Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 6, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan On August 20, Eric will sit down with developer and Hut8Labs co-founder Dan Milstein for a webcast you can join to discuss “Getting Engineers Into the Lean Startup Cycle.” This conversation will be a great opportunity for engineers and engineering managers to learn more about implementing Lean Startup ideas.

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 7, 2017

Two conditions that do matter to your startup’s out-year viability are the cost and length of its product development cycle. Startup founders counting the days until break-even or actively seeking outside capital must focus on streamlining their development cycles. Focus on Your Minimum Viable Product. Stay Lean and Low.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2012

To celebrate the debut of the Japan edition of “The Startup Owner’s Manual” and to express great thanks to Steve and his co-author Bob Dorf, I would like to reflect back what first drew me to this book and offer Steve’s worldwide readers a look at the progress of Customer Development and the Lean LaunchPad class in Japan.

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Japan Customer Development Developer Customer 292

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 2, 2019

Most of you aspiring entrepreneurs have no idea how dramatically your own role has to evolve as you develop a solution, start a business, and expect it to scale into a successful self-managed company. Thus my job as a small business advisor really is really more about getting you developed than perfecting the business.

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Leadership Technical Review Cofounder Social Media 248

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 3, 2022

This philosophy comes from The Lean Startup methodology , which relies on testing hypotheses to better understand your customers’ pain points and goals. It outlines four major growth strategies: market penetration , market development , product development , and diversification. Product development.

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Marketing Framework Metrics Channel 115

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

This post describes how following the traditional product development can lead to a “startup death spiral.&# In the next posts that follow, I’ll describe how this model’s failures led to the Customer Development Model – offering a new way to approach startup sales and marketing activities.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 224

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 12, 2018

The “valley of death” is a common term in the startup world, referring to the difficulty of covering the negative cash flow in the early stages of a startup, before their new product or service is bringing in revenue from real customers. Consider licensing your product or intellectual property, and “white labeling.”

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Intellectual Property Technical Review Startup Incubator 134

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 1, 2021

Do they have better sales, marketing, or product development groups? What the winners start with is the realization that in a world of continuous disruption, they have only a few years to develop new capabilities or be pushed over the brink. Today, lean is the de facto method for building new start-ups.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

It has replaced how to write a business plan with hands-on Lean Startup methods. To create great entrepreneurs, we had to give our students the experience of navigating the chaos and uncertainty of running a lean startup while providing the same kind of rigorous framework the business plan did in its day. Today the U.C.

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Mucker Lab

MAY 28, 2020

Like a teenager with a million-dollar allowance and an identity crisis, a startup with too much capital and no product-market fit will become capable of making larger mistakes. These lost startups land higher valuations, have larger teams, outsource more product development and spend more money on customer acquisition than their peers.

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Startup Cofounder Burn Rate Technical Review 78

SVPG

NOVEMBER 22, 2013

Much has been written about how to do product discovery in startups, by me and many other people. But one of the real advantages from a product point of view is that there’s no legacy to drag along, there’s no revenue to preserve, and there’s no reputation to safeguard. See Product Discovery with Live-Data Prototypes.

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Product NDA Continuous Deployment Reputation 67

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 6, 2016

To create this first year in business checklist, I turned to our in-house experts here at Palo Alto Software: Sabrina Parsons, CEO; Noah Parsons, COO; Josh Cochrane, Vice President of Product Development; and Josh Fegles, Academic and Government Channel Sales Director, and founder of gluten-free cookie company Jude’s Foods.

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Forecast Software Review Lean Finance 60

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. In fact, this company hasn’t shipped any new products in months. What’s going on?

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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. He has a good team, and theyve shipped a working product to many customers.

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Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Last May, I shared the news that long-time Lean Startup advocates Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits were working on a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur featuring illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. LitMotors approach to using Lean Startup to create a new vehicle category. That new book is about to hit bookstores everywhere.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

kaChing has been very active in the Lean Startup movement. With case studies like this, we aim to illustrate specific Lean Startup techniques through the stories of current practitioners. kaChing has been very active in the Lean Startup movement. It was written by Sarah Milstein in collaboration with kaChing CEO Andy Rachleff.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

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?

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 6, 2013

Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. This is a customer development problem. Steve Blank, a serial entrepreneur in Silicon Valley, developed a methodology for creating businesses that runs in parallel with the traditional product development process.

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Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 126

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

Our sales guys were on the front line and heard what they needed to win deals. They communicated this to product management who looked at all of the internal requirements we had generated (e.g. and product management worked with me to decide what to build & when. They taped people using existing products.

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Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? When we build products, we use a methodology. We know some products succeed and others fail, but the reasons are complex and the unpredictable. a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit." Whats wrong with this picture?

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

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

OCTOBER 2, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. On October 8 at 10a PT, we’ll be talking about bringing Lean Startup methods to established companies, precisely the kinds of businesses that are most resistant to experimentation, even as they desperately need it. That''s hard. That’s Eric Ries’s job.

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Lean Startup Agile Leadership 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products.

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Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2009

This series of posts is a brief explanation of how we’ve evolved from Product Development to Customer Development to the Lean Startup. The Product Development Diagram Emerging early in the twentieth century, this product-centric model described a process that evolved in manufacturing industries.

Silicon Valley 260

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 260

ConversionXL

OCTOBER 7, 2021

The classic lifespan of successful products is a story in four parts: Introduction Growth Maturity Decline. How this story plays out has a lot to do with the type of product and how it’s improved over time, if at all. In this article, we’ll look at the different stages of the product lifecycle through the lens of marketing.

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Product Marketing Software Review Social Media 142

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 14, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference, who has created content for a number of startups. In our ongoing exploration of how people actually implement Lean Startup methods in their workplaces, we’re asking practitioners to share their techniques. Steph: For me, it leads.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 22, 2015

A massive rain storm blew through San Francisco in the middle of last year’s Lean Startup Conference. Why You Should Join Us in 2015 Since 2011, The Lean Startup has helped countless ventures transform ideas into thriving businesses. Register today to take advantage of our Spring sale prices. No lights, no wifi, and no A/V.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 8, 2009 Datablindness Most of us are swimming in a sea of data about our products, companies, and teams. I had it all set up to a jury-rigged SurveyMonkey - PayPal minimum viable product. So the product development team was busy creating lots of split-tests for lots of hypotheses.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2011

The Lean Startup Book is done. If you've been waiting for a comprehensive account of the Lean Startup and how it can help you achieve dramatically better business results, this is it. What really constitutes product/market fit? I am no longer writing a book. Finally, really, truly, done. page proofs, and mailing (!)

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Lean Startup Metrics Private Equity 167

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 22, 2012

Let’s start out with the basic functions of a tech company: 1) Engineering 2) Marketing 3) Sales 4) Business development 5) PR 6) Design 7) Product Management 8) HR 9) Operations 10) Finance Ok, that's just overwhelming. Let’s take sales and business development. Ready to start simplifying?

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PR Technical Review Seed Stage Design 144

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

In an enterprise sales context, this is called a "repeatable and scalable sales process" - once you know how to do this, your company can graduate from early adopters and make an attempt at the mainstream. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science?

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Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

YoungUpstarts

JULY 22, 2020

Instead, we need to streamline and accelerate our processes by borrowing techniques from the world of lean and agile product development. Like its cousin the Minimum Viable Product, a Minimum Viable Persona seeks to provide just enough information to allow work to start. An Exercise to Generate Your MVP.

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SCRUM Agile Customer Framework 162

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

If you dont have customers, a product, investors, or a board of directors, you can pretty much stay focused on just one thing at a time. Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 8, 2023

Seth Rosenberg at Graylock published ‘ Product Led AI’ – pointing to opportunities for founders building AI-first companies. Undoubtedly, there will be detractors who believe many products are simply features on top of foundational models.

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Generative AI ChatGPT Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 78

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup.

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Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 244

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

Learn why the traditional way of writing a five-year business plan is often a waste of time and how to use a Lean Plan instead for smarter, easier strategic planning to establish your long-term vision. Sales and expense projections that far into the future are just wild guesses, especially for startups and new businesses.

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Business Plan Lean Forecast Exit Strategy 83