Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. By being so metrics driven we can have a lot more quantifiable and objective discussions at board meetings and at mid-point reviews. . The Agile Board.

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Advisory Board CTO Hire Fractional CTO Los Angeles 365

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

This builds on a lot of great thinking that has come before, like the agile movements insistence that only the creation of working code counts as progress for a software development team. I used to think that investments in metrics were a form of waste. I used to think that investments in metrics were a form of waste.

San Francisco 98

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. For a startup, having great sales DNA is a wonderful asset. The problem stems from selling each customer a custom one-time product.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. They measure their success on metrics that reflect success in execution, and they reward execution.

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IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products. While it’s useful to be able to have a sales forecast and expense budget early on, it’s not something you need until you’ve validated your idea. Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. Creating a company-wide feedback loop that incorporates both customer development and agile development is a challenge.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Occam's Razor

APRIL 23, 2012

While there is a great deal of appreciation for the power of metrics/data, I've come to realize that Sr. Leaders don't quite appreciate the deep, and often corrosive, consequences of choosing metric x over metric y as a key performance indicator (KPI). It is a standard metric. Don't believe me?

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Metrics Analytics Search Channel 152

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

During a lull in her practice she got a serendipitous opportunity to shift gears completely and ended up leading software product development teams. P.S. For more, here are detailed examples of how this mindset also sets up your sales pitch. On the surface, it's yet another "marketing metrics" company. Personal authority.

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

The Next Web

AUGUST 26, 2012

For this reason you should find out as quickly as possible if the product is indeed offering real value to your customers by looking at real data. The metrics that matter the most are returning customers (user retention), turnover per customer and viral growth (k-factor). Keep the team small, agile and up-to-date.

Bankruptcy 121

Bankruptcy Technical Review Intellectual Property Due Diligence 121

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

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.

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Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

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. It slices, it dices.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 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.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 262

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Focus on the output metrics of that part of the product, and you make the problem a lot more clear. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. Whatever its purpose, try measuring it only at the level that you care about.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

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. Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. And if you neglect maintenance, you may not have a business left at all. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

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

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

In an enterprise sales context, this is called a "repeatable and scalable sales process" - once you know how to do this, your company can graduate from early adopters and make an attempt at the mainstream. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Expo SF (May.

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Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 8, 2009 Datablindness Most of us are swimming in a sea of data about our products, companies, and teams. That’s because many of our reports feed us vanity metrics: numbers that make us look good but don’t really help make decisions. Too much of this data is non- actionable.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Because, unless you are working in an extremely static environment, your product development team is learning and getting better all the time. Most importantly, I encouraged the leaders of the company to bring awareness of the business challenges to the product development team. Great post, Eric. Homer said.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. More agile competitors are starting to eat into our business. and how to price the product.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

ConversionXL

MARCH 7, 2017

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 102

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 102

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. My blog has over 14000 subscribers, for example. Is that a lot?

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

These companies produced over $52 billion dollars in sales in 2005, and employed 450,000 workers that year. These companies produced over $52 billion dollars in sales in 2005, and employed 450,000 workers that year. Substantial research shows that immigrants play a key role in American job creation. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

To acquire new money managers, the company makes traditional sales calls, which means they’ve interviewed many, many professionals and gotten a strong sense of their needs. .&# says Rachleff. At the same time, whenever a customer closes an account, kaChing contacts the person to find out why; most agree to a short phone interview. .&#

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Github - Free public repositories, collaborator management, issue tracking, wikis, downloads, code review, graphs Pivotal Tracker – Agile project management tool that enables real time collaboration. WebSequenceDiagrams - sketch sequence diagrams. Lighthouse – Issue Tracking Tool.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2017

Everyone has railed against these practices ( including us , many times), but it still seems that much of the industry is focused on short term metrics and surface level changes. With agile development cycles and uncertain monetization models, they live and die by data and experimentation. Image Source.

Conversion 48

Conversion Technical Review Artificial Inteligence Analytics 48

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Sometimes, a great hacker has the potential to grow into the CTO of a company, and in those cases all you need is an outside mentor who can work with them to develop those skills. At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization. Does this sound familiar? Expo SF (May.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Steve Blank

JANUARY 10, 2011

The VP of an operating division had run into trouble in product development; the product was late and getting later. The revenue plan had the new product baked into the numbers and it was clear that this division General Manager was going to crater his forecast (happens all the time, nothing new here.) Lie to My Face.

Forecast 264

Forecast Agile Revenue Founder 264

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

In particular, a marketing launch can help you do three things (courtesy, as is most of my marketing advice, of The Four Steps to the Epiphany ): Drive customers into your sales pipeline. Know what the success metrics are for the launch. Combining agile development with customer developm. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 4, 2009

But if that piece-parts solution is great, then its unlikely they are going to need to buy any additional products. Because this language may lead you to believe this concept is for enterprise sales only, I thought Id walk you through an example from the world of consumer electronics. Combining agile development with customer developm.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

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. If they had done this, there would have been zero dollars in sales. Why does Market Type matter?

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I'll add two ideas: The modern structure of university patent licensing and technology transfer works really well in the life sciences and other fields with expensive product development processes. Similarly, government purchasing is a frustrating series of hoops, even compared to enterprise sales. Expo SF (May.

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DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

Startup Metrics for Pirates â?? SaaS Metrics Tutorial â?? turn customer feedback into sales and relationships. Agile project management tool that enables real time collaboration. Great for visualizing work of product development. Agile project management. agile product management.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2011

Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, it relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, as well as a number of counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics, and learn what customers really want.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Metrics Private Equity 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2008

Sales depend on being right (whereas in UGC we can pretty much try anything, and promote the winners). Your platform may require you to staff up a large production department to crank out enough content to satisfy your customers. . Expo SF (May. Conference streaming, sponsors, discounted tickets.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

Designed for large businesses, the channels let a company share several types of documents, brand the channel with their own design elements, and then include display advertising, contest promotions, blog aggregation, social media integration and metrics reporting. The idea seemed to SlideShare to be a natural direction.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

This can take the form of a traditional sales pipeline or a registration-activation-revenue chart. 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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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121