Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Duct Tape Marketing

AUGUST 29, 2014

Instinctively, we know that mobile users are on the go, so they’re more likely to lose patience with a slow mobile site or poor user experience (UX). You’ll now have a chart that shows sessions from mobile users vs. all sessions. Universal Analytics – User ID. Channels Report.

Analytics 64

Analytics Mobile Channel Conversion 64

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

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. The real risk in markets like Web 2.0

Vertical 154

Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 154

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2010

We’ll build the class around the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack. Their objective is to get users, orders, customers, etc. and if a web-based product, a minimum feature set,) all delivered in 10 weeks. Class 1 Jan 4 th Intro/Business Model/Customer Development.

Wiki 315

Wiki Lean Management Business Model 315

Steve Blank

MARCH 18, 2011

Tech IPOs were a receding memory, and mergers and acquisitions became the only path to liquidity for startups. VC’s went back to basics, to focus on building companies while their founders worked on building customers. Startups could now get a first version of a product out to customers in weeks/months rather than months/years.

Internet 334

Internet IPO Silicon Valley Agile 334

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

Working professionals/white collar use emails, but most users grew up instant messaging on TenCent’s QQ and most are moving to Weixin/WeChat. If you’re outside of China, you never hear about these companies or interact with them because they’re geared to serve only Chinese users. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 271

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2010

The size of the red bars (IPO’s) versus blue (mergers and acquisitions) illustrates that while venture-backed startups did get acquired, the IPO market was booming. But unlike an IPO where you sold stock to the public and got to run your company, in an acquisition your company is gone, and the odds are in a year or so you will be too.

Venture Capital 302

Venture Capital IPO Liquidity Event Entrepreneur 302

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2013

Unfortunately the class operates much like the military acquisition system: the project specification has minimal input from real world users, the product gets built with a waterfall engineering process, and there’s no input on whether the product actually meets real world needs until the product is delivered. Table for 4000.

Silicon Valley 261

Silicon Valley Colorado Lean Connecticut 261

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Compelling per-customer economics. We had only a small number of customers – if memory serves, only a few thousand active users. But a little math will show that we were making over a dollar per-user per-month. Our cost to acquire a customer on AdWords was only a few cents. April 15, 2009 4:06 PM Eric said.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

JANUARY 26, 2016

They are experts in leveraging Web 2.0 All while we’re still writing a Request for a Proposal from within the US Government procurement and acquisition channels. These acquisition and procurement “silos” of excellence are virtually impenetrable by new ideas and requirements. We’re Our Own Worst Enemy.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley North Korea Agile Lean 120

Steve Blank

APRIL 13, 2013

Working professionals/white collar use emails, but most users grew up instant messaging on TenCent’s QQ and most are moving to Weixin/WeChat. If you’re outside of China, you never hear about these companies or interact with them because they’re geared to serve only Chinese users. China Customer Development Technology Venture Capital'

Silicon Valley 163

Silicon Valley China Venture Capital Merger 163

Steve Blank

APRIL 29, 2013

Unfortunately the class operates much like the military acquisition system: the project specification has minimal input from real world users, the product gets built with a waterfall engineering process, and there’s no input on whether the product actually meets real world needs until the product is delivered. Table for 4000.

Silicon Valley 154

Silicon Valley Colorado Lean Connecticut 154

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2010

But these VC’s aren’t Lean because they fund startups with web-based distribution models. It’s because the startups are doing something very new that make them “Lean&# : These startups embrace customer and agile development that Eric Ries has been evangelizing. Lean VC’s are Different.

Lean 262

Lean Internet Silicon Valley Venture Capital 262

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 3, 2012

Steve Huffman ( Reddit , Hipmunk ) for help with Web applications. Matt Brezina (Xobni, Sincerely ) for advice on customer development, finding product/market fit and scaling user acquisition. SOPA/PIPA). Tikhon Bernstam ( Parse , Scribd ) for insight into building out your product, team and company.

Founder 116

Founder San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup 116

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

The Four Steps to the Epiphany (highly recommended book by Steve Blank) preaches for customer development before product development, advocating a quick launch with a minimal feature set rather than a full fledged product offering. ‘The user’ is too impersonal and elusive of a term to understand correctly.

Lean 120

Lean Customer Development Audience Viral 120

andrewchenblog.com

MARCH 10, 2010

Coupled with A/B testing, customer development, and thinking through business problems in a scientific, hypothesis-driven way, you end up with a powerful cocktail of techniques to build a modern startup in the most iterative way possible. You could have named it “User Experience Debt&#. Please comment! Best regards!

Technical Review 47

Technical Review Design Las Vegas Product 47

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

Lean 257

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 257

viniciusvacanti.com

SEPTEMBER 7, 2010

You’d have a lot easier time getting a great technical co-founder to join you if your initial prototype had 20,000 users and growing. It’s actually pretty hard to find a good start-up job if you have no real engineering or user acquisition / product management skills. Traction (the Catch 22 option).

Cofounder 43

Cofounder Technical Cofounder Founder Ruby 43

news.ycombinator.com

SEPTEMBER 16, 2011

It sounds like youre assuming that your execution will be flawless, even something to be copied by competitors, but how can you know without testing it on the customer? Ideas are worthless when theyre another spin on a web 2.0 It was yet another Web 2.0 social network/web analysis/etc. Shocking, I know.

Stealth 41

Stealth Technical Review Startup Software Review 41

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

Surprisingly, I was thinking the same thing today about user-generated content, which basically check-in's are too. I’d been around the web long enough to remember the dozens of companies before YouTube that tried to create crowdsourced video sites and failed. If network B has 20 users than it’s value is 400 (20*20).

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2021

Shawn immediately said the name I had given the four steps was confusing – I had called it market development – he suggested that I call it Customer Development – and the name stuck. Delivery platforms are the vehicles through which customers come to interact with your product.

Product 436

Product Viral Channel San Francisco 436

ConversionXL

JULY 3, 2014

With only 6% of senior executives believing that their companies understand their customers’ needs extremely well, it’s no wonder why customer acquisition and retention has become a substantial problem. The Case For Building Customer Personas Out Of Data-Driven Research. 3) Web & Exit Surveys.

Customer 133

Customer Analytics Conversion Lead Generation 133

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

The App Store is a channel for customer acquisition. I think its helpful to think about two kinds of competition for distribution: acquisition competition and retention competition. Acqusition competition is how new apps get new customers. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2012

They’ve all used growth hacking techniques to grow their user base from zero to millions (and sometimes hundreds of millions). Growth Hacking comes to solve a very common problem in consumer startups: getting to the first x thousand/million users quickly once the product has launched and the hype has passed.

API 167

API Viral Startup Retention 167

Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

To say he has had an impact on the web would be an understatement. Users would know exactly how much was paid for each click. He wanted to build direct customer relationships to get product feedback but only 2% of customers would ever return their registration cards. Summary notes, as always, provide below.

Product 350

Product Tuvalu Dilution Incubator 350

Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

What if you could think like an expert on any topic in a matter of minutes, instead of after hours of inefficient web browsing? We assumed our customers would be any smart Internet users looking to make a decision—granted, an extremely broad customer segment. Lean Start-up Connection: Customer Development.

Lean 298

Lean Agile Customer Development SEO 298

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

Listen to this episode if you want to hear about a founder who has a product and users and paying customers … and is trying to figure out how to take his company to the next level and grow faster. They have many, many man-years of development and customer development in them. In Spain I have large companies.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

And most web applications do their positioning right in the first few screens of the app. In engagement loops users only get "credit" if their activity directly spawns more activity. Why, we just unified acquisition and engagement! helping you balance engagement vs acquisition. March 25, 2009 9:16 AM Jesse Farmer said.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

ConversionXL

JUNE 19, 2014

It’s easy to forget when analyzing the data for conversion purposes is that the end user is a real human with feelings. Whenever you land on any web page, the first thing that happens is that you see how the page looks like. The Effect of Typography on User Experience & Conversions. 3 Step Approach To Emotional Design.

Greece 107

Greece Customer eCommerce Design 107

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

Ask your existing users this question via a survey. How can we reward our top users without money and without appearing too big brotherish? 2) Invite people to use your product in person (on their laptops), 3) Measure the impact using www.survey.io – iterate and fix all the user flows. I may iterate 3 times in one day.

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

ConversionXL

JUNE 19, 2014

It’s easy to forget when analyzing the data for conversion purposes is that the end user is a real human with feelings. Whenever you land on any web page, the first thing that happens is that you see how the page looks like. The Effect of Typography on User Experience & Conversions. 3 Step Approach To Emotional Design.

Greece 98

Greece Customer eCommerce Design 98

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. 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.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

ConversionXL

JUNE 19, 2014

It’s easy to forget when analyzing the data for conversion purposes is that the end user is a real human with feelings. Whenever you land on any web page, the first thing that happens is that you see how the page looks like. The Effect of Typography on User Experience & Conversions. 3 Step Approach To Emotional Design.

Greece 82

Greece Customer eCommerce Design 82

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 5, 2020

For example, if a client says a challenge of theirs is “converting more users who visit product pages,” ask them what they currently do, what’s worked, and what hasn’t. People like Web Smith from 2PM , and others in the D2C space, were advocating and sharing examples of brands who used content to build organic audiences.

PR 120

PR B2B Lean Audience 120

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

" Web Development Startups Solo Founders I am a creative guy with a startup idea. Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life? 5 Comments 30 Answers Tristan Kromer , I help entrepreneurs find co-founders. 5 Comments 30 Answers Tristan Kromer , I help entrepreneurs find co-founders.

Developer 42

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

In single-sided markets (where the user is the payer), earlyvangelists will be happy to pay for early access to the product. Their willingness to pay is a critical part of the customer discovery process. In Web/mobile apps, where multi-sided markets (separate users and payers) are often found, earlyvangelists can be users or payers.

Customer 119

Customer Advisory Board Engineer Cofounder 119

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 27, 2011

The idea is to build a hit that would make the founder(s) an appealing and quick talent acquisition (sometimes referred to as an acq-hire). This is lean development without any customer development. The development part is similar to a lean startup: you want to be agile. The focus is on building. Discuss.

Lean 144

Lean Startup Agile Coder 144