Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? That means knowing whats written and whats not, what the architecture can and cant support, and how long it would take to build something new. Thats more than just drawing architecture diagrams, though.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

For example, complex new semiconductor architectures, (i.e. a new type of graphics architecture, or a new communications chip architecture) mean you may not know if the chip performs as well as you thought until you get first silicon. How would that change my company strategy?

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Vertical Silicon Valley Marketing Customer 144

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

He complemented their elegantly designed minicomputers and made some astute comment about their architecture (now I’m rolling my eyes, their computers were dinosaurs) and asked who were the brilliant designers. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the Customer Development process are you on?

Technology 138

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 138

Steve Blank

JUNE 23, 2016

ARM, a competitor, not only had a better, much lower power processor, but a better business model – they licensed their architecture to other companies that designed their own products. Today that’s built on the premise that an x86 architecture is the one best suited for big data. this article first appeared in the Peoples Daily.)

Architecture 227

Architecture IRR Balance Sheet Liquidity Event 227

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

We basically had a retainer with one of the pioneering folks in computational chemistry, who ported and tuned his company’s application for our rather radical architecture, and also acted as a marketeer for us in that (then quite nascent) field.

Engineer 198

Engineer Silicon Valley Part-Time VPE Advisory Board 198

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It’s important to invest in good architecture so that your website will scale once customers arrive. If you make that investment, and then customers arrive, and the site stays up, most companies will reward the people who built the architecture and, thus, prevented the scaling problems.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Even though some aspects of the product were eventually vindicated as good ones, the underlying architecture suffered from hard-to-change assumptions. Without conscious process design, product development teams turn lines of code written into momentum in a certain direction. Even a great architecture becomes inflexible.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, January 4, 2009 Sharding for startups The most important aspect of a scalable web architecture is data partitioning. So far, this is just a summary of what all of us who have attempted to build web-scale architectures considers obvious. Customer data is normally partitioned according to customer id.

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

For example, at a previous virtual world company , we spent years developing an architecture to cope with millions of simultaneous users. The downside was that we had to combine dozens of projects whose internal architectures, coding styles, and general quality varied widely. Sometimes quick and dirty actually incurs less debt.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

We wanted an agile approach that would allow us to build our software architecture as we needed it, without downtime, but also without large amounts of up-front cost. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. Tune in Thursday at 1 pm PT, 4 pm ET on Sirius XM Channel 111. Want to be a guest on the show? Entrepreneurship stretches from Main Street to Silicon Valley, from startups to big companies. Send an email to terri@kandsranch.com describing your entrepreneurial journey.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 27, 2012

It was great to watch him embrace the spirit and practice of customer development. He was constantly in front of customers, listening, selling, installing and learning. Or by then other customers would tell us something quite different. Which required Ben hearing from the same customers I did.

Founder 316

Founder Cofounder Advisory Board Burn Rate 316

Steve Blank

MAY 11, 2009

They had this great architecture, and Apple had figured out to get movies into their own computers for a demo, but for the rest of us there was no physical device that allowed an average consumer to plug a video camera or VCR into and get video into a Mac. It was fun watching it happen.

Video 164

Video Silicon Valley RSS California 164

Steve Blank

JUNE 5, 2018

Some examples of innovation tools are Customer Development, Design Thinking, User-Centric Design, Business Model Canvas, Storytelling, etc. Or a team that achieved product-market fit building a non-standard architecture could find no way to maintain it at scale within the parent organization.

Programming 320

Programming Incubator Leadership Silicon Valley 320

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

I suggested that we change the underlying architecture of our UI system so that the artists would be able to build their own UI pieces themselves and then integrate them into the product without requiring new code every time. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ▼ June (3) What is a startup?

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 28, 2010

Yet the Customer Development process uses a series of checklists to ensure that you walk through the Customer Discovery and Validation steps. Our engineers were just like the customer, and if they didn’t think our product description made sense, no one else would.

Business Model 239

Business Model Customer Development Engineer Vesting 239

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 4, 2012

I am often reminded of the story of the building of Chicago and the rise of modern skyscrapers of glass & steel with non-load-bearing walls as talked about in The Fountainhead but also chronicled in history books and in the many architectural tours I’ve taken in Chicago. Steve, thanks so much for joining us today!

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Community Silicon Valley Detroit Chicago 350

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

It seems your cluster architecture is one of the key architectural constraints making continuous deployment possible. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

I know them right away - we can talk high-level architecture all the way down to the bits-and-bytes of his system. When the architecture needs modifying - why do we need a meeting? Building a good application architecture is not just coding. Its common to find a hacker at the heart of almost any successful technology company.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

In Customer Development the goal of a minimum feature set is to pare the features of the first product release to the minimum necessary for early customers. Your customers teach you which features actually matter by whether they will buy. Filed under: Customer Development , E.piphany.

San Francisco 228

San Francisco Database Advisory Board Silicon Valley 228

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

You dont need to invent a new architecture, and you dont need to even build your architecture up-front. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Were in a new wave of platform evolution. 1 comments: flixsterwidgettest said. yeah, its awesome.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 23, 2016

As a formal method, the Lean Startup consists of three parts: The Business Model Canvas – to frame hypotheses, Customer Development – to test those hypotheses in front of customers, and Agile Engineering – to build Minimum Viable Products to maximize learning. Change Customer Relationships to Buy-in/Support.

Business Model 120

Business Model Revenue Channel Community 120

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

And as Kapor himself points out, the core ideas have even older origins: The Roman architecture critic Vitruvius advanced the notion that well-designed buildings were those which exhibited firmness, commodity, and delight. Customer Development is itself an example of SBCE. We owe a lot to this seminal document.

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

and going into a long diatribe about how insecure the ActiveX architecture was compared to Javas pristine sandbox. what happens if we have a pipelined architecture? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development?

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Eric, Is this post about Architecture? I define Architecture (capital A) as "the advocacy for human values in a process" (not little a architecture, over-arching structural approach, just design-in-the-large). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 22, 2016

Joining me in SiriusXM’s studio in New York was Grant Warner , director of innovation and entrepreneurship at Howard University’s College of Engineering Architecture and Computer Science, and co-founder of ConnectYard. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. Grant Warner. Clips from his interview are below.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder DC Entrepreneur Silicon Valley 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

But it goes beyond that, including techniques for improving the economics of product development. Reinertsen weaves together ideas from lean manufacturing, maneuver warfare, queuing theory, and even the architecture of computer operating systems and the Internet. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Steve Blank

MARCH 9, 2016

At the Rockwell Group, the architecture and design firm, he co-founded Studio Red and the Lab , an incubator for integrating digital technology into physical spaces. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. He founded Mouth in 2012. Send an email to terri@kandsranch.com describing your entrepreneurial journey.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Cofounder Entrepreneur IPO 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

The engineering team has decided its reached a breaking point, and is taking several weeks to bring it up to modern standards, including unit tests, getting started with continuous integration , and a new MVC architecture. On the other, they already have a team fully engaged on making their product architecture better.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Lets start with a distinction between shipping new software to the customer, and changing the customers experience. The idea is that often you can change the customers experience without shipping them new software at all. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Continuous Deployment 68

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Someone has managed to convince themselves that they have to do their big architecture change in one fell swoop. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? When Ive worked to get everyone to build in small batches, I would see this pattern in action.

Product Development 68

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 17, 2016

Next on Entrepreneurs are Everywhere : my interview with Grant Warner , director of innovation and entrepreneurship at Howard University’s College of Engineering Architecture and Computer Science, and co-founder of ConnectYard , in part 2 of this post coming later this week. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show.

Government 120

Government Entrepreneur Intellectual Property Silicon Valley 120

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Switching these customers directly to continuous deployment sounds harder than it really is. A typical "new feature" release is, in my experience, about 80% changes to underlying APIs or architecture. Switching these customers directly to continuous deployment sounds harder than it really is.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Open APIs and data-oriented architecture (aka "web 2.0"). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Product development leverage Validated learning about customers Built to learn Web 2.0 The much-promised era of component reuse in software is finally upon us.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I started my last company with 100% off-shore resources because I could never have completed Customer Development at a reasonable cost of money or regulatory burden had I employed US Citizens. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

DC 90

DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Both sides start to think of their point of view in moralistic terms: “those guys don’t see the economic value of fast action, they only care about their precious architecture diagrams&# or “those guys are sloppy and have no professional pride.&# No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2009

The plug-in co-processor architecture was too complex and couldn’t be made to work reliably. Nothing else was in the development pipeline for the next 12 months. This requires deep customer and competitive knowledge. Instead of the family of eight products we were expecting, only one could be delivered.

Silicon Valley 134

Silicon Valley Product RSS Engineer 134