David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Almost every private equity and venture capital investor now advertises that they have a platform to support their portfolio companies. 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.

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Talented product developers. If you can harness the knowledge, natural enthusiasm, and peer influence of your very best customers — I call them “Rock Star” customers — they’ll market, sell, and help develop breakthrough products for your firm better than your internal resources can do, and often at a fraction of the cost.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

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.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

You get increasing growth by optimizing the viral loop , and you get revenue as a side-effect, assuming you have even the most anemic monetization scheme baked into your product. Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

K9 Ventures

AUGUST 13, 2010

SneakerLabs’ first product was a Java-based chat server and client. Since I had good connections with the University, we got a lot of feedback on how the product could be improved to meet their needs. We listened to their feedback and started adding features to the product accordingly. The product worked. Not so fast.

Revenue 72

Revenue Developer Java Customer Development 72

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.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

It is becoming easier and cheaper for companies to bring products to market, leveraging free and open source software , cloud computing, open social data (Facebook, OpenSocial ), and open distribution (AdWords, SEO). Customer development. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. Market Type But most startups aren’t in existing markets. I cover this in the Four Steps to the Epiphany.)

Silicon Valley 143

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 143

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. He has a good team, and theyve shipped a working product to many customers.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? Change who your product is for.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. What is customer development?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and. When the answer is no, we can cancel all the effort that goes into building schedules and focus on making progress evident. Focus on launching.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

I believe its important that product teams be cross-functional, no matter what other job function the product champion does. At IMVU , we called this person a Producer (revealing our games background); in Scrum , they are called the Product Owner. about what their function needs to do to fully support the product.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, November 5, 2008 Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and media buyers I see lots of startups whose business plans revolve around selling high-value ad space to brand advertisers. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Advertising 60

Advertising San Francisco Media Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Through case studies, exercises, and discussions, Eric Ries will guide entrepreneurs of all stripes through the key areas that determine success for startups: product, engineering, QA, marketing, and business strategy. This workshop presents a new methodology that will allow you to bring new products -- and companies -- to life.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Customers will get to consume the content they want, and support the producers of that content directly, rather than having to rely exclusively on intermediaries. The key tools of this new marketing are: targeting, filtering, and customer insight. There are too many products clamoring for attention. Is that a lot? Is that good?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

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. And most startup code and features end up on the floor as customers never really wanted them.

Lean 260

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

First, SlideShare is a fantastic product (that I use on a regular basis) and an impressive company example of Lean Startup practices in action. If your company is using minimum viable product , you’ve probably said the same thing yourself. Early this year, SlideShare launched custom channels.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Every product ultimately is satisfying a need in the customers who buy it or use it. Products that dont solve satisfy any need for any customers tend to die out quickly. The more painful curse for startups is the product that satisfies a need or solves a problem - but that problem is not very important.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. Their economics blends elements of the free, advertising-supported, "eyeballs" business with more traditional e-commerce and subscription businesses. Is it that they act as free advertising for our premium product?

San Francisco 148

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

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. This is precisely the dilemma that the doctrine of minimum viable product is designed to solve.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, January 11, 2009 CPI > CPC Google revolutionized advertising by popularizing pay-per-click. This model has not translated well to the world of social networking, because customers of social networks engage sites in a different way than customers of search engines.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment 68

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

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. As Steve writes in the Four Steps to the Epiphany , we always seek to find a market for the product as currently specified , not conduct a focus group to tell us what the spec should be.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

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. They need products that are really working in the market. via AndrewChen.co). ” Curiosity.

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

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

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. At IMVU , most of them thought our product was ridiculous at best; hopeless at worst. Still, a startup product development team is a service organization.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

I’ve talked with a number of software development shops who are eager to get into the business of cofounding companies, i.e., getting product revenue and equity instead of just consulting revenue. If we believe in founders enough, we should believe in their potential more than what they could be paying us to build the product.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

Of their early customers, about 1/3 of them turned out to be high school or middle school teachers. This wasnt an education product - it was a pretty surprising group to find using it. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development?

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Five Why’s rarely works for general abstract problems like “our product is buggy&# or “our team moves too slow.&# The net effect of all this was to make new engineers incredibly productive right away – in most cases, we’d have them deliver code to production on their very first day.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

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? In a mature company with a mature product, the goal is to pay for lots of people to come to your website. SEM is a simple idea.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

Hewlett and David Packard, who in 1938 began developing their first product, an audio oscillator, in this garage. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and.

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

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. We started with the product about three years ago, development, a year later we released it. Edwin: May I.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

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. Do some Customer Development instead.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

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. His book Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production is a fascinating read, even though its decidedly non-practical. Each five whys email is a teaching document. and so forth.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

But they are often counter-productive when placed in a management role for other kinds of work. Successful products and features have a natural lifecycle. The problem is that people who were essential to the product in a previous phase can get carried along and find themselves stuck downstream. What is customer development?

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

In most applications, most of the time, customers return to use the application not in response to a notification or event, but under their own volition. These decisions are critical to the success of any high-engagement product, and they take place entirely inside the minds of customers. Impressive. It all depends on: 1.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88