how it works - all live in the production environment. Monitoring of real-world metrics. Monitoring of real-world metrics. Or variations thereof.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

This is going to be BIG.

MAY 26, 2022

You’d like to believe the world is completely meritocratic—that you’ll put your heads down to work on your company, hit all your metrics, and just show up on the doorstep of a VC firm who will just be bowled over at the fantastic little company you’ve created. What are those people finding when they poke around your internet presence?

Founder 104

Founder .Net Term Sheet Aggregator 104

Cracking the Code

FEBRUARY 27, 2009

Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Great companies have been founded during downturns and Bessemer sees a lot of investment opportunity in the current market environment," said Ed Colloton, Chief Operating Officer of Bessemer Venture Partners. internet. (6).

Software Review 48

Software Review Partner United States Venture Capital 48

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Maybe operations has changed the OS configuration in production in a way that is incompatible with some developers change. ► 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.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Have you met that prickly operations guy who seems to love servers more than people (but would never let them fail on his watch)? ► 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.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 9, 2020

This was supposed to be Airbnb's biggest year by many measures, including its IPO, which was one of the most anticipated since the 2008 financial crisis. 20:32) On believing in the internet as an immune system, then learning it's not and taking responsibility.(22:55) One by one the markets in which you operate shut down.

Silicon Valley 60

Silicon Valley Hosting Cofounder Employee 60

Reid Hoffman

JANUARY 13, 2021

Now, that may end up being a logistics network, that may end up being a kind of transport network in a way that they operate. In fact, when you look at it, you say, “Ok, well, what are the early-stage consumer internet investments?” There wasn’t like an IPO – this amazing IPO that just happened. I was wrong.”

Incubator 36

Incubator IPO Networking Cofounder 36

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Compared to the million-dollar startup, they are operating at micro-scale. Time-to-complete-a-sale is not a bad metric for validated learning at this stage. Thank you for your simple, insightful explanation of why that is the wrong metric to use. How does that stack up?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

Some questions have a natural escalation path (like working through the standard operations on a linked-list) and others require some more creativity. Any of these answers can work, and depending on what they choose, it usually makes sense to keep probing along these lines: which operations are the most expensive?

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

► 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. The visionary’s lament The Superbowl ad test Lo, my 57692 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

When youve mastered that, consider adding operations, customer service, marketing, product management, business development - the idea is that when the team needs to get approval or support from another department, they already have an "insider" who can make it happen. I rcommend you try building a cross-functional team and see what happens.

San Francisco 74

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 74

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 26, 2012

There used to be the Four Horsemen of the IPO world, back in the '80s and '90s. They all went away; they got rolled up in 1999 and 2000 into these too-big-to-fail banking operations," Davidson tells us. When they exited the scene, the small IPO market followed suit. Brown & Sons, Montgomery Securities. The question is why?

IPO 115

IPO Stock San Francisco Lean 115

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

► 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. The visionary’s lament The Superbowl ad test Lo, my 57692 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Reid Hoffman

JUNE 8, 2021

Airbnb was preparing for an IPO right when the pandemic hit, and everything changed in a matter of days. And all of the other smart and operational decisions that have enabled Airbnb to weather the storm and go on to have one of the most successful public market debuts. Obviously, the challenges of 2020 were next level.

Silicon Valley 69

Silicon Valley Hosting Rhode Island Design 69

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

When I was a kid, the way I logged onto the internet for the first time (to play MUDs, naturally) was through an open dial-up console at San Diego State University. No logins, no codes, just raw uncensored internet access. these devices all need human instruction to enable correct and desired operation.

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Cracking the Code

OCTOBER 10, 2008

Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Save Asia for post-IPO Single instance, multi-tenant, single datacenter - Have only one version of the code in production. Effectively measuring and understanding your CAC and CLTV metrics are key to future success.

Software Review 48

Software Review North America Europe Metrics 48

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

As a consumer internet company with millions of customers, it may seem to have little relevancy for an enterprise software company with only a handful of potential customers, or a computer security company whose customers demand a rigorous audit before accepting a new release. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

The idea was that these two people would operate as a unit, with the mentors job performance during this period evaluated by the performance of the new person. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

Continuous Deployment 131

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 13, 2010 The Superbowl ad test I am a firm believer in the danger of vanity metrics , numbers that give the illusion of progress but often mask the true relationship between cause and effect. Vanity metrics are generally bigger. Vanity metrics. The solution? Is that really news?

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154