Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 4, 2012

Today, it’s clear to me that business plans for startup companies are a historical artifact that represented the best approach at the time to define a business for potential investors. Business Model Canvas vs Lean Canvas vs One-Page Lean Startup. Attend a Startup Weekend. Related articles. Looking for Help?

Business Plan 193

Business Plan Lean Cofounder Venture Capital 193

Feld Thoughts

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

Dick is focusing his effort on getting some early customer validation and is using a Lean Startup approach. However, Praveena has committed to personally get the first version of the product up and launched without outside consultants, so there is no expense here either.

Balance Sheet 125

Balance Sheet Fractional CTO Burn Rate Salary 125

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 30, 2013

Though the notion of a “lean startup” that uses both Agile and Customer Development approaches is ostensibly strongly customer focused, the purpose of these methodologies is for the company to find an maximize its market, not specifically to optimize the user experience. The essay follows. I think he totally nails it.

Technology 168

Technology Coder Semantic Social Media 168

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 22, 2010

While everyone is talking about health care, let’s not forget our friend the Startup Visa. The New Startup Arms Race : Eric Ries, who is part of the Startup Visa Initiative core team (and the creator of the Lean Startup Methodology) has a great essay up on The Huffington Post. Startup Visa Stories.

Silicon Valley 102

Silicon Valley Widget Startup Lean 102

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 31, 2018

If you are a fan of Startup Communities , there’s a lot going on around new initiatives on this front. Ian Hathaway and I are hard at work on a book called The Startup Community Way, which is modeled after Eric Ries’ evolution of The Lean Startup to his recent book The Startup Way.

New Jersey 82

New Jersey Venture Capital Community Lean 82

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

They need to raise money before building anything substantial after determining that they needed a little dough to follow the Lean Startup methodology. In startup time, that feels like forever. One of them used to be a lead developer at [insert hot consumer tech company here].

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Feld Thoughts

JULY 30, 2013

The paragraph that caught my attention was: I call this constant advising/mentoring of early stage startups “mentor/investor whiplash” and I think it is a big problem. Not just with the accelerator programs but across the early stage/seed startup landscape. That’s how business works.

Early Stage 166

Early Stage Lean Programming Conversion 166

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 18, 2017

I’m an enormous fan of Eric Ries and The Lean Startup. His, and Steve Blank’s, thinking and writing changed how we approach startups. An exec at a company I’m an investor in sent this to me this morning. Does this feel like your life at your company?

Boston 118

Boston Lean Software Founder 118

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 15, 2013

Some are major contributors to their startup communities. As with everything new that grows quickly, it’s a chaotic system with lots of innovation, creative destruction, and rapid change and learning that – if done well – is a great example of the power of the Lean Startup approach to entrepreneurship.

Global 179

Global Networking United States Seed Money 179

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 12, 2014

I asked Eliot to write a short post about how he’s feeling and thinking about the category of “startup fiction” now that the book is out in the wild and he’s getting some great feedback. Gurus wax lyrical about vision and lean, focused execution. We’ve worked for a startup. Following are his thoughts.

Stock 130

Stock Venture Capital Lean Product Development 130

Feld Thoughts

MARCH 10, 2013

One of the chapters in Startup Life: Surviving and Thriving in a Relationship with an Entrepreneur that was especially challenging for me and Amy to write was the one about children. It’s very nicely linked to the Lean Startup methodology (without realizing it). I read it tonight. It was timely and excellent.

Lean 144

Lean Business Model Search Demand 144

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 4, 2013

I’ve been a big supporter of Startup Weekend , locally and nationally, since the very beginning and I’m continuing to do so by both sponsoring and mentoring in the NEXT Boulder program. Below are the words of Ken Hoff, an up-and-coming leader in the Boulder startup community. for more information.

Startup 130

Startup Vesting Cofounder Lean 130

Feld Thoughts

DECEMBER 23, 2010

Entrepreneurs everywhere describe the first release of their MVP (“minimum viable product&# – for those of you that haven’t intersected with the Lean Startup movement) app as a “platform&#. Yeah, I whined about this a few months ago in my post Your Platform Is Not In My Space.

Lean 138

Lean Search Finance Startup 138

Feld Thoughts

MAY 29, 2013

Rally is also donating three seats to their Enterprise Lean Startup training course to this effort. Hacking isn’t just about writing code, it’s about exploring the boundaries of what’s doable and what’s desirable.

Denver 137

Denver Raleigh United States Seattle 137

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 25, 2011

There are a number of great ones coming that seem to have been kicked off by Eric Ries’ dynamite The Lean Startup. The next is Startup Weekend: How to Take a Company From Concept to Creation in 54 Hours. I recently joined the board of Startup Weekend , which I describe as a weekend-long simulation of entrepreneurship.

Cofounder 147

Cofounder New York Lean Community 147

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 4, 2012

During this process, Mark and his staff put real effort into understanding the issues and, rather than sitting on the sidelines and seeing what would happen, leaned in, took a stand, and had a big impact helping shift the tide in the Senate against PIPA.

Colorado 114

Colorado Lean Hosting Campaign 114

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 30, 2013

We see DevOps instantiating the lean startup culture throughout an organization. Similar to how we got involved in the Agile movement early with our investment in Rally Software , we are long on DevOps with investments in companies such as JumpCloud , VictorOps , SendGrid , Pantheon , Authentic8 and others.

Conversion 132

Conversion Agile Portfolio Lean 132

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 29, 2012

What if I told you there is a valuable group of entrepreneurs that know Boulder to be a great place for startups BUT a place that is not welcoming to them…WHAT?…”our This past summer, I worked with David Cohen, Tom Chickoore and the great people at TechStars to develop and organize a startup boot camp for Veterans.

Entrepreneur 140

Entrepreneur Cofounder Community America 140

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 6, 2012

Reading: Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup : (Cohen, Feld). Reading: The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses (Ries). Reading: Startup Communities: Creating A Great Entrepreneurial Ecosystem In Your City (Feld).

Venture Capital 133

Venture Capital Leadership Lean Community 133

Feld Thoughts

JULY 21, 2010

If you don’t follow Eric’s thoughts on Lean Startups on his blog Lessons Learned , you should. Eric is an incredible speaker and is traveling the world on a mission to help people stop wasting other people’s time.

Founder 103

Founder Lean Startup 103

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 25, 2010

My frat at MIT has spawned numerous startups that I’ve written about in the past, including my post on 351 Massachusetts Avenue (home of the first office for my first company – Feld Technologies). Once again, I was blown away by the intensity and intelligence of the MIT undergrads that I spent the day with.

Elevator Pitch 111

Elevator Pitch Massachusetts Boston Lean 111

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 6, 2011

In lean startup language, they’ve got a minimal viable product. I see so many startups rushing to just get stuff out, without thinking hard about “what that stuff is and why anyone would care.&# It’s an ambitious product vision that will take a while to fully roll out. However, they are faced with two choices.

Product 138

Product Agile Lean Developer 138

Feld Thoughts

AUGUST 22, 2012

In parallel, there’s often a Lean Startup methodology going on that does more quantitative tests of the specific product. This search is usually qualitative – it involves real feedback from potential customers and users, but it’s not a measured, tested approach.

Founder 147

Founder Marketing Cofounder Lean 147

Feld Thoughts

JULY 21, 2015

The language of startups has become pervasive. It feels like it started with Eric Ries’ great book The Lean Startup when words like MVP and pivot started showing up in all conversations. Today, there are hundreds of words that people throw around in the context of their startups. Don’t try to fake it.

Silicon Valley 70

Silicon Valley Metrics .Net Founder 70

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 17, 2012

” In the mean time, I’ve decamped to New York for a few days where I’m hanging out with my friends at USV and my dad talking about how to transform healthcare via software and the Internet (not a huge interest of mine, but of them, and my dad) and then spending time with MakerBot creating machines that create machines.

Analytics 124

Analytics New York Lean Programming 124

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 1, 2012

As I continue to grind through writing Startup Communities: How To Create An Entrepreneurial Ecosystem In Your City, I’m trying to maintain a steady diet of complementary books. This is a negative leaning book, but there is some positive and constructive stuff in it.

Hawaii 119

Hawaii Japan Government Europe 119

Feld Thoughts

APRIL 25, 2011

Enterprises have data center downtime, and back in the day when startups had to build their own, so did they. Even though I have seen it many times, I am still taken aback when I talk to a startup that has used Amazon just like a traditional data center using traditional methods.

Cloud 138

Cloud Architecture Web Demand 138

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 20, 2015

While ostensibly it’s a post about lean vs. fat startups, it really is about discovering product/market fit and it gives a good history lesson on the thinking circa 2010 on this issue. Ben eventually states, and then explains, four product/market fit myths.

Product 70

Product Marketing Valuation Search 70

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 19, 2013

” You are using all the Lean Startup and Lean Launchpad techniques to find your product-market fit. But early on, especially pre or early revenue, lack of focus is the death of so many companies. Sure, there’s a point where you are still thrashing around looking for “the thing.”

Brazil 181

Brazil API Lean Revenue 181

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 16, 2013

I guess that’s part of the motivation I have in writing Startup Boards: Reinventing the Board of Directors to Be Useful to the Entrepreneur (the next book in the Startup Revolution series which should be out sometime this summer.). In the mean time, over the past two years I done a lot of experiments with the boards I’m on.

Continuous Deployment 166

Continuous Deployment Distribution Lean Email 166

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 25, 2014

The Lean Startup approach is super helpful here. .” Instead of expecting BigCo to react to you in any way, start from the perspective that if you want a relationship with BigCo, your only goal in life should be to help BigCo be successful. Then, test this hypothesis. Test, ship, iterate – just keep trying and keep learning.

Lean 154

Lean Conversion Sales Developer 154

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 25, 2014

The Lean Startup approach is super helpful here. .” Instead of expecting BigCo to react to you in any way, start from the perspective that if you want a relationship with BigCo, your only goal in life should be to help BigCo be successful. Then, test this hypothesis. Test, ship, iterate – just keep trying and keep learning.

Lean 132

Lean Conversion Sales Developer 132

Feld Thoughts

JUNE 7, 2011

Recently, Steve Blank, one of the founders of the Lean Startup concept, wrote two provocative posts about board meetings. And they don’t merely waste three hours – they burn a day in advance “getting ready&# and who knows how much time after following up on random things generated by me and my fellow board members.

Lean 132

Lean Founder Entrepreneur Management 132

Feld Thoughts

JANUARY 12, 2017

Eric Ries: Entrepreneur, blogger, and author of The Lean Startup. Dave McClure: Founding Partner, 500 Startups. Khailee Ng: Managing Partner, 500 Startups. Skoll Foundation. Brad Feld: Managing Director, Foundry Group. Paul Graham: Co-Founder, Y Combinator. Fadi Ghandour: Co-Founder, Aramex. Jenny Lawton: COO, Techstars.

Cofounder 70

Cofounder Campaign Lean Matching 70