Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 18, 2020

I found this reality addressed well in a new book, “ Fast Times ,” by McKinsey Partners Arun Arora, Peter Dahlstrom, Klemens Hjartar, and Florian Wunderlich. Set up training courses that highlight agility, and adopt agile working practices.

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Agile Advisory Board Metrics Asia 307

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

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way. Heres the catch.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

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

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

Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 29, 2021

It's important to keep business agile. Thanks to Sean Kelly, Book Retreats.com ! #9- One of the key metrics of success in Real Estate is having a large market share. Your customer is the determining factor in whether or not you succeed. I think I am ready for any curveball in my way the next time.

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Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 7, 2022

Even with advantages that independent startups can never hope to match, including brand recognition, customers, financial capital, and distribution, I don’t often see the entrepreneurial passion for innovation, agility, and team perseverance exhibited by new startups. Get prepared for the accelerate and scaling phase.

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Advisory Board Incubator Dilution Agile 359

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 17, 2017

I found some key ones in a new book, “ The Future-Proof Workplace ,” by Linda Sharkey, PhD, and Morag Barrett. The command and control leadership of the past is proving to be too inflexible, devoid of values, and not empathic to people issues – customers, employees, and partners. Company culture drives decision making and process.

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Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Leadership Agile 139

Startup Professionals Musings

JUNE 20, 2022

I saw some real guidance in the classic book by Loc de Brabandere and Alan Iny, “ Thinking in New Boxes.” Another example is seeing substitute versions of a product, like eBooks, for a low price displacing hardcover books. New unmet consumer or customer needs. Changes in your organization’s core performance metrics.

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Metrics Agile Community Government 277

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 4, 2015

In a new book, “ The Leadership Capital Index ,” Dave Ulrich, a best-selling author, business consultant, and business school professor, provides some real insights and metrics on what makes up the elements of goodwill in the minds of top valuation experts. I have paraphrased his key points here as follows: Leader personal impact.

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Leadership Technical Review Due Diligence Valuation 120

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? This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Every board meeting, the metrics of success change.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 29, 2012

When Bob Dorf and I wrote the Startup Owners Manual we listed a series of Customer Development principles. Pair Customer Development with Agile Development. No Business Plan Survives First Contact with Customers. Startup Metrics are Different from Existing Companies. for A Repeatable and Scalable Business Model.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 15, 2020

I found real confirmation of my approach, and much practical guidance in a recent book, “ Entrepreneurial Leap ,” by a friend and cohort Gino Wickman. For the business to prosper, every employee, and your customers, must know and relate to your core values, such as product excellence, care for the environment, and personal integrity.

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Metrics Agile Hiring Matching 351

Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 20, 2019

I saw some real guidance in the classic book by Loc de Brabandere and Alan Iny, “ Thinking in New Boxes.” Another example is seeing substitute versions of a product, like eBooks, for a low price displacing hardcover books. New unmet consumer or customer needs. Changes in your organization’s core performance metrics.

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Entrepreneur Metrics Agile Community 234

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

OnlyOnce

AUGUST 12, 2013

Book Short: Is CX the new UX? Outside In: The Power of Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business , by Harley Manning and Kelly Bodine from Forrester Research, was a good read that kept crossing back and forth between good on the subject at hand, and good business advice in general.

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Lean Agile B2B Metrics 94

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Boyd emphasized the importance of agility in combat: "the key to victory is to be able to create situations wherein one can make appropriate decisions more quickly than ones opponent." Agile software development. Agile allows companies to build higher quality software faster. Customer development. Excellent ideas!

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Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Occam's Razor

MAY 2, 2017

There is no golden metric for everyone, we are all unique snowflakes! :). and tell you what are the best key performance indicators (metrics) for them. In the past I’ve shared a cluster of metrics that small, medium and large businesses can use as a springboard…. If you want to play along. Don’t read what I’ve chosen.

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Metrics Acquisition eCommerce Analytics 141

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. We finally settled on a $1.99 Setup a simple website.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

I place them roughly in this order: Movies > Television > Books > Music > Magazines > Radio > Newspapers Each industry is watching the one in front of it sink into the quicksand. 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.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. We were lucky to learn about Customer Development early on in the life of our startup. More importantly, we’d witnessed Customer Development’s massive success at another local startup. So how did Customer Development fail us? It’s your vision damn it!

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Customer Development Developer Customer California 230

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

I recently spoke with Aaron about everything from his work to his forthcoming book, Brave New Work , his personal theory about why best practices aren't usually the best, and how he uses lean startup at the drugstore. ** What is work in the 21st century? His blood sugar was our steering metric and his behavior was our feedback loop.

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View from Seed

FEBRUARY 27, 2019

Analytics is about designing, reporting, and leveraging operating metrics to aid strategic and functional decision-making. These are operating metrics because they are not part of GAAP financial statements, even though they are critical for everyone from the CEO to marketers and PMs to make data-informed decision on a daily basis.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2011

I am no longer writing a book. The Lean Startup Book is done. The finished book will come out on September 13, featuring an amazing cover designed by my IMVU co-founder Marcus Gosling and refined and tested by so many of you. The book contains tons of case studies. But the book is much more than just stories.

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Lean Startup Metrics Private Equity 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. In the meantime his two books, The Monk and the Riddle and Getting to Plan B are both a must-read. When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

He has a good team, and theyve shipped a working product to many customers. But they are pushing for the things that matter to customers - features. And they are cognizant that their funding is limited, and if they dont find out which features are absolutely critical for their customers soon, they wont be able to survive.

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Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 13, 2019

His latest book is “ The Strategy Mindset 2.0: I’m the author of seven books, including “ The Strategy Mindset ” and “ The Strategy Mindset 2.0 “, as well as two of the market-leading textbooks used in both undergraduate and graduate programs around the world. There are many strategy books on the market.

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LLC Founder Texas Agile 127

Startup Professionals Musings

OCTOBER 8, 2017

I saw some real guidance in the classic book by Loc de Brabandere and Alan Iny, “ Thinking in New Boxes.” Another example is seeing substitute versions of a product, like eBooks, for a low price displacing hardcover books. New unmet consumer or customer needs. Changes in your organization’s core performance metrics.

Metrics 132

Metrics Agile Community Government 132

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. To do that we will create end-user demand and drive it into the sales channel, educate the channel and customers about why our products are superior, and help Engineering understand customer needs and desires.

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Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 263

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 15, 2013

I saw some real guidance in a new book by Loc de Brabandere and Alan Iny, “ Thinking in New Boxes.” While the focus of the book is really on business creativity, the following triggers were outlined as weak signals which should not be overlooked in your efforts to think outside the box, or think in a new box: A changing value proposition.

Metrics 239

Metrics Agile Community Government 239

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. Luckily, I now have the benefit of a forthcoming book, The Principles of Product Development Flow. Sounds very similar to agile development which is the way. For software, the easiest batch to see is code. (I Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I know plenty of people who prefer more advanced source control system, but my belief is that many agile practices diminish the importance of advanced features like branching. Its not that the idea behind them is wrong, but I think agile team-building practices make scheduling per se much less important. Youd better.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 10, 2020

The traditional buyer’s funnel relies on linear decision-making, assuming that an audience will move neatly to become a prospect, then customer. Keep in mind, however, that customers won’t necessarily go through these stages in order. Metrics for this depth are rare and only long-term. Breaking content out of the linear funnel.

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Agile Social Media Audience Software Review 139

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2010

Last, Ive tried to keep this blog updated with events , slides , audio , video and books that are helpful as well. Last, Ive tried to keep this blog updated with events , slides , audio , video and books that are helpful as well. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Lean San Francisco Wiki Startup 146

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

When you have an infinitesimal number of customers, it can be embarrassing. But as long as your ego can take it, there are huge advantages to having a small number of customers. Most importantly, you can get to know those few customers in a way that people with zillions of customers cant. You can even meet the friend.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Imagine a general manager that has read The Innovator’s Dilemma and related books, and is therefore trying hard to help her organization make a transition to a new product category via disruptive innovation. That’s because the model is based on assumptions about customers that are totally unproven.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102