Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Continuous deployment and continuous learning At long last, some of the actual implementers of the advanced systems we built at IMVU for rapid deployment and rapid response are starting to write about it. At IMVU it’s a core part of our culture to ship.

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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. Talking to potential customers and competitors customers.

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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? ) Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content.

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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. And what about if deployment takes forever? But a good day looked like this.

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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.

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Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

At Toyota , they are called Chief Engineer : Toyota realizes that the Chief Engineer job is probably the most important one in the company because the Chief Engineer listens to the customer and then determines what the functions need to do to address the customer’s desires. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

Because of the extreme unknowns inherent in startup situations, we are all blind – to the realities of what customers what, market dynamics, and competitive threats. Periodic or on-demand reports are one possibility, but we can do much better. In order to use data effectively, we have to find ways to overcome this blindness.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

The other revels in the world as we all know it will be someday: limitless distribution enabled by new technologies, the importance of collaborative filters, and on-demand availability of all content for end-users. Now, helping potential customers discover new things they might like is the job of the discipline of marketing.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Plus, we saw some of the intrinsic limitations of supporting such a large staff: slower cycle times, higher cost basis, and - most importantly - the ability to serve only a limited number of customer segments. So we tried to craft a strategy that would give us the product development leverage we needed to serve all customers.

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The Next Web

AUGUST 6, 2013

But the lean startup model, when you boil it down, simply says that when you launch any new business or product you do so based on validated learning, experimentation and frequent releases which allow you to measure and gain valuable customer feedback. Lean into lean engineering, it’s going to be a win-win for you and your customers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

A few of the detailed case studies include: Tech legend Bill Gross building an MVP in 1999 to test demand for online car sales, which grew into CarsDirect.com. BetaBrand building apparel MVPs and testing them quickly with targeted customer communities. LitMotors approach to using Lean Startup to create a new vehicle category.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 11, 2010

High-profile startup Friendster had first-mover advantage in the social networking space, but created openings for competitors when it could not scale to meet demand. High-profile startup Friendster had first-mover advantage in the social networking space, but created openings for competitors when it could not scale to meet demand.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

First, a definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. In a lot of cases, this requires a lot of energy invested in talking to customers or metrics and analytics. Some caveats right off the bat.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Many journalists and conference organizers attempt to fill this demand by giving successful entrepreneurs the opportunity to tell their stories: in magazines, on blogs, and on stage. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? 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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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# Let’s begin with the four customer currencies. And this is true outside of games.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

When I first wrote about the advantages of having a pathetically small number of customers , I only had 5 subscribers. Of course, 1000 customers is pretty pathetically small too. Its also time to start thinking about customer segments. So how do you get started with customer segmentation? Thank you all for stopping by.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

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. To probe for agility, you have to ask the candidate questions involving something that they know little about. I have found this quite rare in engineers.

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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. How upset will those customers be?

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? 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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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

Lean manufacturing , agile software development , and Theory of Constraints are all examples of this idea in action. And so Deming’s contribution was especially prescient, as he saw that “the customer is the most important part of the production line.&# What if customers actually like the “crap&# product?

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Wed never heard of five whys, and we had plenty of "agile skeptics" on the team. By the time we started doing continuous integration, we had tens of thousands of lines of code, all not under test coverage. It seems your cluster architecture is one of the key architectural constraints making continuous deployment possible.

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Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

When customers are affected, try to have someone who experienced the customer problem first-hand, like the customer service rep who took the calls from angry customers. oh, and on the book front, you'll be able to get all of my essays so far in ebook, print-on-demand, and kindle editions - coming soon.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

If I have some budget for outside help, should I hire a vendor to help us drive down our payment fraud rates by 1% (ROI easy to predict), or hire a market research firm to give us insights into potential customers (ROI hard to predict)? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

As the company grows, hes the go-to person for almost everything technical, and so hes very much in demand. It exists to serve the needs of customers, and it does this by offering its capabilities to other functions in the company, and partnering with them. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 22, 2008 Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to measure customer satisfaction Ive mentioned Net Promoter Score (NPS) in a few previous posts, but havent had a chance to describe it in detail yet. It does it all by asking your customers just one magic question.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2010

This is just like a startup to me, complete with distribution and product development challenges, ecosystem design and many, many customers. Do you have a suggestion for a guest speaker or case study that illustrates a particular lean startup concept: minimum viable product, continuous deployment, validated learning, the pivot?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 122

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

To wit: achieving product/market fit , getting customer validation , making something people want , things that matter , and of course the many excellent books on the topic, of which Ill mention just two of the best, Crossing the Chasm and The Innovators Dilemma. Is a market a set of paying customers? Tough sell.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

Obama understood the two concepts that are essential for building a high-performance, highly adaptable, agile organization: 1) rapid iteration and 2) clear values-based objectives. Wed train them on-demand as they came in, and send them into the world (or onto the phones) with written instructions and voter contact data. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

There are many articles by many experts ( myself included ) extolling the virtues of listening to customers. In fact, there are so many of these propaganda pieces that this question might naturally cross your mind: if listening to customers is so great, why do we need so much propaganda? We did not take this step lightly.

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