Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown, and the key to success is building an integrated team that includes product development in the feedback loop with customers. 2008 09 06 Eric Ries Haas Columbia Customer Development Engineering View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Read the rest of The Five Whys for Start-Ups. Speed up or slow down? Speed up or slow down?

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

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. And what of the product development team? First of all, they are not selling their product by hand.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

What’s worse is that as you grow you’ve probably developed some pretty bad habits as far as setting priorities and strategy: like thinking you’re a genius - just because you got funded - and that genius is what allows you to *know* what the market wants. I remember having this exact same "aha!"

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 8, 2010 Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Review) The next article in my series on entrepreneurship for Harvard Business Review is live today. Once again, we revisit the topic of Actionable metrics and their nemesis: Vanity metrics. Remember "metrics are people, too."

Metrics 121

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 121

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review Way back when the money was doled out, the team made a compelling pitch about the large market that was going to adopt their new innovative product or service. They are on-schedule and on-budget, but their gross metrics are way off.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

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. In traditional marketing there are three main objectives. Buy a higher quantity 2.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

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

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. Labels: product development 8comments: Vincent van Wylick said. This post has been removed by the author.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Its inspired by the classic OODA Loop and is really just a simplified version of that concept, applied specifically to creating a software product development team. There are three stages: We start with ideas about what our product could be. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

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. We know some products succeed and others fail, but the reasons are complex and the unpredictable.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 30, 2008

This basic pattern is useful in all aspects of product development. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Software Review 74

Software Review San Francisco Design Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. The new startup arms race (for Huffington Post) For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

It is becoming easier and cheaper for companies to bring products to market, leveraging free and open source software , cloud computing, open social data (Facebook, OpenSocial ), and open distribution (AdWords, SEO). Lean startups have the ability to use this commodity stack to lower costs and, more importantly, reduce time to market.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

During the same period (1987 – 1990) and I did some work at MIT under Eric von Hippel on “user driven innovation with regard to software development&# which today would probably fall under the heading of “open source software development approaches.&# Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

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.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Now, helping potential customers discover new things they might like is the job of the discipline of marketing. But that job is changing dramatically, and this brings us to the next major problem facing traditional media organizations: Media companies are failing at marketing. There are too many products clamoring for attention.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Apparently a school in Australia has taken his suggestion, and you can read all about it at Marc Prenskys Weblog: Cell Phones in Class -- A Huge Breakthrough. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Own the development methodology - in a traditional product development setup, the VP Engineering or some other full-time manager would be responsible for making sure the engineers wrote adequate specs, interfaced well with QA, and also run the scheduling "trains" for releases. Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Thats a perfectly reasonable reaction, given that most releases of most products are bad news. Even worse, the sad state of product development generally means that the new "features" are as likely to be ones that make the product worse, not better. Monitoring of real-world metrics.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 6, 2009

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. The new startup arms race (for Huffington Post) For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Lean 115

Lean Video San Francisco Continuous Deployment 115

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. The new startup arms race (for Huffington Post) For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 119

San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Even more importantly, you can start to experiment with feature set, positioning, and marketing - all without building a product. Use Google Optimizer to try different landing pages (even radically different landing pages) to see if any particular way of talking about your product makes a difference to your conversion rates.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I am convinced one of Joel Spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the Joel Test , a checklist of 12 essential practices that you could use to rate the effectiveness of a software product development team. He wrote it in 2000, and as far as I know has never updated it.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2009

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. The new startup arms race (for Huffington Post) For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Agile 60

Agile Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

Customer Development will help you – force you – to make better decisions based on tested hypotheses, rather than untested assumptions. The results of the Customer Development process may indicate that the assumptions about your product, your customers and your market are all wrong.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

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. We were using it to get features to market faster, and that was working well.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 6, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. The new startup arms race (for Huffington Post) For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Agile 76

Agile San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

In the early fall of 2009, as kaChing prepared for its marketplace launch, the management team showed the app—which included real time market data, SEC-grade accounting, analytics, compliance and customer management tools—to a number of investment pros to get feedback and endorsements. Thus far the results are encouraging.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Articulate, inspirational.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113