Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue? It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies. Provide early seed capital, and be the ones to make those introductions. And do your customer development.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Another advantage of the early stages is that most dont have to juggle too many competing priorities. Some companies and founders refuse to serve existing customers, and are always lurching from one great idea to the next. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May. for Harvard Business Revie.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. In building the program for this year’s Lean Startup Conference , we’ve tried to strike a balance. To give you a sense of these practitioners, we asked some our new speakers to talk about how they use Lean Startup methods. Below are three of their takes on MVPs.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 7, 2009

Finally, I’ll write about 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. Moreover, since the first CEO was likely to have been one of the founders, the trauma of CEO removal begins.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Today, when I talk to startup founders, the most common answer I get to the question "do you talk to your customers?" The people who are the lifeblood of an early-stage startup are earlyvangelists. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. is something like "yes, I personally answer the customer support emails."

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

For the rest of us, there is an alternative: to create credibility by building a lean startup. At IMVU, we were terrified by how early we shipped (and charged for) our first product. Unfortunately, they are disinterested in doing the hard work to help early stage entrepreneurs and companies. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

Lean methods present a third option: to invest in our process so that our design gets more feedback sooner and is more adaptable to changes in purpose. SBCE feels like it should fit into the lean startup nicely, but I can't quite figure out how. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

One way to conceive of our goal in an early-stage venture is to incrementally “fill in the blanks&# for the business model that we think will one day power our startup. This model of joint accountability is at the heart of the lean startup, and is just as applicable to venture-backed, bootstrapped, and enterprise startups.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Altgate

SEPTEMBER 16, 2010

The presentation was on outsourcing generally, not just software engineering and the audience was very early stage companies (some yet to be founded). But did you know that founder Markus Frind has just 3 employees for his $10MM+ revenue business? In the early days no one can tell your story better than you. Start a blog.

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Up and Running

FEBRUARY 8, 2016

While there are dozens of lessons I could take away from these entrepreneurs’ experiences, I want to highlight three common mistakes founders make in the early stages of a startup. So it is no surprise that many founders put off implementing financial record keeping, monitoring, and budgeting. But this is a mistake.

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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. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

Thanks to those of you who were willing to fill out the survey, I learned my net promoter score (about 25) as well as some clear other segmentation insights: about 80% of you are founders of or work at a startup, you read many of the same other blogs, and many of you would like to engage with Lessons Learned in formats and venues beyond this blog.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 2, 2011

A revolution has taken hold as customer development and agile engineering reinvent the Startup process. Board meetings that guide startups haven’t changed since the early 1900’s. Yet even with all these tools, early stage startups still need to physically meet with advisors and investors. Victor Hugo. 1) Structure.

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Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

If you’ve tried to slog your way through my book on Customer Development you know that I’m insistent that the founders need to be the ones getting outside the building (physically or virtually) to validate all the initial hypotheses of the business model and product. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

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Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 139

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 12, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, June 12, 2009 Lean Startup Workshop scholarship program I havent had much time to write lately, and so havent been able to share much about the Lean Startup Workshop series I have been producing with OReilly in their Master Class division. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, February 24, 2009 The lean startup at UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Image by Jessica_Mah via Flickr Last week I had the opportunity to lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at Haas, which is always a great learning experience - for me at least! Eric takes a different approach.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 20, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, August 20, 2009 The Promise of the Lean Startup Im honored to have a guest post on GigaOm to introduce the concept of the lean startup to their audience. The ultimate goal of a lean startup is to identify where its vision intersects with what reality can accommodate.

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Steve Blank

MAY 18, 2009

We agreed that all her founding CEOs seemed to have the same set of personality traits – tenacious, passionate, relentless, resilient, agile, and comfortable operating in chaos. What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired.

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Ben's Blog

MAY 15, 2020

In the fallout from the pandemic, most founders and CEOs are in the process of completely revamping their growth models from the bottom up amid new and unpredictable consumer behavior. ” And I think, specifically for founders who are probably listening to this, the category data is interesting but it’s actually not that helpful.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 17, 2010

Three premier early-stage venture investors have joined forces to sponsor the event: Baseline , Floodgate , and First Round Capital. Three premier early-stage venture investors have joined forces to sponsor the event: Baseline , Floodgate , and First Round Capital. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 13, 2015

The founders needed to find a different way to gather early feedback. * The importance of running experiments to learn more about customer behavior is one of the core principles of the Lean Startup. Customers often would not be able to talk much about their work, so founder REDACTED had to get creative.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

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. is no right or wrong in the early days of startup. Its strength is its rigor and flexibility. Thank you, Steve.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 5, 2009

Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. What are Early Stage VC’s Really Asking? They will realize that you have built a startup that’s agile, resilient and customer-centric. Just as a refresher.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 264

Steve Blank

JUNE 22, 2009

The original Hewlett Packard which made test and measurement products was spun-out and renamed Agilent. Agilent is a $5.8 Technology changes, culture changes, customer needs change, more agile competitors emerge, etc. At HP the founders were still at the company and still running the business.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Agile 169

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? This is the usual reason given for a marketing launch, but for most early stage startups, its a failure. Founders push for it. Expo SF (May.

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Step 1: Start with a lean plan. It’s the fastest way to get your idea onto paper, and it’s the very first step in the lean planning process, which is much easier and more iterative than traditional business planning methods. Introducing Lean Planning: How to Plan Less and Grow Faster. Solve a problem you can relate to.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

female founders. founder friday. Lessons learned from female founders and women entrepreneurs. Startup Quote: Wendy Tan White on Building a Successful Startup » FounderDating: How I Found My Co-Founder. Tweet By Elizabeth Knopf (Co-Founder & CEO, Sorced). Scoring Founder “Dates” On My Own.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

What all these teachers had in common were two things: they were technology early adopters that were willing to take a chance on a new software product, and they all had similar problems organizing their classes and students. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Expo SF (May. for Harvard Business Revie.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 12, 2009

It was amazing to see the two founders, Fred Durham and Maheesh Jain, build a $100 million company from coffee cups and T-shirts. But Cafepress’s most memorable moment was when the founders used a “Lessons Learned” VC pitch to raise their second round of funding and got an 8-digit term sheet that same afternoon.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. In fact, I remember sending him and his obscure-to-me co-founder (aka Reid Hoffman ) a bug report early-on, instead of taking them up on their offer of an in-person meeting. Expo SF (May.

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Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 25, 2013

A Lean Startup methodology offers entrepreneurs a framework to focus on what’s important: Business Model Discovery. Teams use the Lean Startup toolkit: the Business Model Canvas + Customer Development process + Agile Engineering. Or the founder, or the product, or the market – no metrics can measure those intangibles.

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Agile VC

NOVEMBER 7, 2019

But there is also opportunity in lean times. But during this period, many founders and investors do prize growth above most everything else. Late stage rounds help keep companies private longer and eventually Facebook proves to be a blockbuster company… public equity investors hope to find the next Facebook pre-IPO.

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 18, 2010

After I retired, I began teaching Customer Development , a theory of how to reduce early stage risk in entrepreneurial ventures. Am I a Founder? Agile Opportunism – Entrepreneurial DNA……………… 5. Lean Startups aren’t Cheap Startups……… 102. Startup Culture.

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Silicon Valley Customer Development IP Developer 209

Steve Blank

APRIL 7, 2009

But what I remind them is that great grades and successful founders/technology entrepreneurs have at best a zero correlation (and anecdotal evidence suggests that the correlation may actually be negative.) You don’t get grades for having resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition and tenacity.

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mashable.com

JUNE 11, 2013

Or maybe the co-founders have a poisonous relationship that will hinder the companys growth. Whatever your companys "fatal flaw" may be, you can likely avoid it in your own venture if you take some advice from people whove gone through the early startup phase before. Check out the tips below from founders, CEOs and investors alike.

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Cofounder Technical Review Startup Software Review 111

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

VC Cafe covers early stage Israeli and European tech & mobile startups. ” Hackernews list of “Tools of the Trade” for startups - includes over 150 SaaS tools used by startups, and over 150 comments with interesting insights from founders. Lean Methodology Sources. Part 3- Lean Cust.

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