Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 15, 2022

By definition, most startups begin as a result of some innovation in product, process, or service. The problem is that innovations in most business areas are coming so fast these days that yours can be overrun while still being scaled up across geographies and other products. Product-line expansion. Geographic expansion.

Dilution 355

Dilution Startup Merger Flash 355

The Startup Magazine

MARCH 7, 2024

Guest Author: Danish Ahmed, Founder of startuptools.ai. Companies are turning to AI to streamline their operations, notably in areas like customer service, cybersecurity, and fraud prevention. AI tools help analyze vast amounts of data to provide insights into market trends and customer preferences.

Artificial Inteligence 119

Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Algorithm Cofounder 119

ReadWriteStart

DECEMBER 8, 2023

According to Gergo Vari, the founder of Lensa, if your startup is ready to ride the metaverse wave, staying informed and investing in the skills and expertise needed for this new era are crucial. Adapting to emerging trends and staying agile will be crucial for startups as the metaverse grows.

Technical Review 133

Technical Review Generative AI Startup Agile 133

YoungUpstarts

MAY 30, 2019

In 2013, I left a CTO job overseeing a 50-person product engineering team for the same job at a four-person startup. Upon arrival, I incorporated a few elements from my previous stop into this new endeavor, including a battle-tested Agile Scrum process and the corresponding technology. Manage Your Workflow — Or Else.

Management 138

Management Product SCRUM Early Stage 138

ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 20, 2023

With such daunting statistics, it’s clear that maintaining a startup becomes an uphill battle for founders without the right foundations. Yet, navigating this landscape requires more than just a unique product or service. From custom app development to effective mobile marketing strategies, they embody the spirit of innovation.

Technical Review 137

Technical Review Startup Silicon Valley Agile 137

YoungUpstarts

MAY 30, 2014

by Sam Bahreini, co-founder and COO of VoloForce. Google is notorious for this, releasing many of its products in beta form — and sometimes even leaving them in that phase for years. But this relatively new trend of testing products publicly has led to some misunderstandings of what it actually means to launch a “beta” product.

Customer 231

Customer Development Team Review Cofounder Agile 231

Steve Blank

APRIL 12, 2010

Each sale requires us to handhold the customer and takes way too long to close. He took a deep breath, looked around the boardroom table and then proceeded to outline a radical reconfiguration of the product line (repackaging the products rather than reengineering them) and a change in sales strategy, focusing on a different customer segment.

Business Model 332

Business Model Agile Customer Development Startup 332

Women Entrepreneurs Can

NOVEMBER 14, 2018

These days, one of the decisions that startup owners make (or at least should think about making) is whether to be an agile company from the very start, to try to adopt it later or to do things the more traditional way. Most people are already familiar with agile principles to some extent, but just in case let’s go over the basics.

Agile 40

Agile Software Review Startup SCRUM 40

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. Jim Murphy is a long-time agile practitioner in startups. But startups sometimes have trouble applying agile successfully. Enter Jims post.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 15, 2020

For startups, the entrepreneur and founder is almost always the face of the company. Investors, partners, team members, and customers implicitly value or devalue a startup based on the leader’s physical presence, emotional identity, social skills, intellectual agility, moral values, and past performance in the domain.

Valuation 311

Valuation Technical Review Due Diligence Leadership 311

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

Customer Development is a technique startups use to quickly iterate and test each part of their business model. How you execute Customer Development varies, depending on your type of business. Ash Maurya , the CEO of WiredReach, has extended my work by building a model of Customer Development for Web Startups.

Customer Development 266

Customer Development Web Developer Customer 266

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

APRIL 3, 2018

But I remind them that customers don’t ask for your transcript. It does mean that success in building a company that scales depends on finding product/market fit, enough customers, enough financing, enough great employees, distribution channels, etc. Lessons Learned. Entrepreneurship is a calling, not a job.

Technical Review 334

Technical Review Entrepreneur Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 334

Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

After 20 years of working in startups, I decided to take a step back and look at the product development model I had been following and see why it usually failed to provide useful guidance in activities outside the building – sales, marketing and business development. So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 238

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 238

Hearpreneur

NOVEMBER 29, 2018

Enter Dr. Mik Kersten’s new book, Project to Product: How to Survive and Thrive in the Age of Digital Disruption with the Flow Framework [IT Revolution Press, November 2018], based on two decades of research, spanning almost every domain of software delivery. Tell us about your products and services. How do you help clients?

Framework 66

Framework Agile Open Source Software 66

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 29, 2020

This start-up is headed by industry-leading professionals including its CEO and co-founder, Ido Susan, and Hillel Kobrinsky the CSO and co-founder. Namogoo.com offers additional protections to companies to eliminate malware and invasive ad injections, to enhance the customer experience, and improve KPIs in conversion rates.

Cofounder 147

Cofounder Software Review Technical Cofounder 147

The Startup Magazine

APRIL 14, 2022

You could have the best product on the market, but if no one knows about it, then no one will buy it. Startups that are named after their founders sometimes do not succeed. If your startup’s name is too technical or complicated, people might not understand it, which may make them less likely to use your service or buy your product.

Startup 144

Startup Early Stage Naming Public Relations 144

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 2, 2020

They’re still built that way by the product’s engineers. Of course, users won’t be able to customize their project as fully as if they were coding it from scratch. But in most cases, that level of customization isn’t necessary. How no-code tools work. How small businesses can benefit from no-code tools.

CTO Hire 264

CTO Hire eCommerce Engineer Software 264

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. Are there customers for what you are building? How many are there? Can it scale?”

Customer Development 262

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 6, 2008 Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile I thought Id share an interesting post from someone with a decidedly anti-agile point of view. Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2020

The classes are built on the Lean Startup methodology: Customer Discovery, Agile Engineering and the Business/Mission Model Canvas. So how do our students get out of the building to talk to customers to do Customer Discovery when they can’t get out of the building? Reminder: What’s the Point of Talking to Customers ?

Customer 413

Customer Business Model Restful Video 413

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

And to today, when its major product is simply innovation. When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions and even billions of users can happen in years versus decades. The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle.

Restful 222

Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 15, 2011

It's also challenging to attract and retain a loyal community of customers and users. This is one of the reasons that it's so important to have a good co-founder. Although you certainly can make the case for a single-person startup , it's so much easier to have a co-founder and we've covered in the past tips on finding a good one.

Cofounder 121

Cofounder SCRUM Founder Widget 121

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 4, 2010 Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Kent Beck will give the opening keynote at the Startup Lessons Learned conference on April 23. Labels: sllconf Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Kent Beck will give the opening keynote at the Startup Lessons Learned conference on April 23.

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

SoCal CTO

APRIL 2, 2013

What's Going to Go Wrong A lot of founders don't really understand Lean Startup principles. Have you conducted Problem, Solution and Feature Interviews with customers? Have you conducted Problem, Solution and Feature Interviews with customers? Don't be fooled by a Common Misunderstanding in Agile Software Development.

Technical Cofounder 219

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Developers Software Development 219

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2019

By definition, most startups begin as a result of some innovation in product, process, or service. The problem is that innovations in most business areas are coming so fast these days that yours can be overrun while still being scaled across geographies and other products. Product-line expansion. Geographic expansion.

Dilution 224

Dilution Merger Flash Global 224

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 3, 2009 Minimum Viable Product: a guide One of the most important lean startup techniques is called the minimum viable product. MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products. We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 4, 2021

Lean Methodology consists of three tools designed for entrepreneurs building new ventures: The Business Model Canvas – to write down all the hypotheses about a new business; Customer Development – a process for testing those hypotheses outside the building; Agile Engineering – to rapidly build minimal viable products to test product/market fit.

Customer 420

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 420

The Startup Magazine

OCTOBER 19, 2022

“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia represents the largest potential market in the Middle East for our disruptive 3D construction technology, and many large-end customers in the Kingdom have been eagerly awaiting, that the technology became available via an established local company,” says Henrik Lund-Nielsen, COBOD founder and general manager.

Saudi Arabia 147

Saudi Arabia Oman Technical Review Qatar 147

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Agile – you may find the real opportunities for your company was somewhere else. Passionate – is the company/product/customers the most important thing in your life? This is the minimum feature set for founders. Founders know they want to start something. The Adventure of a Lifetime. How quickly will you recover?

Cofounder 219

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 219

View from Seed

MAY 14, 2019

A number of blog posts recently have mentioned this, but we seem to be experiencing a rise in repeat founders starting new businesses and raising seed capital. We’re also seeing a wave of folks who were not founders, but were star players among the first 25 folks at a unicorn company also starting new companies.

Founder 256

Founder Agile Cofounder Seed Capital 256

Steve Blank

MAY 6, 2015

I am always surprised when critics complain that the Lean Startup’s Build, Measure, Learn approach is nothing more than “throwing incomplete products out of the building to see if they work.”. Repeat, learning whether to iterate, pivot or restart until you have something that customers love. Build, Measure, Learn sounds pretty simple.

Lean 120

Lean Agile Business Model Customer Development 120

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. Reinertsen is the book for you.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

ConversionXL

AUGUST 12, 2020

Then, you turn up to people’s desks like an unwelcome door-to-door salesperson, trying to convince them of the virtues of customer-centricity. So how do you convince people with little motivation—throughout the entire business—to focus more on your customers? So how can data help you? Challenge opinions. Show the financial impact.

Customer 74

Customer Conversion Dividend Software Review 74

Feld Thoughts

OCTOBER 3, 2010

Ryan Martens, Rally’s founder, thought it would be a great opportunity to do some Q&A with Niki and Nate Kohari, the founders of AgileZen. And, if you are a software developer using Lean or Agile methodologies, take a look at Rally and AgileZen. Why did you start AgileZen ? What is your mantra and secret to success ?

Founder 122

Founder Acquisition Software Developers Software Development 122

Duct Tape Marketing

OCTOBER 29, 2019

Bringing Marketing and Product Development Together written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing. On this episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, I visit with author and product and marketing executive Jill Soley. How does the go-to-market approach vary between services versus products? Podcast Transcript.

Product Development 40

Product Development Developer Product Marketing 40

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? When we build products, we use a methodology. But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit."

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168