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. I havent had to work this model under those conditions, so I cant say anything definitive.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

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. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

ConversionXL

JUNE 13, 2017

Agile marketing may not be a phrase you hear often, but it’s becoming increasingly popular and important. Traditionally associated with development and product management, agile is a lightweight and, well, agile framework for software development and bringing features and products to market.

SCRUM 112

SCRUM Agile Marketing Development Team Review 112

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. Even worse, agile wasnt really helping me ship higher quality software.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

We lack a consistent and clear definition of the job. 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. What made them exceptional?

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

Watching User Interactions – One of the biggest problems in technology is that systems are designed by people who are technical by definition. I used to always tell my development team, “you need to design a product that my dad could use. They had decided to take a Digg style approach to product development.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

And that narrow definition of entrepreneurship doesn’t count all of the managers inside established companies who are effectively engaged in the same process of building an internal startup (see What is a startup? for my more expansive definition). for my more expansive definition). What motivates all these entrepreneurs?

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

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. You can learn about customer development, and quite a bit more, in Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Expo SF (May.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Examples of this are well-known, and (in my definition) include any product that causes new customers to sign up as a necessary side-effect of existing customers normal usage: Facebook, Myspace, AIM/ICQ, Hotmail, Paypal. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. Your comment about the Innovation/R&D phase that it's hard to predict has definitely proven true in my experience. And why do those problems seem to get worse as the company grows?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Thank you @ericries for drastically altering my perception of agile startup Thank you all so much for your kind words. Really enjoyed your speech, but Boulder's startup community is definitely older than 5 years. I was really overwhelmed this time. They seem like they really have something good brewing there. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. I suggested the best place to start the conversation is with the 21 st century definition of a startup: A startup is a temporary organization designed to search for a repeatable and scalable business model. for new product development that emphasize immediate returns.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

Yet, I think this definition is too important to leave out. Use some customer development to find out. The power of A/B testing is so under-exploited in product development, that Im trying new ways to explain its benefits. Definitely like to see video of the full talk. I had an incredible time. See you next time.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

This post describes a solution – the Customer Development Model. In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provide the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. Hope you find it useful!

Customer Development 253

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 253

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

I would definitely be interested any scholarship opportunities that might be made available. We changed our model to B2B and adopted Agile around 2002. I would love to attend one of the Lean Start-up Workshops, but unfortunately that would be difficult for me to do so financially. Cash is tight. Expo SF (May.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Version One Ventures

FEBRUARY 21, 2019

Question 1: How do you run experiments for product development in a two-sided marketplace? Bala: Without going into all the details of “ Controlled Experimentation ”, let’s start with the problem statement that we can’t run traditional A/B experiments in marketplace products. Want to learn more?

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Metrics Demand Austin 132

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

Now there was nothing wrong with their analysis: anyone who invents a technology as sophisticated as The Transformers is definitely going to make a lot of money. They even included a slide with The Transformers on it. Expo SF (May. Conference streaming, sponsors, discounted tickets. Learning is better than optimization (the local ma.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

The agile software movement has made numerous contributions: continuous integration, which helps accelerate feedback about defects; story cards and kanban that reduce batch size; a daily stand-up that increases tempo. Continuous deployment is another such technique, one with a unique power to change development team dynamics for the better.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 29, 2020

Before we look at ways to bootstrap a startup, let’s consider a comprehensive definition of what a startup is. Eric Ries, the founder of theleanstartup.com , states that the lean startup philosophy“provides a scientific approach to creating and managing startups and get the desired product to customers’ hands faster.”.

Bootstrapping 85

Bootstrapping Global Startup Hungary 85

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

So let’s turn our attention from what may happen in the future to what is definitely happening in the present. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. Here are a few of my observations from the trenches: Personal brands are displacing organizations brands.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

femgineer.com

JULY 18, 2010

If you’re a founder who is still trying to grasp the product roadmap and create a company vision its probably not a good time to hire an engineer. We engineers know that need to be agile in a startup and be able to scrap code and rebuild, but want we don’t want is to have a founder who manic or aimless.

Engineer 41

Engineer Software Review Startup Technical Review 41

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

My transition to Continuous Deployment Prior to adopting continuous deployment, I used to release software on a weekly schedule (come rain or shine) which I viewed as pretty agile, disciplined, and aggressive. Users will naturally ask for more stuff and your MVP by definition is minimal and needs more love. Just dont push it.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 18, 2010

That’s the definition of insanity. Now the company is in crisis mode because the rest of the organization (product development, marketing, etc.) Each block in the business model canvas maps to hypotheses in the Customer Discovery and Validation steps of Customer Development. and being continually surprised when it didn’t.

Burn Rate 251

Burn Rate Management Business Model Customer Development 251

Venture Chronicles

JUNE 29, 2010

Accept has built a set of products for “innovation management&# and while I reflexively gag at the word “innovation&# when applied to large companies, I actually think Accept has the right approach for delivering a solution to the problem of connecting customers with product development.

Software 34

Software Portfolio Agile Retention 34

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 21, 2010

So let’s begin with a definition of a startup that captures its essential nature, and tries to leave behind the specific associations of the most famous startups. A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is a tricky part of the definition, too.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Startup Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. Market Type also affects the market size as well as how you launch the product into the market.

Customer Development 220

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 220

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Unfortunately, most decisions that confront startups lack a definitive right answer. Sometimes an early negative result from an experiment is a harbinger of doom for that product, and means it should be abandoned. By reducing the decisions we have to make to a series of quantitative questions, we can avoid a lot of real-life messiness.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 21, 2008

Everything else (including a lot of traditional "agile" or "lean" tactics) is waste. Basically, the definition of waste is different when you know less about your customer. My answer to the comment went like this: Efficiency is a by-product of removing waste. Labels: lean startup 3comments: Nivi said. I like the distinction.

Lean 121

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 121

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 14, 2014

As companies strive to stay agile and innovative, they’ve discovered that units of 8 to 12 people work best as the natural size of high-performance teams. This is the magic number for leadership teams, product teams, research teams, design teams, and more. I definitely know that those jerks from Sales have their own selfish agenda.

Agile 196

Agile Leadership Architecture Product Development 196

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. We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration. Definitely highlights the beauty of the web.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

It should go without saying that this post is not advice, nor is it recommendation of what you should do, it’s simply my observation of how companies using Customer Development positioned themselves to successfully raise money from venture investors. They will realize that you have built a startup that’s agile, resilient and customer-centric.

Customer Development 267

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 267

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. 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.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

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 424

Customer Marketing Lean Vertical 424

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

The first, according to Dr. David Travis at UserFocus , was agile development : Dr. David Travis: “‘Development’ teams morphed into ‘design’ teams. To use the agile terminology, design teams wanted to get a ‘shared understanding’ of their users and they were suspicious of any attempt to set requirements in concrete.”.

Software Review 115

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 115

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 27, 2010 Good enough never is (or is it?)

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. I see a lot of early-stage entrepreneurs waste too much time chasing money rather than figuring this out first.

Lean 260

Lean Silicon Valley Startup RSS 260