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. This engineering manager is a smart guy, and very experienced.

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Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

The benefits of customer and agile development and minimum features set are continuous customer feedback, rapid iteration and little wasted code. But over time if developers aren’t careful, code written to find early customers can become unwieldy, difficult to maintain and incapable of scaling.

Part-Time VPE 322

Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 322

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 25, 2012

For the business leaders I know, these priorities almost always include the following: Business agility. Implicit in agility is increased productivity on change initiatives. In today’s world of distributed data, global reach, and powerful incursion technologies, how do I protect my data and my customers’ data? User privacy.

Technology 206

Technology Agile Architecture Distribution 206

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 28, 2011

For the business leaders I know, these priorities almost always include the following: Business agility. Implicit in agility is increased productivity on change initiatives. In today’s world of distributed data, global reach, and powerful incursion technologies, how do I protect my data and my customers’ data? User privacy.

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Agile Startup Architecture Distribution 230

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Ive attempted to embed the relevant slides below.

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Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 15, 2017

Agile businesses have moved to the cloud because of its scalability, efficiency and reliability, amongst other benefits. The severity of potential damage tends to depend on the sensitivity of the data exposed – something that Equifax customers recently found out about painfully first-hand. So what can organizations do?

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Security Software Review Technical Review API 140

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2017

So, no project can have fewer than, say, three people dedicated to it, plus people management and possibly some form of Product or Project Management. Marketing isn’t scheduling a launch and recruiting isn’t timing the start-dates of the next 50 hires in customer service and sales. Predictability.

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Government Startup Cofounder Technical Support 223

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 31, 2018

He also believes that startups often have an advantage in using technological advances to help them innovate customer experiences. “In In many respects, it’s the leanness, flexibility and agility of startups that help them become successful,” he says. They’re the ones doing the disrupting, and their innovations are making waves.”.

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United Kingdom Technical Review Design Operations 113

Gust

SEPTEMBER 16, 2012

For the business leaders I know, these priorities almost always include the following: Business agility. Implicit in agility is increased productivity on change initiatives. In today’s world of distributed data, global reach, and powerful incursion technologies, how do I protect my data and my customers’ data? User privacy.

Technology 162

Technology Agile Architecture Distribution 162

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. Such direct experiences allows one to test critical “leap-of-faith” assumptions about what customers like and dislike.

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Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

ConversionXL

JUNE 19, 2018

Your customers are ready for the future of commerce. You need high tempo testing and experimentation throughout the whole customer journey. Where is your customer journey captured? Alexa Hubley: The Agile Marketing Playbook. Create your agile process: Map (start at the end). It’s all about customer experience.

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Technical Review Agile Analytics Conversion 103

YoungUpstarts

FEBRUARY 14, 2017

We do this because we want our product to the best it can be and, most of all, used by the customers we built it for. It’s not always hard to get feedback, particularly when dealing with early adopters, you’ll find that customers are often very willing to share their thoughts. Your customers don’t use your product. Is it clear?

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Technical Review Architecture Revenue Channel 157

Hearpreneur

FEBRUARY 18, 2024

Thanks to David Reyes, Reyes Financial Architecture ! #6- Breaking down larger tasks into manageable steps allows me to maintain focus & a sense of accomplishment. 10- By directly engaging with customers Photo Credit: Jordan Adair Firstly, setting precise, attainable goals is paramount. Thanks to Gabriele Asaro, Clash.gg !

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Entrepreneur Jordan Networking AJAX 116

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 what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?"

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CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It’s important to invest in good architecture so that your website will scale once customers arrive. If you make that investment, and then customers arrive, and the site stays up, most companies will reward the people who built the architecture and, thus, prevented the scaling problems.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2023

This meant the class was team-based, Lean-driven (hypothesis testing/business model/customer development/agile engineering) and experiential – where the students, rather than being presented with all of the essential information, must discover that information rapidly for themselves. How to map stakeholders and systems’ dynamics?

Lean 295

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Venture Chronicles

AUGUST 2, 2013

and more on point is that the best product is a result of what you learn from your customers, not what you think you should be doing. This is where we really erred in our approach, engineering and product management all report up to the CTO, and the company fundamentally underinvested in product management as a functional area.

Product 62

Product CTO Hire Architecture Startup 62

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 14, 2014

As companies strive to stay agile and innovative, they’ve discovered that units of 8 to 12 people work best as the natural size of high-performance teams. This fosters high performance and helps the company to present a single face to customers and shareholders. Thinking Aloud managing teams teambuilding workplace culture'

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Here are a few: We know what customers want. By hiring experts, conducting lots of focus groups, and executing to a detailed plan, the company became deluded that it knew what customers wanted. But that was two full years before any customers were allowed to use it. Stealth is a customer-free zone.

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San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

I hope to show why lean and agile techniques actually reduce the negative impacts of technical debt and increase our ability to take advantage of its positive effects. Unfortunately, customers hated that initial product. Yet other agile principles suggest the opposite, as in YAGNI and DoTheSimplestThingThatCouldPossiblyWork.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Duct Tape Marketing

JUNE 20, 2023

12:22] Would you look at the value derived by digital technologies differently than by producing customer value or revenue? [14:23] Every year inbound brings together leaders across business, sales, marketing, customer success, operations, and more. 16:32] Are there organizations that are significantly behind in this rewiring ?

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Technical Review Silicon Valley Generative AI Arizona 65

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

We wanted an agile approach that would allow us to build our software architecture as we needed it, without downtime, but also without large amounts of up-front cost. You can also download our presentation, " Just-In-Time Scalability: Agile Methods to Support Massive Growth." Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

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. These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers.

Technology 142

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 142

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. Managing timelines instead of queues. Reinertsen is the book for you.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

The site visits include stops at Square (the payments startup founded by Twitter co-creator Jack Dorsey), WeWork Soma (an amazing co-working space) and Pivotal Labs (leaders in Lean and Agile consulting), along with one more super-interesting location we’ll announce shortly. Needless to say, this is a slow and complex process.

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Continuous Deployment Norway Lean Analytics 162

www.bothsidesofthetable.com

MAY 13, 2012

Your deepest thinkers on technology architecture are seldom good team leaders. The best technologists often aren’t amazing people managers. They work on their own schedule and are often hard to manage. They care about the quality of what is build more than they care about end customers. Most often they are not.

Fractional VPE 89

Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE Fractional CTO CTO Hire 89

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

Balancing competing objectives is a recurring theme on this blog - its the central challenge of all management decisions. The six key attributes spell ABCDEF: Agility. When talking about their past experience, candidates with agility will know why they did what they did in a given situation. Communication.

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San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, January 4, 2009 Sharding for startups The most important aspect of a scalable web architecture is data partitioning. Imagine you want to store data about customers, each of whom has "last name" field in your database. The solution is to build an architecture that works for the startup condition.

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San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Wed never heard of five whys, and we had plenty of "agile skeptics" on the team. The five whys methodology has been around for some time, not just as a continuous improvement technique, but as a general problem solving method in all areas of management. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science?

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 5, 2024

We also emphasize the importance of robust financial management, ensuring we have sufficient reserves to weather potential downturns. Securing that our customers stay loyal even in the most uncertain times. Some individuals might sell off larger properties to downsize to more manageable and affordable homes.

Entrepreneur 76

Entrepreneur Architecture Agile Small Business 76

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. I know them right away - we can talk high-level architecture all the way down to the bits-and-bytes of his system. Just change it.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

They are leaders, visionaries, founders and managers having tremendous success. I suggested that we change the underlying architecture of our UI system so that the artists would be able to build their own UI pieces themselves and then integrate them into the product without requiring new code every time. Startups are companies.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 21, 2017

The owner was not equipped to manage people. 3 – Google Regional Sales Manager. Before starting Badger, I worked at Google as Regional Sales Manager. Sales Account Manager. Sales Account Manager for a leading NYC based StartUp. Image Credit: Steve Benson. Thanks to Steve Benson, Badger Maps ! #4 4 – Sr.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

They have a product that has a moderate number of customers. Its well done, looks professional, and the customers that use it like it a lot. Most of all, I encouraged them to start talking to their most passionate customers and running some big experiments based on that feedback. Only pay for benefits to customers.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

If we accept the verdict of customers instead of pundits, I think these claims are easy to dismiss. Managers start to make a note of who’s on which faction, and then assign projects accordingly. Another is used by marketing to refer to what customers see.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 27, 2010

For the business leaders I know, these priorities almost always include the following: Business agility. Implicit in agility is increased productivity on change initiatives. In today’s world of distributed data, global reach, and powerful incursion technologies, how do I protect my data and my customers’ data? Data security.

Entrepreneur 220

Entrepreneur Agile Architecture Distribution 220

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

We just had our app support a few tens of thousands of customers, and it did well. So did I when I finally found myself building an app with real scalability, a few years later, but a combination of our just-in-time scalability technique and great open source scaling tools, made it manageable. Looking back, that was a special moment.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68