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I had the chance to interview Randy Peterson of P&G for his upcoming participation in Search Engine Strategies 2008: San Jose where he will be speaking on the Keynote Roundtable: “Why Does Search Get the Credit for Everything?” You are participating in a keynote roundtable this year at the SES 2008 show in San Jose about attributing sales to Search – How much credit does an SEM program deserve in an overall marketing mix? MORE
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. December 17, 2008 2:04 PM Alex Horovitz said. December 17, 2008 7:56 PM dmartell said. December 19, 2008 9:02 PM rtolmach said. December 27, 2008 6:46 PM Robin Good said. MORE
Know the difference between a Reporting Squirrel and a Analysis Ninja? One is in the business of providing data. One is in the business of providing, to use a old fashioned word, information. This one of the core reasons why most dashboards are "crappy", i.e. they are data pukes that provide little in terms of context and even less in terms of actionable value. Here are some examples of sub optimal dashboards, sub optimal in my mind from a actionable perspective. MORE
We love our conversion rates. :) Really really. Part of me is glad because my book and the Trinity strategy and the Web Analytics 2.0 mindset all stress the importance of measuring Outcomes. No Outcomes = No Happiness. But I have come to realize that we are not being the best we can be by focusing on just the overall website conversion rate. We are leaving money on the table. We are not getting enough credit. We are not getting a good understanding of the complete picture. MORE
Admit it, you secretly live in the fear of your Senior Management finding out that your online greatness is less a result of your online campaigns and more a result of the tons and tons your company has invested in the real world. The real world. "Offline" "Offline" to you and me. :). We tend to often overlook the pesky offline real world. Sooooo booorrring ! Say that with a Paris Hilton'ish brush off. :). I think most of it is not malicious. MORE
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. November 26, 2008 9:23 AM Andrew Meyer said. link] Keep up the great posts, Andy November 29, 2008 10:44 AM life wealth explorer said. December 1, 2008 12:25 PM Alex Horovitz said. December 17, 2008 7:45 PM spirink said. MORE
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 29, 2008 The ABCDEFs of conducting a technical interview I am incredibly proud of the people I have hired over the course of my career. December 2, 2008 8:53 AM Lisa said. December 2, 2008 10:47 AM William Pietri said. December 2, 2008 10:56 AM Ryan said. December 8, 2008 11:37 PM Jackson Gates said. MORE
As a follow-up to my last post on Meetups SEO / SEM , I was just booted from the group and any of my comments about issues I had with the way the group was handled along with my negative vote about the event were deleted from the group. It makes me wonder if Meetup is actually encouraging this kind of thing MORE
Found this via Ben Kuo - The math behind Internet advertising businesses The advertising equivalence principle? So if we assume that a $1 CPM is about right and figure out what audience is required to build a $100MM annual revenue business, we find out that we need 8.33 billion monthly page views and over 300 million monthly unique visitors creating 25 page views per user. With these assumptions, we would need a site that ranked fourth globally. MORE
I went to a meetup yesterday that was on the topic of Internet Marketing / SEO / SEM. The meeting had a decent case study and some pretty good discussion around the room of different tools that you might consider using. Then the organizer went into a 20 minute sales pitch around his new training/coaching offering. It felt like a bad time share presentation. MORE
Michael, politely, says in an email: "I have done web analytics for five years, I have mastered Omniture, WebTrends and Google Analytics, I provide analysis and not just reporting. I feel like am an Analytics God. What would be your advice for me in terms of next steps for my career? My goal is to climb the ranks and increase my salary." " Let me hasten to add two things. Michael is not his real name. Modesty aside, :), Michael is good at what he does. MORE
Friday, October 10, 2008. The Bessemer 10 laws of SaaS - Fall 2008 Release. When we first published Bessemer’s Top 10 Laws for Being "SaaS-y" in early 2008 in conjunction with our annual invitation-only SaaS CEO Summit, we were overwhelmed with the positive response and feedback we received. 1st 2008 with a base value of 100.00 ▼ 2008. (11). The Bessemer 10 laws of SaaS - Fall 2008 Release. Churchill Club 2008 Top 10 Tech Trends. MORE
Fascinating article by Andrew McAfee - Technology Beats a Full House - discusses how variation in performance spread decreases over time as systems become optimized. He shows that the spreads in IT heavy industries has greater variation over the past decade. winners were increasingly separated from losers MORE
150 
I'm blogging from the CalTech Enterprise Forum. The topic is: Betting Your Company On An Internet Platform? A very interesting topic, especially for those of us involved in developing for start-ups. At the CTO Group that I organize in Santa Monica, we've had lots of discussions around this. The basic conclusion was that it was a bit premature if you were talking about a serious, funded start-up. Especially when there are things like: Amazon S3 / EC2 / AWS outage this morning. MORE
A while ago I posted about Secret for Networking at Events - Prenetworking where I recommended that people should look at who's attending the event prior to going to the event in order to make their networking more effective. I've received a lot of positive feedback on the post. MORE
There is perhaps no challenge greater than tracking offline impact of your online presence (campaigns or other activity). It is perhaps one of the last few complex nuts left to crack. Because it is hard. Not impossible. Just hard. And for now it is equal parts quantitative, qualitative and faith. This post bravely attempts to: 1 ] Highlight the importance of holistic multichannel analytics. 2 ] Outline why online to offline tracking is a difficult exercise, atleast for now. MORE
It's funny how things intersect in life. I just ran into Chris Gammil's post New Era of Social Innovation where he describes it as: The model takes the best of the OPEN model and pushes right out into the open, further distributing idea sourcing, team forming, development, commercialization and economic distribution. What are some of the drivers? MORE
Chris Gammil and I just spent some quality time together with a new, private group that is advising start-ups here in Los Angeles. The goal is to have start-ups learn from each other and from others who have been through the experience. So, far it's turning out great. The primary question we ask is: What's Keeping You Up at Night Chris provided a list of common issues: How much is enough? - how much 'traction' is enough for investors? MORE
Andrew Warner from Mixergy posted - Before Looking for Funding, Get an Advisor. He recommends that early stage companies get input from people who know the funding process, know the vertical, etc. That's great advice. Of course, it's sometimes hard to find advisors. On the flip side, as a person who regularly advises early stage start-ups, I often have a hard time finding interesting start-ups. MORE
Last Saturday, I was a panelist at the CalTech - Social Networks event. It was a really good event with lots of interesting folks in attendance. I would guess that there was about 100 people - on a Saturday in Pasadena. That shows some interest in the topic. The presenters had some interesting things to say on a wide variety of topics. A post by Elrend Wilhelmsen discusses some of what was discussed. MORE
I've never been able to walk into a large group of people and feel like I can "work the room." Sure, I've read various articles on this stuff, but honestly, I still struggle with meeting interesting people. I seem to be very adept at meeting financial planners, attorneys, accountants, etc. - and after 10 seconds of conversation, I'm at a loss. MORE
"Experiment or die, there is no try." " That was my call to action, Yoda inspired, last week to a group of international C-level executives. And I meant every word of it. There is a tendency to think experimentation and testing is optional. Ouch! I fundamentally believe that is wrong. For a few simple reasons: # 1 It's Not Expensive! You can start for free with a superb tool: Google's Website Optimizer. MORE
The term KPI is one that I hear far more than any other in this nascent field we call Web Analytics. Key Performance Indicators! This is a KPI and that is a KPI and "you don't have a KPI, oh my!" " and "look at my KPI it is awesomer than yours!" " and. well you've been there. You can empathize. Simple talk in this blog post: Highlight a definition. Give you five KPI's that I like, ones that I think, IMHO, live up to the moniker KPI. MORE
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 13, 2008 Five Whys Taiichi Ohno was one of the inventors of the Toyota Production System. November 13, 2008 8:59 PM eisrael said. November 14, 2008 3:19 AM Hitchens said. November 14, 2008 4:41 PM Eric said. November 14, 2008 5:00 PM Tony said. Tony Wanless, Knowpreneur Consultants November 15, 2008 11:18 AM Raoul Duke said. November 17, 2008 5:48 PM Anonymoussaid. MORE
2008 may not even seem that long ago to some of you. According to Pew Internet & American Life Project back around 2008, only about ½ the North American population even used online devices and a mere 8% were deep users of the web. But so much has changed in marketing since then that quite frankly a website even developed in 2010 can seem – well – “old school.”. MORE
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, November 7, 2008 Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online service, step-by-step If you want to build an online service, and you dont test it with a fake AdWords campaign ahead of time, youre crazy. November 7, 2008 7:36 PM nitesh said. November 7, 2008 7:41 PM nitesh said. November 7, 2008 7:42 PM Edward L said. November 8, 2008 8:44 AM OneDish said. link] November 8, 2008 7:13 PM Jason said. MORE
I recently interviewed Motoko Hunt of AJPR for Search Engine Strategies Chicago where she will be speaking in the Search Around the World: Europe, Asia/Pacific & Latin America panel. Motoko Hunt. What is your background and what do you do for www.ajpr.com ? On my first “real” job, I was a corporate interpreter/translator. Then I got into marketing, and worked as Senior Marketing and Procurement Manager at Japanese trading firm in California. MORE
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? November 9, 2008 5:40 PM Chris said. etl.stanford.edu November 10, 2008 2:20 AM Saku said. November 10, 2008 10:45 PM Will said. December 3, 2008 6:42 PM Anonymoussaid. When we build products, we use a methodology. For software, we have many - you can enjoy a nice long list on Wikipedia. MORE
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 The three drivers of growth for your business model. 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. Choose one. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?) MORE
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. September 15, 2008 9:12 PM Hitchens said. September 24, 2008 12:29 AM Jesse said. September 29, 2008 8:30 AM blake said. October 3, 2008 2:23 PM schubie said. MORE
The dashboards we look at to monitor the health of our products are lagging the experiences our user communities are having. Back and forth flame wars on Twitter, Facebook and elsewhere register as “engagement” and high clickthrough on “new comment” mobile notifications. MORE
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. October 20, 2008 9:34 PM Nivi said. October 20, 2008 10:36 PM Nathan said. October 20, 2008 11:32 PM Eric said. October 20, 2008 11:40 PM chris said. October 21, 2008 4:33 PM Larry Freeman said. MORE
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, October 4, 2008 About the author ( Update January, 2010: This post originally dates from October, 2008 back when I first started writing this blog. October 13, 2008 6:47 PM Luke G said. December 4, 2008 4:43 PM Valto said. Ive updated the "official" conference bio below but otherwise the text remains unchanged from that original essay.) MORE
Google now shows me an option to push things in my search results to the top. It's an interesting choice. Doesn't it seem like it's inviting problems. Basically the only people who will spend time on this is people trying to improve their search rankings. The rest of us signal with lots of other things like links, bookmarking, etc. Not sure I buy this approach from Google MORE
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. October 6, 2008 12:16 AM Vincent van Wylick said. October 6, 2008 12:17 AM r& said. October 6, 2008 9:02 AM Eric said. October 6, 2008 9:48 AM Alan Keefer said. Ive written about it on our development blog at [link] October 6, 2008 3:34 PM Chris Hondl said. MORE
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? October 1, 2008 2:13 AM archenland said. Great article youre now in my rss feeds :) October 2, 2008 4:37 AM kamilski81 said. October 2, 2008 8:58 AM Chad said. The green arm is the best. ;) October 2, 2008 10:27 PM Andrew Badera said. October 4, 2008 5:19 AM Nivi said. October 20, 2008 9:36 AM Igor Milovanovi? MORE
Monday, January 28, 2008. Happy New Year 2008! The second part of the year has seen a lower flow of blog posts, but part of my 2008 resolutions are to remedy to this shortfall, so be prepared for a strong 2008. In June of 2008, Become.com was selected as Best Search & Comparison Site [link] by the Sloan Center [link] at the University of California, Riverside. 1st 2008 with a base value of 100.00 ▼ 2008. (11). Happy New Year 2008! MORE
It will soon be a year of working at Google and milestones are always a good time for introspection. I have a lot on my mind but there was one thing in particular that I wanted to share with you all: What it is has been like working at Google. Interesting, fun, surprising, insightful, inspiring, impactful, and more such words. This post shares that experience. I went into Google with my own filters and expectations on what the experience would be like and what I would end up doing. MORE
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 8, 2008 The lean startup Ive been thinking for some time about a term that could encapsulate trends that are changing the startup landscape. September 11, 2008 2:06 PM Editor said. September 15, 2008 9:19 PM James said. After some trial and error, Ive settled on the Lean Startup. I like the term because of two connotations: Lean in the sense of low-burn. Of course, many startups are capital efficient and generally frugal. MORE
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. You declare how much someone clicking an advertisement is worth to you, and then the search engine does its best to get you as many clicks as it can at that price. MORE
The Webware 100 2008 Winners have been announced. For more coverage and the official post see webware. Compared to the 2007 list , there are some differences. Congrats to those that won! Marketing.fm MORE
60 I was merrily using Time on Page and Time on Site metrics for quite some time before I actually realized how they were being measured. It was a real Doh (!) moment. Turns out we have not rfid'ed every visitor and they don't rub their head against their monitor before starting their session on my website (and of course another head rub when they decide they have had enough and exit). This would allow us to capture the time stamps accurately and have exact measures. What a disappointment! MORE
2008 Related Topics Eric Friedman
APRIL 21, 2008
The Webware 100 2008 Winners have been announced. For more coverage and the official post see webware. Compared to the 2007 list , there are some differences. Congrats to those that won! Marketing.fm
Eric Friedman
JULY 28, 2008
I had the chance to interview Randy Peterson of P&G for his upcoming participation in Search Engine Strategies 2008: San Jose where he will be speaking on the Keynote Roundtable: “Why Does Search Get the Credit for Everything?” You are participating in a keynote roundtable this year at the SES 2008 show in San Jose about attributing sales to Search – How much credit does an SEM program deserve in an overall marketing mix?
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Eric Friedman
NOVEMBER 10, 2008
I recently interviewed Motoko Hunt of AJPR for Search Engine Strategies Chicago where she will be speaking in the Search Around the World: Europe, Asia/Pacific & Latin America panel. Motoko Hunt. What is your background and what do you do for www.ajpr.com ? On my first “real” job, I was a corporate interpreter/translator. Then I got into marketing, and worked as Senior Marketing and Procurement Manager at Japanese trading firm in California.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 The three drivers of growth for your business model. 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. Choose one. The AARRR model (hence pirates, get it?)
Cracking the Code
OCTOBER 10, 2008
Friday, October 10, 2008. The Bessemer 10 laws of SaaS - Fall 2008 Release. When we first published Bessemer’s Top 10 Laws for Being "SaaS-y" in early 2008 in conjunction with our annual invitation-only SaaS CEO Summit, we were overwhelmed with the positive response and feedback we received. 1st 2008 with a base value of 100.00 ▼ 2008. (11). The Bessemer 10 laws of SaaS - Fall 2008 Release. Churchill Club 2008 Top 10 Tech Trends.
Startup Lessons Learned
OCTOBER 4, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, October 4, 2008 About the author ( Update January, 2010: This post originally dates from October, 2008 back when I first started writing this blog. October 13, 2008 6:47 PM Luke G said. December 4, 2008 4:43 PM Valto said. Ive updated the "official" conference bio below but otherwise the text remains unchanged from that original essay.)
Cracking the Code
JANUARY 28, 2008
Monday, January 28, 2008. Happy New Year 2008! The second part of the year has seen a lower flow of blog posts, but part of my 2008 resolutions are to remedy to this shortfall, so be prepared for a strong 2008. In June of 2008, Become.com was selected as Best Search & Comparison Site [link] by the Sloan Center [link] at the University of California, Riverside. 1st 2008 with a base value of 100.00 ▼ 2008. (11). Happy New Year 2008!
SoCal CTO
JANUARY 6, 2008
I've never been able to walk into a large group of people and feel like I can "work the room." Sure, I've read various articles on this stuff, but honestly, I still struggle with meeting interesting people. I seem to be very adept at meeting financial planners, attorneys, accountants, etc. - and after 10 seconds of conversation, I'm at a loss.
SoCal CTO
NOVEMBER 21, 2008
Google now shows me an option to push things in my search results to the top. It's an interesting choice. Doesn't it seem like it's inviting problems. Basically the only people who will spend time on this is people trying to improve their search rankings. The rest of us signal with lots of other things like links, bookmarking, etc. Not sure I buy this approach from Google
SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 1, 2008
I went to a meetup yesterday that was on the topic of Internet Marketing / SEO / SEM. The meeting had a decent case study and some pretty good discussion around the room of different tools that you might consider using. Then the organizer went into a 20 minute sales pitch around his new training/coaching offering. It felt like a bad time share presentation.
SoCal CTO
OCTOBER 1, 2008
As a follow-up to my last post on Meetups SEO / SEM , I was just booted from the group and any of my comments about issues I had with the way the group was handled along with my negative vote about the event were deleted from the group. It makes me wonder if Meetup is actually encouraging this kind of thing
SoCal CTO
SEPTEMBER 22, 2008
Found this via Ben Kuo - The math behind Internet advertising businesses The advertising equivalence principle? So if we assume that a $1 CPM is about right and figure out what audience is required to build a $100MM annual revenue business, we find out that we need 8.33 billion monthly page views and over 300 million monthly unique visitors creating 25 page views per user. With these assumptions, we would need a site that ranked fourth globally.
SoCal CTO
SEPTEMBER 15, 2008
Fantastic post by Dion Hinchcliffe - Ten Aspects of Web 2.0 Strategy That Every CTO and CIO Should Know. Raises some interesting points, but the general theme is: just figure out ways to get it to happen
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 30, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? October 1, 2008 2:13 AM archenland said. Great article youre now in my rss feeds :) October 2, 2008 4:37 AM kamilski81 said. October 2, 2008 8:58 AM Chad said. The green arm is the best. ;) October 2, 2008 10:27 PM Andrew Badera said. October 4, 2008 5:19 AM Nivi said. October 20, 2008 9:36 AM Igor Milovanovi?
Occam's Razor
DECEMBER 22, 2008
Admit it, you secretly live in the fear of your Senior Management finding out that your online greatness is less a result of your online campaigns and more a result of the tons and tons your company has invested in the real world. The real world. "Offline" "Offline" to you and me. :). We tend to often overlook the pesky offline real world. Sooooo booorrring ! Say that with a Paris Hilton'ish brush off. :). I think most of it is not malicious.
SoCal CTO
JULY 20, 2008
Fascinating article by Andrew McAfee - Technology Beats a Full House - discusses how variation in performance spread decreases over time as systems become optimized. He shows that the spreads in IT heavy industries has greater variation over the past decade. winners were increasingly separated from losers
Occam's Razor
SEPTEMBER 16, 2008
The term KPI is one that I hear far more than any other in this nascent field we call Web Analytics. Key Performance Indicators! This is a KPI and that is a KPI and "you don't have a KPI, oh my!" " and "look at my KPI it is awesomer than yours!" " and. well you've been there. You can empathize. Simple talk in this blog post: Highlight a definition. Give you five KPI's that I like, ones that I think, IMHO, live up to the moniker KPI.
SoCal CTO
JUNE 14, 2008
I'm blogging from the CalTech Enterprise Forum. The topic is: Betting Your Company On An Internet Platform? A very interesting topic, especially for those of us involved in developing for start-ups. At the CTO Group that I organize in Santa Monica, we've had lots of discussions around this. The basic conclusion was that it was a bit premature if you were talking about a serious, funded start-up. Especially when there are things like: Amazon S3 / EC2 / AWS outage this morning.
SoCal CTO
JUNE 10, 2008
It's funny how things intersect in life. I just ran into Chris Gammil's post New Era of Social Innovation where he describes it as: The model takes the best of the OPEN model and pushes right out into the open, further distributing idea sourcing, team forming, development, commercialization and economic distribution. What are some of the drivers?
SoCal CTO
JUNE 10, 2008
A while ago I posted about Secret for Networking at Events - Prenetworking where I recommended that people should look at who's attending the event prior to going to the event in order to make their networking more effective. I've received a lot of positive feedback on the post.
SoCal CTO
MAY 31, 2008
Chris Gammil and I just spent some quality time together with a new, private group that is advising start-ups here in Los Angeles. The goal is to have start-ups learn from each other and from others who have been through the experience. So, far it's turning out great. The primary question we ask is: What's Keeping You Up at Night Chris provided a list of common issues: How much is enough? - how much 'traction' is enough for investors?
SoCal CTO
MAY 19, 2008
Andrew Warner from Mixergy posted - Before Looking for Funding, Get an Advisor. He recommends that early stage companies get input from people who know the funding process, know the vertical, etc. That's great advice. Of course, it's sometimes hard to find advisors. On the flip side, as a person who regularly advises early stage start-ups, I often have a hard time finding interesting start-ups.
Up and Running
MAY 10, 2013
2008 may not even seem that long ago to some of you. According to Pew Internet & American Life Project back around 2008, only about ½ the North American population even used online devices and a mere 8% were deep users of the web. But so much has changed in marketing since then that quite frankly a website even developed in 2010 can seem – well – “old school.”.
Startup Lessons Learned
NOVEMBER 7, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, November 7, 2008 Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online service, step-by-step If you want to build an online service, and you dont test it with a fake AdWords campaign ahead of time, youre crazy. November 7, 2008 7:36 PM nitesh said. November 7, 2008 7:41 PM nitesh said. November 7, 2008 7:42 PM Edward L said. November 8, 2008 8:44 AM OneDish said. link] November 8, 2008 7:13 PM Jason said.
Startup Lessons Learned
NOVEMBER 13, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 13, 2008 Five Whys Taiichi Ohno was one of the inventors of the Toyota Production System. November 13, 2008 8:59 PM eisrael said. November 14, 2008 3:19 AM Hitchens said. November 14, 2008 4:41 PM Eric said. November 14, 2008 5:00 PM Tony said. Tony Wanless, Knowpreneur Consultants November 15, 2008 11:18 AM Raoul Duke said. November 17, 2008 5:48 PM Anonymoussaid.
Occam's Razor
FEBRUARY 11, 2008
It will soon be a year of working at Google and milestones are always a good time for introspection. I have a lot on my mind but there was one thing in particular that I wanted to share with you all: What it is has been like working at Google. Interesting, fun, surprising, insightful, inspiring, impactful, and more such words. This post shares that experience. I went into Google with my own filters and expectations on what the experience would be like and what I would end up doing.
Startup Lessons Learned
NOVEMBER 8, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? November 9, 2008 5:40 PM Chris said. etl.stanford.edu November 10, 2008 2:20 AM Saku said. November 10, 2008 10:45 PM Will said. December 3, 2008 6:42 PM Anonymoussaid. When we build products, we use a methodology. For software, we have many - you can enjoy a nice long list on Wikipedia.
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. October 20, 2008 9:34 PM Nivi said. October 20, 2008 10:36 PM Nathan said. October 20, 2008 11:32 PM Eric said. October 20, 2008 11:40 PM chris said. October 21, 2008 4:33 PM Larry Freeman said.
Startup Lessons Learned
SEPTEMBER 15, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 8, 2008 The lean startup Ive been thinking for some time about a term that could encapsulate trends that are changing the startup landscape. September 11, 2008 2:06 PM Editor said. September 15, 2008 9:19 PM James said. After some trial and error, Ive settled on the Lean Startup. I like the term because of two connotations: Lean in the sense of low-burn. Of course, many startups are capital efficient and generally frugal.
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. September 15, 2008 9:12 PM Hitchens said. September 24, 2008 12:29 AM Jesse said. September 29, 2008 8:30 AM blake said. October 3, 2008 2:23 PM schubie said.
SoCal CTO
JANUARY 18, 2008
Last Saturday, I was a panelist at the CalTech - Social Networks event. It was a really good event with lots of interesting folks in attendance. I would guess that there was about 100 people - on a Saturday in Pasadena. That shows some interest in the topic. The presenters had some interesting things to say on a wide variety of topics. A post by Elrend Wilhelmsen discusses some of what was discussed.
Startup Lessons Learned
OCTOBER 5, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. October 6, 2008 12:16 AM Vincent van Wylick said. October 6, 2008 12:17 AM r& said. October 6, 2008 9:02 AM Eric said. October 6, 2008 9:48 AM Alan Keefer said. Ive written about it on our development blog at [link] October 6, 2008 3:34 PM Chris Hondl said.
Occam's Razor
JULY 1, 2008
There is perhaps no challenge greater than tracking offline impact of your online presence (campaigns or other activity). It is perhaps one of the last few complex nuts left to crack. Because it is hard. Not impossible. Just hard. And for now it is equal parts quantitative, qualitative and faith. This post bravely attempts to: 1 ] Highlight the importance of holistic multichannel analytics. 2 ] Outline why online to offline tracking is a difficult exercise, atleast for now.
Occam's Razor
MARCH 26, 2008
We love our conversion rates. :) Really really. Part of me is glad because my book and the Trinity strategy and the Web Analytics 2.0 mindset all stress the importance of measuring Outcomes. No Outcomes = No Happiness. But I have come to realize that we are not being the best we can be by focusing on just the overall website conversion rate. We are leaving money on the table. We are not getting enough credit. We are not getting a good understanding of the complete picture.
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. November 26, 2008 9:23 AM Andrew Meyer said. link] Keep up the great posts, Andy November 29, 2008 10:44 AM life wealth explorer said. December 1, 2008 12:25 PM Alex Horovitz said. December 17, 2008 7:45 PM spirink said.
Occam's Razor
DECEMBER 3, 2008
Michael, politely, says in an email: "I have done web analytics for five years, I have mastered Omniture, WebTrends and Google Analytics, I provide analysis and not just reporting. I feel like am an Analytics God. What would be your advice for me in terms of next steps for my career? My goal is to climb the ranks and increase my salary." " Let me hasten to add two things. Michael is not his real name. Modesty aside, :), Michael is good at what he does.
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. You declare how much someone clicking an advertisement is worth to you, and then the search engine does its best to get you as many clicks as it can at that price.
Occam's Razor
JANUARY 8, 2008
I was merrily using Time on Page and Time on Site metrics for quite some time before I actually realized how they were being measured. It was a real Doh (!) moment. Turns out we have not rfid'ed every visitor and they don't rub their head against their monitor before starting their session on my website (and of course another head rub when they decide they have had enough and exit). This would allow us to capture the time stamps accurately and have exact measures. What a disappointment!
Startup Lessons Learned
NOVEMBER 29, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 29, 2008 The ABCDEFs of conducting a technical interview I am incredibly proud of the people I have hired over the course of my career. December 2, 2008 8:53 AM Lisa said. December 2, 2008 10:47 AM William Pietri said. December 2, 2008 10:56 AM Ryan said. December 8, 2008 11:37 PM Jackson Gates said.
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. December 17, 2008 2:04 PM Alex Horovitz said. December 17, 2008 7:56 PM dmartell said. December 19, 2008 9:02 PM rtolmach said. December 27, 2008 6:46 PM Robin Good said.
Occam's Razor
NOVEMBER 17, 2008
"Experiment or die, there is no try." " That was my call to action, Yoda inspired, last week to a group of international C-level executives. And I meant every word of it. There is a tendency to think experimentation and testing is optional. Ouch! I fundamentally believe that is wrong. For a few simple reasons: # 1 It's Not Expensive! You can start for free with a superb tool: Google's Website Optimizer.
Occam's Razor
APRIL 30, 2008
Know the difference between a Reporting Squirrel and a Analysis Ninja? One is in the business of providing data. One is in the business of providing, to use a old fashioned word, information. This one of the core reasons why most dashboards are "crappy", i.e. they are data pukes that provide little in terms of context and even less in terms of actionable value. Here are some examples of sub optimal dashboards, sub optimal in my mind from a actionable perspective.
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