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Why vanity metrics are dangerous

Startup Lessons Learned

If you never have, you can create your own using Google Finance. If you never have, you can create your own using Google Finance. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

Metrics 167
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Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Startup Lessons Learned

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process. Go on an agile diet quickly. More on that in a moment.

Customer 167
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Lessons Learned: The engineering manager's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

When I first encountered agile software techniques, in the form of extreme programming , I thought I had found the answer. I explained it to people this way: agile lets you make the trade-offs visible to whole company, so that they can make informed choices. Even worse, agile wasnt really helping me ship higher quality software.

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Lessons Learned: Product development leverage

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. In the end, I believe they co-created our product with us. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development.

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What is a startup?

Startup Lessons Learned

This is why so many small businesses can be financed with simple bank loans; the level of risk and uncertainty is well enough understood that a reasonably intelligent loan officer can assess its prospects. Fundamentally, the lean startup is a methodology for coping with uncertainty and unknowns with agility, poise, and ruthless efficiency.

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Lessons Learned: Where did Silicon Valley come from?

Startup Lessons Learned

Among those: plentiful financing and nerds , a culture that celebrates both failure and success, and an ethos of openness and sharing. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

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Fear is the mind-killer

Startup Lessons Learned

In the case of an entrepreneur pitching for finance, its the same fear that has them putting on a facade and not comfortable in what they do and dont know that will see them a long way off getting funded. Obviously they're not voicing their objections that way, but it isn't hard to read between the lines. Expo SF (May.