Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

In my experience, the majority of changes we made to products have no effect at all on customer behavior. This kind of result is typical when you ship a redesign of some part of your product. Without split-testing, your product tends to get prettier over time. First of all, why split-test? One last note on reporting.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

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. 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?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially. There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Introduce new products and enhancements every month.

Social Media 120

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 120

ConversionXL

MAY 27, 2022

Stage 1: Target the right metrics for an effective long game. In today’s market ( 8,000 martech products alone ), it’s easier to attract the right customer with material they value than it is to chase down and convert a prospect who isn’t ready to buy. Metrics for your demand generation funnel. Demand generation is no exception.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. Nothing made any difference.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

It provides a basic introduction to analytics as they apply to Lean Startup, including sections on what metrics to use and how to interpret them. For instance, Ben lists out the worst of the “vanity metrics,” a term that describes appealing but meaningless or misleading numbers. Alistair: There are plenty. Consider a restaurant.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics 167

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

If you’re building a startup, you’re likely to be in one of these two situations: Launching and selling a new product that nobody’s ever heard about, and probably don’t even know they need, or… Improving an existing product or service, which means that you’re going head on against someone with more traction, people, and money than you.

Revenue 60

Revenue Acquisition Channel Campaign 60

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. This is a common problem that results from viral-loop optimization. Impressive.

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Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Both Sides of the Table

JULY 1, 2010

The consumer product they’ve created is called TrueCar. And finally, Scott demonstrated his internal management tool for managing the metrics of his business. Money to be used for hiring and additional product development. Offers virality optimization tools and A/B testing inside Facebook. Foursquare.

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San Francisco Venture Capital Analytics Government 248

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 29, 2020

There has never been a viral outbreak of such magnitude before. Additionally, “a startup is usually a company designed to effectively develop and validate a scalable business model. Product development also occurs in small iterations or changes. Year-on-year growth metrics in unique site traffic is 7.8

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Bootstrapping Global Startup Hungary 85

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. At a high level, anything that drives virality should be free. To take your specific example about virality - why do we want to have more users sign up? Is it that they act as free advertising for our premium product?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them. In a previous post , I covered the three main drivers of growth: Paid, Sticky, and Viral. And this is true outside of games.

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

Understand growth accounting – new, resurrected vs churned = net growth (can also look at this at feature level, not only product). Work hard to define meaningful product metrics – enabler of team success. Virality: # of users that refer your product for you: exponential growth if your K factor is greater than 1.

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Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

” April, 2012 – Andrew Chen writes Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing , which goes viral (2.4K September, 2012 – Andrew Chen, who currently does growth at Uber , writes You don’t need a growth hacker , which encourages companies to really consider whether they have product-market fit before hiring a growth hacker.

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

If you ask an expert in Facebook apps to come help build yours, youll usually hear the same advice: build your app for virality. Thats sensible advice; most people who have made a business on Facebook rely on the viral driver of growth. If you have a virally-growing app, you dont need the extra installs.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join. Synthetic notifications. Who is using it?

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Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

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

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 11, 2009 Innovation inside the box I was recently privy to a product prioritization meeting in a relatively large company. The team spent an hour trying to decide on a new pricing strategy for their main product line. It was fascinating. The whole process had taken.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

The Next Web

AUGUST 26, 2012

Additionally, this focus will allow everyone within the team to make more accurate decisions faster, as it’s clear who you are building your product for. For many start-ups, the central focus is developing a product that offers value to a target audience. KPI’s are different for each start-up. Most start-ups fail.

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Bankruptcy Technical Review Intellectual Property Due Diligence 121

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

Take a look at The App Store after the gold rush - FierceDeveloper : According to a recent BusinessWeek feature , the flood of new games, productivity tools and related iPhone software is making it difficult for the vast majority of apps to crack the consumer consciousness. Acqusition competition is how new apps get new customers.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Many of them have really cool products shipping or about to be released, and I wholeheartedly agree with my friends at the iFund that the next generation of applications is going to be amazing. The store determines which products sit on which shelves, and which yours sits next to. On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive.

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Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

If you're working on the Sticky Engine of Growth , you're focused on very different metrics from those that you care about in the Viral Engine of Growth. Similarly, a two-sided marketplace cares about different things from a traditional e-commerce product. So churn for those product categories may be lower. to 3% a month.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Announce a new product, start its PR campaign, and engage in buzz marketing activities. Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. Product launch) In todays world, there is no reason you have to do these two things at the same time. If the viral coefficient is 0.9,

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Question 1: When youre adding features to a product used by an existing user base, do you still do split testing to determine usage patterns? Existing customers already have an expectation about how your product works, and its important to take this into consideration when adding or changing features. Absolutely, yes.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Maybe two different developers made changes to the same underlying subsystem, but in incompatible ways. Maybe operations has changed the OS configuration in production in a way that is incompatible with some developers change. The reason its a risk is that, until you integrate, you dont know if the code is going to work.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

In a few cases, they are clearly smart people in a bad situation, and Ive written about their pain in The product managers lament and The engineering managers lament. The "just fix it" mentality is counter-productive here. At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

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

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, December 6, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part three Those startups that manage to build a product people want have to deal with the consequences of that success. Lets start with the most important thing you can do to help product teams succeed: make them cross-functional.

San Francisco 74

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 74

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

It has been awesome, flattering, and humbling to see that post went viral and has been seen by so many thousands of people — mainly aspiring entrepreneurs — and has been translated into many languages. It’s all about the product. The only thing that matters is how good your product is. Always has been.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

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, Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

ConversionXL

DECEMBER 11, 2018

Or look at MailChimp, a startup-turned-$400-million-revenue-machine that is always creating viral campaigns that set them above their competition, like this recent “Did You Mean Mailchimp” one. My advice is to seek out those with the most knowledge of the theme, feature, product, or concept of your campaign. Answers (Combined).

Campaign 134

Campaign Marketing Design Differentiation 134

mashable.com

MAY 24, 2011

May 23, 2011 by Christina Warren 20 Share on Tumblr email share Share on Tumblr email share The Mobile App Trends Series is supported by Sourcebits , a leading product developer for mobile platforms. Sourcebits offers design and development services for iOS, Android, Mobile and Web platforms. ); // Welcome to Mashable!

Mobile 90

Mobile Web Social Media Software Review 90

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

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, Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 132