Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. I have personally sold many copies of his book, and continue to recommend it as one of the most important books a startup founder can read.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

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. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, July 29, 2009 Embrace technical debt Financial debt plays an important and positive role in our economy under normal conditions. The human tendency to moralize about debt affects engineers, too. The biggest source of waste in new product development is building something that nobody wants.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, February 20, 2009 Work in small batches Software should be designed, written, and deployed in small batches. Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. For software, the easiest batch to see is code.

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San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 13, 2009 The Principles of Product Development Flow If youve ever wondered why agile or lean development techniques work, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen is the book for you.

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Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering. Heres my take.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. The meaning of alpha test , beta test, and first customer ship are pretty obvious to most engineers. Here’s what the product development diagram looks like from a sales perspective.

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Customer Development Developer Silicon Valley Customer 228

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2009

The same issues arose time and again: big company management styles versus entrepreneurs wanting to shoot from the hip, founders versus professional managers, engineering versus marketing, marketing versus sales, missed schedule issues, sales missing the plan, running out of money, raising new money. Would you mind sharing them?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I am convinced one of Joel Spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the Joel Test , a checklist of 12 essential practices that you could use to rate the effectiveness of a software product development team. Joel said it: "Top notch development teams dont torture their programmers."

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Market Risk vs. Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 1, 2008 Test-Driven Development as andon cord You cannot control what you cannot see, and the hardest part of managing software projects is that the final product is so intangible. These tests are written by the engineers themselves, and they must all pass every time.

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San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 15, 2009 Why Continuous Deployment? One large source of waste in development is “double-checking.&# For example, imagine a team operating in a traditional waterfall development system, without continuous deployment, test-driven development, or continuous integration.

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Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. This post describes such a model.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 253

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. January 2, 2009 8:54 AM mancjew said. January 2, 2009 8:57 AM Abbas said. Abbas February 22, 2009 3:33 PM cwillu said. I will come back for more.

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San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

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. For some reason, though, despite the increased buy-in, the final product often doesnt look anything like the original spec.

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San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 8, 2009 Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and whats changed since then) My recent article on technical debt and its positive uses generated a fair bit of controversy. Great engineers see it and smile. This is called set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE). [1]

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Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." Thats why eBay advertises on search engines, and Facebook doesnt. Labels: search engine marketing 0comments: New comments are not allowed. Thats where Id like to pick up the discussion.

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San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? 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 Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. Kent is a significant figure in the field of software development. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Our mystery keynote is now revealed and I couldnt be more excited.

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Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. It’s one of the subtle distinctions that at times gets lost in the process.

Silicon Valley 143

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 143

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

I was an engineer on the engineering team. For one, the engineers consider the artists stupid; the artists consider the engineers arrogant. The engineering team would then build that feature, mimicking the UI as close as they could using the current primitives supported by the system. The meeting was tense.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

bizthoughts.mikelee.org

MARCH 8, 2012

BizThoughts Thoughts about business, technology, the web & entrepreneurship About Booklist Contact Nov 15 2011 Finding a Technical Cofounder By Mike Lee Categories: Entrepreneurship , Leadership Since I have a technical background, I get about one offer a month to join some engineering team, or to be a technical cofounder.

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Technical Cofounder Cofounder Technical Review Software Review 40

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Labels: product development Speed up or slow down? This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Its inspired by the classic OODA Loop and is really just a simplified version of that concept, applied specifically to creating a software product development team. There are three stages: We start with ideas about what our product could be. September 3, 2009 12:25 PM Omar Ead said. Great points Eric.

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

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 269

Silicon Valley Product Startup Product Development 269

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Turns out, there was aboslutely no demand whatsoever for that particular product. Oops - there went several precious weeks of development effort down the drain. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? February 7, 2009 5:40 AM Major_Grooves said. What a great post.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

ConversionXL

MAY 1, 2017

Past Product: Lackluster Marketing Causes Growth Stalls, Too. These pitfalls are not limited to product development. Often, erosion of customer loyalty has been going on for years but the company has failed to perceive it—until it’s too late. Competitor Innovation and Market Disruption. Swimming with Sharks.

Technical Review 127

Technical Review Algorithm Channel Analytics 127

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

the version that would facilitate the investment of real money) was planned for late-2009. “Some people weren’t comfortable because it wasn’t as fun, and one senior engineer thought we’d be losing the part of kaChing that was an enabler for anyone who wanted to make it as a pro,&# Rachleff recalls. The result?

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The goal is to have split-testing be a continuous part of our development process, so much so that it is considered a completely routine part of developing a new feature. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, August 26, 2009 Building a new startup hub Last week, I had a unique opportunity to spend some time in Boulder at the behest of TechStars. And do your customer development. You can learn more about that by reading The engineering managers lament.)

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San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. They work hard to keep their house in order at all times, and there are strict rules and guidelines in place that prevent engineers and teams from doing things their own way.

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Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now A great checklist of techniques and tools for making your development more agile, written from a Rail perspective.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Later, when the company was much larger, we had everyone on our engineering team agree to sit in on one usability test every month. It wasnt a huge time commitment, but it meant that every engineer was getting regular contact with an actual customer, which was invaluable. September 25, 2009 5:23 PM jchunter said.

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San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 6, 2009 Lean Startup fbFund slides and video As a follow-up to my previous post on my talk for fbFund at Facebook , there was enough interest in watching video of the talk that I have finally uploaded it using Apples MobileMe. July 6, 2009 4:21 PM Anonymoussaid. July 6, 2009 8:43 PM Eric said.

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Lean Video San Francisco Continuous Deployment 115

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Agile software development. Customer development. Its not enough just to build a product with great features - you have to figure out if there is a market for it. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. February 13, 2009 4:05 AM Eric said.

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