Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

This builds on a lot of great thinking that has come before, like the agile movements insistence that only the creation of working code counts as progress for a software development team. I used to think that investments in metrics were a form of waste. I used to think that investments in metrics were a form of waste.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In addition to presenting the IMVU case, we tried for the first time to do an overview of a software engineering methodology that integrates practices from agile software development with Steves method of Customer Development. Ive attempted to embed the relevant slides below. What about a hardware business with some long-lead-time components?

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Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

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. Thus we reduce the risk of deployments.

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Continuous Deployment Norway Lean Analytics 162

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

By continuously adjusting, we eventually build up a robust series of defenses that prevent problems from happening. This approach is a the heart of breaking down the "time/quality/cost pick two" paradox , because these small investments cause the team to go faster over time. Id like to point out something else about the example above.

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Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. And a certain amount of chaos reigned too.

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Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. Creating a company-wide feedback loop that incorporates both customer development and agile development is a challenge.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. When operating with continuous deployment, its almost impossible to have integration conflicts. Sounds very similar to agile development which is the way. Small is beautiful.

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San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

We had endless arguments internally about what features it should include, how the avatars should look, and how much it should cost. Just load them all in and choose a low cost-per-click. Seems like a fairly low-cost method of gauging customer interest for a would-be product. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

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." Lean startups have the ability to use this commodity stack to lower costs and, more importantly, reduce time to market. Agile software development.

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Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

I spent some time with his company before the conference and discussed ways to get started with continuous deployment , including my experience introducing it at IMVU. Moreover, approaching the problem from the direction that I had intuitively is a recipe for never reaching a point where continuous deployment is feasible.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Or, if it really was prevented, what was the opportunity cost of choosing to prevent it ahead of time? And in most situations, there is significant cost involved in negotiating over the right estimates to plug in. In other words, a principled way to combine agility with stability. How much will it cost to solve this problem now?

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San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

It costs not just the time of the actual meeting, but the time getting there and back, and the time preparing for it beforehand and thinking about it afterward. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

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San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

While some cost-cutting measures reduce that number, others increase it. In lean times, it’s most important to focus on cutting costs in ways that speed you up, not slow you down. Otherwise, cutting costs just leads to going out of business a little slower. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

The Lean Startup is a practical approach for creating and managing a new breed of company that excels in low-cost experimentation, rapid iteration, and true customer insight. It uses principles of agile software development, open source and web 2.0, Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Expo SF (May.

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Lean San Francisco Web Advisory Board 68

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. But if you want to practice rapid deployment, you need to be able to deploy that build in one step as well. Can you make a build in one step? Youd better.

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Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. I want to talk specifics, and when you come right down to it, most technology startups dont have a very interesting cost structure. The blog is fantastic as well.

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Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

The cost of creating new companies is falling rapidly, and access to markets, distribution, and information is within the reach of anyone with an Internet connection. The cost will be felt in jobs -- thousands of new jobs that could have been created here, but werent. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? And what about if deployment takes forever? In my mind, theyre racking up costs (one month for that part, two months for that other part, uh oh). Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This theory has become so influential that I have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Expo SF (May. Conference streaming, sponsors, discounted tickets.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

[link] And - of course - going through [link] and reading up on the various different approaches different companies have (successfully) taken towards getting scalability at reasonably low cost. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. sadly, this blog forces you to use a google account. Expo SF (May.

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Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

We can choose to continue paying the interest, or we can pay down the principal by refactoring the quick and dirty design into the better design. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future. Side-effects that reduce agility are the most damaging symptoms of technical debt.

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Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Since we were only paying per click, it didnt cost us anything to cast a wide net. Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Expo SF (May.

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SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. They know how much it costs to bring in a customer and they know how much money they can expect to make on each one. Our cost to acquire a customer on AdWords was only a few cents. Go on an agile diet quickly. And yet, their investors are frustrated. Great post!

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics. Luckily, we also discovered that certain other metrics, like LTV and CPA were much better than we initially projected. If it costs $0.10 Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. But $10.00?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Its obvious that can lower your development costs, but I think its even more important that it can reduce your time to market. Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down?

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

As the costs of production fall, it’s getting easier and easier to send in a proposal or even a complete work. Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it. I’ve met a lot of gatekeepers in the past few months.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 27, 2009

The Lean Startup is a practical approach for creating and managing a new breed of company that excels in low-cost experimentation, rapid iteration, and true customer insight. It uses principles of agile software development, open source and web 2.0, Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Expo SF (May.

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Lean Austin San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

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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Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 29, 2010

Doesnt the communication overhead of a large team lead to chaos of overlapping experiments and continuously-deployed bugs?" "If And do I still need to get out of the building if Ive got great metrics and surveys?" Of course, readers of this blog know that the lean in "lean startup" doesnt refer to cost, but - rather - to Lean Thinking.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

In this post I want to talk about the nuts and bolts of how to integrate continuous integration into your team, and how to use it to create two important feedback loops. First, a word about why continuous integration is so important. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Expo SF (May.

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Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2010

The cost of creating new companies is falling rapidly, and access to markets, distribution, and information is within the reach of anyone with an internet connection. The cost of creating new companies is falling rapidly, and access to markets, distribution, and information is within the reach of anyone with an internet connection.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 122

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Stick to some kind of absolute-cost rule, like "no one is allowed to spend more time on the refactoring for a given feature than the feature itself, but also no one is allowed to spend zero time refactoring." Labels: agile , product development , Test-driven development 11comments: William Pietri said. Great post, Eric. Homer said.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

davemcclure : amazing concepts on Continuous Development => "Cluster Immune System" @EricRies #LeanStartup @fbFund [link] dalelarson : Because most features take longer to argue and prioritize than to build. ericries #leanstartup Another new idea in the section on continuous deployment and the cluster immune system.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Which comes to the second major principle: halt work that leads to more waste, even if it means abandoning sunk costs. Just because something looks pretty, or feels like a good idea, or has a lot of sunk cost in it, does not mean it should be pursued. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

It cost us a few hundred thousand dollars to get our app up and running, but none of that was dollars spent on software licenses or professional services. I cant really imagine how much it cost our "grownup" counterparts at other dot-com startups to get their first app up and running. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Know what the success metrics are for the launch. Slow progress, but has cost less than 150k aud so far. Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down?

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San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168