Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 29, 2018

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Hire a professional marketing and public relations agency once you have a good revenue stream but you don’t need them to start a free blog, establish Facebook and Twitter accounts with initial content and complete the basics of search engine optimization.

Burn Rate 223

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 223

abovethecrowd.com

OCTOBER 1, 2013

Over 13 years ago, in March of 2000, I wrote a blog post titled “ The Most Powerful Internet Metric of All. ” The key thesis was this: if an Internet company could obsess about only one metric, it should be conversion. As such, it is time to pound the table again – conversion is by far the most powerful Internet metric of all.

Metrics 93

Metrics Conversion Internet Acquisition 93

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 Thoughts on scientific product development I enjoyed reading a post today from Laserlike (Mike Speiser), on Scientific product development. I agree with the less is more product development approach, but for a different reason. Now that is fun.

Product Development 68

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2022

It’s easy to get so pre-occupied with handling the business rollout that you forget to maintain and increase your social media interactions, search engine optimization efforts, and highlighting positive customer reviews on your website. Continually add new marketing and distribution partners. Real growth always requires real marketing.

Startup 335

Startup Social Media Metrics Viral 335

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 5, 2014

Cashflow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Hire a professional marketing and public relations agency once you have a good revenue stream but you don’t need them to start a free blog, establish Facebook and Twitter accounts with initial content and complete the basics of search engine optimization.

Burn Rate 262

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Entrepreneur Salary 262

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

Cash flow is a basic survival metric for every startup. Hire a professional marketing and public relations agency once you have a good revenue stream but you don’t need them to start a free blog, establish Facebook and Twitter accounts with initial content and complete the basics of search engine optimization.

Burn Rate 120

Burn Rate Hockey Stick Startup Salary 120

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. What good are these metrics if they dont help guide product or business decisions?

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

It’s easy to get so pre-occupied with handling the business rollout that you forget to maintain and increase your social media interactions, search engine optimization efforts, and highlighting positive customer reviews on your website. Continually add new marketing and distribution partners. Real growth always requires real marketing.

Social Media 329

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 329

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

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.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

ConversionXL

AUGUST 30, 2018

It slows product development. The key is to connect user research to an improved user experience and, in turn, an increase in customer retention, leads, or any other metric for which C-suite members are accountable. Include notes from your internal team that explain how insights are influencing product development.

Design 111

Design Framework Product Development Technical Review 111

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

The disadvantage is that its methodology was based on the old waterfall model of product development and not the agile and lean methods that startups use today. Great entrepreneurs are on a search for the truth, no matter how wrong their initial conception is. It’s just that they are validated instead of made up.).

Business Plan 120

Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2019

There are tons of metrics you can monitor: Conversion rate; Bounce rate ; Click-through rate ; Pageviews; Lead captures; Purchase conversion rate. Setting up your experiments for success: Define success metrics. Statistical ghost: When you think your test has impacted your metric, but in reality there’s no impact.

Artificial Inteligence 114

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Metrics SEO 114

Up and Running

MAY 15, 2014

As an entrepreneur raised in the era of analytics, I want to find metrics for everything. I knew that there were issues with my potential partner, but I also knew that the company would grow at a slower pace if I had to start the co-founder search from back at square one. The problem is that this is harder to do than it sounds.

Partner 113

Partner Cofounder Equity Metrics 113

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 3, 2018

They’d upload a list of product terms and related topics— moisture resistant flooring adhesive, subfloor moisture proofing —and their keyword research tool would spit back hundreds of “0 searches per month” results. Their content wasn’t designed to rank for popular keywords and harness existing search volume.

B2B 133

B2B Marketing SEO Search 133

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Pretty soon, a soul-searching meeting ensues. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Labels: product development Speed up or slow down?

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Only talking to real-life people will help you figure out whether you’ve got a good product, or just a solution in search of a problem, or a product in search of a market. We went door to door and even rented a kiosk in the mall to get feedback to see if people would use a product like ours.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. For example, I’m a big believer in split-testing.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 8, 2010 Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Review) The next article in my series on entrepreneurship for Harvard Business Review is live today. Once again, we revisit the topic of Actionable metrics and their nemesis: Vanity metrics. Remember "metrics are people, too."

Metrics 121

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 121

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

These founders specify, design, and build a fully featured product using classic product development methods without ever leaving their building. Executives look at that date and the calendar, working backward to ignite fireworks on the day the product is launched. In fact, they’re out searching for them!

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Nick Kim , Crosscut’s Head of Platform, in his presentation at the 4th Annual VC Platform Summit, shared their Platform development methodology, which he viewed as an exercise in product development. For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. Alpaca VC shares their Master Agency List.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration. In a lot of cases, this requires a lot of energy invested in talking to customers or metrics and analytics. Refreshing to finally see lean and agile thinking emerge in product/business-floors and not only in technology. Great Post - could not agree more.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

During a lull in her practice she got a serendipitous opportunity to shift gears completely and ended up leading software product development teams. Their products are over-priced, buggy, lacking features, and every experience I've had with their tech support has been atrocious, but man their stuff looks and feels nice!

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

I used to think that investments in metrics were a form of waste. Customers dont care if you have good metrics, only if you have a good product. The only reason we learned the art of metrics-based decision making at IMVU was out of necessity. Labels: product development 4comments: Doug said. Thank you Eric.

San Francisco 98

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

The Enterprise: Business Model Execution We know that a startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. Somewhere in the dim past of the company, it too was a startup searching for a business model. Our Investment Readiness Level is just one of those metrics.)

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 13, 2008 SEM on five dollars a day How do you build a new product with constant customer feedback while simultaneously staying under the radar? Trying to answer that question at IMVU led me to discover Google AdWords and the world of search engine marketing. SEM is a simple idea.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Every experiment has to be evaluated based on a single standard report of 5-10 (no more) key metrics. Any team that creates an experiment must monitor the metrics and customer reactions (support calls, forum threads, etc) while the experiment is in-progress, and abort if something catastrophic happens. It promotes rapid iteration.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Tell your Startup Visa story Speaking 2010: Webstock, GDC, Web 2.0,

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Read the rest of The Five Whys for Start-Ups. Speed up or slow down? Speed up or slow down?

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. And what of the product development team? Time-to-complete-a-sale is not a bad metric for validated learning at this stage.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. Startups have finite time and resources to find product/market fit before they run out of money.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Without conscious process design, product development teams turn lines of code written into momentum in a certain direction. This is why agility is such a prized quality in product development. As far as I know, there are no products that are immune from the technology life cycle adoption curve.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown, and the key to success is building an integrated team that includes product development in the feedback loop with customers. 2008 09 06 Eric Ries Haas Columbia Customer Development Engineering View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Focus on the output metrics of that part of the product, and you make the problem a lot more clear. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. Whatever its purpose, try measuring it only at the level that you care about.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

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. No vanity metrics should be looked at. No vanity metrics should be looked at.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth. This is when metrics come into play. See Also: The Top 10 Tools for Tracking Your Web Metrics. Search ads are expensive, however. What would they type in a Google search?). Successful and failed experiments.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

. “Growth hackers have a passion for tracking and moving a metric. Without metrics or data, a growth hacker can feel out of place and uncomfortably exposed. This strong bias towards data drives a growth hacker away from vanity metrics towards metrics that will make or break the business.” ” Creativity.

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48