Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 27, 2019

My simple answer is that they keep their focus on customers, rather than technology. Jeff Bezos has kept his focus on customers. In my view, every startup in today’s world would do well to adopt a management system with the same key objectives: Start with a customer-obsessed business model.

Global 308

Global Marketing Technical Review Algorithm 308

Hearpreneur

OCTOBER 25, 2023

The expansion of e-commerce should also bring about seeing returns as a strategic lever, similar to how companies used faster delivery to drive customer experience and revenue. Think of it from the customer's perspective – Why should this customer shop from your store instead of the other stores selling this product?

eCommerce 126

eCommerce Omaha Entrepreneur SEO 126

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

Once upon a time every great organization was a scrappy startup willing to take risks – new ideas, new methods, new customers, targets, and mission. Metrics are used to manage process rather than creation of new capabilities, outcomes and speed to deployment. Companies Run on Process. Process Versus Product.

Government 315

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 315

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why vanity metrics are dangerous In a previous post, I defined two kinds of metrics: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. In this post, Id like to talk about the perils of vanity metrics. My personal favorite vanity metrics is "hits."

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 7, 2022

Customers would peruse advertising with open-mindedness and intrigue, reviewing new products for potential purchase without much judgment of that advertisement or reflection about its purpose. Today’s customers have different preferences. Focusing on vanity metrics can be damaging to your long-term potential.

Marketing 198

Marketing Advertising Metrics Technical Review 198

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

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

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

I'm going to be looking at aspects like: Things to consider before building your MVP Features often overlooked when documenting an MVP for developers Understanding important metrics you want to measure Risks and challenges in developing an MVP. Have you conducted Problem, Solution and Feature Interviews with customers?

Technical Cofounder 219

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Developers Software Development 219

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 29, 2019

A platform is a business model and capability that can be accessed and customized by external users. Create and practice an obsession over customers. Make sure everyone knows it’s their job to maintain empathy and exceed customer expectations. Institute deep metrics measuring all aspects of the customer experience.

Artificial Inteligence 222

Artificial Inteligence Agile Technical Review Demand 222

ctotodevelopers.blogspot.com

JULY 11, 2012

Social, Agile, and Transformation. I cover several topics including agile software development, software startups, web 2.0, Strategic Agile Thinking: Balancing Value, Innovation and Research. 2) The agile "happy place". Agile teams sprint when value is known, implementation is low risk. and business transformation.

Agile 40

Agile Architecture Offshore Software Developers 40

Hearpreneur

JANUARY 29, 2023

To do this effectively, they must have a clear understanding of their customer base and their needs. By gaining insight into their customer’s behavior and preferences, businesses can identify which technologies will have the most impact on their current operations and help them to stay ahead of their competitors.

Artificial Inteligence 114

Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Agile Technical Review 114

SoCal CTO

MAY 21, 2012

Many of the factors are not obvious and include building mystery to drive margin, why boring B2B companies often win but are challenging in other ways, how bootstrapping wins, integrating metrics from the start and many other similar lessons. What parts Agile addresses and the big problems with Agile for early-stage startups?

Fractional CTO 175

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Startup Social Network 175

Steve Blank

MARCH 15, 2017

His company had marched through customer discovery, learning about the customer problem, validated solutions and was now scaling sales and marketing. But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. Help Engineering understand customer needs. All good news.

Startup 310

Startup PR Public Relations Channel 310

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 12, 2020

Shelter-in-place orders have left many startups lacking ways to interact with customers. Pivoting only works if a business is small and agile and can shift its operations quickly and flawlessly in a different direction. What we should have learned is that businesses need to be more agile in their construction.

Bankruptcy 165

Bankruptcy Startup Agile Technical Review 165

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 18, 2020

They outline and give some positive recommendations to counter the key organizational impediments to fast transformation that I see all too often, even in businesses with top management committed to first-mover speed and agility: Passive resistance to change from within the organization.

Agile 307

Agile Advisory Board Metrics Asia 307

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.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 22, 2023

Rather than a focus on salary and perks, your focus is on customers, revenue, and operations. As an employee, you only get to execute what others tell you, even if you enjoy the challenge of new requirements and customer feedback. More new, repeat, and loyal customers means career success.

Metrics 279

Metrics Startup Agile Salary 279

The Startup Magazine

MAY 4, 2022

They not only have to create a new product or service that is innovative and appealing to customers, but they also have to do it quickly and efficiently. The digital transformation strategy must be agile, flexible, and customer-centric to stay ahead of the competition. Startup companies are under a lot of pressure to succeed.

Technical Review 124

Technical Review Startup Agile Technology 124

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, March 25, 2009 The Lean Startup at Agile Vancouver April 21st A surprising number of respondents in the latest Lessons Learned survey hail from one of the flourishing startup hubs in Canada. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May.

Agile 60

Agile Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 18, 2022

Instead of sizing up new opportunities and actively courting every new customer, you start worrying about cutting costs, repeatable processes , and overtaking known competitors. As a consultant, I hate to see you lose that startup focus on innovation, change, and customers. Eliminate penalties for risk-taking and learning experiences.

Artificial Inteligence 385

Artificial Inteligence Startup Metrics Agile 385

ReadWriteStart

APRIL 8, 2023

Customers will be even more comfortable with the introduction of voice commerce, another unicorn of the online shopping experience. Sustainability is the Queen In 2023, customers have become even more environmentally conscious, as recent statistics prove. Only in 2021, 72.9% Amazon has been at it for years.

eCommerce 185

eCommerce Technical Review Software Review Analytics 185

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.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

How good are you and everyone on your team at proactively scanning the environment for opportunities, emerging trends, and customer feedback? Increase change agility. Change agility represents a startup’s ability to immediately and effectively engage everyone in pending changes and innovations. Imbue customer change focus.

Agile 290

Agile Startup Metrics Leadership 290

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

42:20 Did agile development influence you? 48:30 Vanity metrics. 52:00 Actionable metrics. 57: 00 How do you rectify company mission and customer demand. 48:30 Vanity metrics. 52:00 Actionable metrics. 57: 00 How do you rectify company mission and customer demand. 40:05 What happened after Imvu.

Silicon Valley 301

Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

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.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

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.

Advisory Board 359

Advisory Board Incubator Dilution Agile 359

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 27, 2023

Everyone in the company must adopt the principles of customer-first focus, agility in responding to change, and constant innovation to improve your processes as well as the solution. Measure progress through metrics on sales, revenue, and penetration. Seek customer feedback on ways to improve value and satisfaction.

Agile 229

Agile Leadership Global Distribution 229

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.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 17, 2017

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. Due to social media and the Internet, these relationships now need to extend to customers, partners, and suppliers. Company culture drives decision making and process.

Artificial Inteligence 139

Artificial Inteligence Technical Review Leadership Agile 139

ConversionXL

MAY 22, 2017

That was designed to allow information storage and manage customer contact information. SaaS stacks give companies the agility they need to move fast, but often they are the cause of a huge data fragmentation. Valuable customer data is buried in these disconnected tools. This is where the Customer Data Platform comes in.

Customer 92

Customer Marketing Artificial Inteligence Clickthrough 92

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 14, 2017

by Amanda Setili, author of “ Fearless Growth: The New Rules to Stay Competitive, Foster Innovation, and Dominate Your Markets “ Polarization is a common problem for companies trying to make smart and agile strategic decisions. In our age of disruption, you must be agile and courageous. Hint: That should be all companies.)

Agile 113

Agile Malaysia Technical Review Metrics 113

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

> Uber's " Reality Therapy 4 Startups": What U Need 2 Know NOW > Steve Blank on why NOT to be an Entrepreneur > Airbnb's Globetrotting Lessons: Building 4 a Global Market > Vinod Khosla - The VC Legend: Interview w/ Dave McClure > Eric Ries on Entrepreneurship: What He's Learned Along the Way > GitHub's Secret 2 Success: Rethinking (..)

Lean 165

Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering 165

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.

Leadership 120

Leadership Technical Review Due Diligence Valuation 120

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.

Customer Development 328

Customer Development Developer Customer Cofounder 328

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 10, 2021

Make sure that metrics and goals are set up front, and not modified as the project progresses. Unfortunately, I often see goal misalignments with teams, such as marketing measured on sales volume, or sales measured on customer retention. Provide assessments based wholly on facts. Align accountability with organizational objectives.

Metrics 331

Metrics Retention Agile Startup 331