Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Instead, we do everything possible to validate the founders belief. The book takes its name from Steves theory of the four stages of growth any startup goes through. Most people cant sustain more than a few of these iterations, and the founders rarely get to be involved in the later tries. Phases of product & company growth.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

As a result, for a lot of these companies, Boulder is just a gateway to San Francisco. Accept that many successful companies are going to want to be backed by big-name firms in other cities. Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. Articulate, inspirational.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

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. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Of the techniques he mentioned, I think four are fundamental and critical for any lean startup: TDD (or the even more politely named TATFT ) Continuous integration Automate your deployments Collect statistics The tools to help you do these things are getting better and better every day, but dont confuse tools with process.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

It’s easy to overestimate the impact of this kind of traffic because it just feels good to have your name and company featured. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

I want to thank Techstars for putting this event together and giving me a chance to experience the scene, even if it lacks a name. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Much of what I have found effective is counter-intuitive, because it requires investing more effort in each hire - all in the name of efficiency. This is another sub-optimization caused by incentivizing the wrong metric. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco. If not, you can avoid making the hire with confidence.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

In previous posts, I’ve mentioned quite a few of these, including these most important ones: having engineers post on the forums in their own name when they make a change routinely split-testing new changes routinely conducting in-person usability tests and interviews Net Promoter Score Each of these techniques is fundamentally bottoms-up.

Advisory Board 151

Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics. Luckily, we also discovered that certain other metrics, like LTV and CPA were much better than we initially projected. .&# I think the problem with this approach is not the presence of the spreadsheet, but how it’s used.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Ash Maurya is the founder of WiredReach , a bootstrapped startup that he has been running for seven years. Ive previously named his post Achieving Flow in a Lean Startup as one of my favorite blog posts of 2009. Ash Maurya is the founder of WiredReach , a bootstrapped startup that he has been running for seven years.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

But we were cutting corners in the development methodology as well as in the code, in the name of increased speed. Excepting for cosmically co-incidental success stories, the fuzzy requirement stuff never congeals as a holistic engineering exercise. a is name, b is address, and c is tax percentage.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

I think that if a web founder would come to me asking for an investment talking about how he's coding an immensly scalable, perfectly designed system, I will throw him out in an instant. So far, this is all an academic exercise in naming - but I think it has an important real-world effect. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

abovethecrowd.com

OCTOBER 17, 2013

The company, which the founder cleverly named “Stitch Fix,” had a remarkably unique offering compared to other women’s fashion experiences. I immediately reached out to the founder and CEO, Katrina Lake , who had previously worked for another Benchmark portfolio company in the fashion space, Polyvore. Location: San Francisco.

eCommerce 62

eCommerce Technical Review North America San Francisco 62

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

Whether youre a US citizen or an immigrant, entrepreneur or investor, founder or employee, theres something you can do. If you are an immigrant founder who has helped build a company that has created jobs in the US, we need you to tell your story. This is especially true if you live outside the echo chamber of Silicon Valley.

San Francisco 118

San Francisco DC Startup Lean 118

Austin Startup

AUGUST 30, 2018

Austin has built a name for itself within the startup scene, ranking among the top cities in the U.S. So while the number of dollars pouring into Austin may be increasing, that metric is only favorable to businesses that warrant those sized-rounds. The discrepancy grows larger when compared to the top-ranked city, San Francisco.

Austin 48

Austin Early Stage San Francisco Later Stage 48

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

I was delighted to be asked to give a brief talk about the MVP at the inaugural meetup of the lean startup circle here in San Francisco. MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products. In a lot of cases, this requires a lot of energy invested in talking to customers or metrics and analytics.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. Unfortunately, its easy to lose track of positioning effects when optimizing for a single metric.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Hearpreneur

SEPTEMBER 16, 2015

What exactly is going to be the name of your business? Whatever the inspiration or relation may be, the naming of your business is one of the most important parts of becoming a CEO. businessname #business #entrepreneur #startup #name #compilation #instagram #ceoblognation #blog #newblog #blogpost #livetoday.

Naming 48

Naming Entrepreneur Haiti Nigeria 48

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Some startups fail because the founders cant have this conversation - they either blow up when they try, or they fail to change because they are afraid of conflict. Although I wish I could take credit for these pivots, the reality is that they were not caused by my singular insight or that of my other co-founders.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

The same is true of brand-name products in almost every category (and it can be measured ). But plenty of other product categories depend on social factors: status purchases, beauty products, fashion products, and (at least here in San Francisco) food and produce. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

All the good domain names were taken, all the good ideas were being implemented. If Id bought just a handful of the "best of the rest" domain names that were available at the time (for a whopping $70 each), I probably could have just retired right then. I was much more focused on other transient success stories of the day.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

I believe this is one reason why the myth of the dictatorial startup founder has such enduring appeal. In fact, we know so much that we already know what they will care enough about (namely, the product’s quality – as opposed to, say, missing features). No vanity metrics should be looked at. I understand this fear.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

If necessary, consider doing this under a different brand name than the one you are wedded to using. There will always be far more apps that dont make the top lists, no matter what metric is used. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco. Dont do PR upfront, dont put out a press release. Its like knowing the future.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

It moves at a rapid clip, each argument backed up with the relevant math and equations: marginal profit , Littles law , Markov processes , probability theory , you name it. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco. The book is structured as a series of principles, logically laid out and briefly discussed - 175 in all.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Duct Tape Marketing

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

There are so many metrics you could be measuring on social media, so let’s cull down the list and make sure that the most important ones are at least being eyeballed. Reach is used as the denominator for the engagement rate metric (see below). Speaking of engagement, it’s our next metric! But where do you start? Engagement.

Social Media 28

Social Media Media Social Network Metrics 28

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. The first version of the 3D IMVU client took about six months to build, and as the founders iterated towards a compelling user experience, the user base grew monthly thereafter. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco. Bring your questions.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

As Im pontificating about agile, I see the name Kent Beck in my peripheral vision. Eric Names matter. By pulling in a web of associations, names help people quickly assess ideas. There is a dark side to naming. The naming question has been raised about the "lean" in Lean Startups. Eric Names matter.

Lean 140

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 31, 2009

lets you post a description of a job without having to reveal the name of the company who is offering it, or the contact information of the hiring manager. 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 68

San Francisco Lean Startup Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Pay attention to whether people are comfortable “naming names&# in the meeting. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Founders push for it. Who doesnt want to see their name in print? In some ways, founders are even worse. My experience is that many founders actually have a deep anxiety that maybe they are not succeeding. Know what the success metrics are for the launch. See if their answer is about tactics or strategy.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

The Next Web

JUNE 19, 2012

Under the relatively fresh ‘TNW Profile’ banner, we regularly shine a light on great European entrepreneurs and startup founders, to learn more about their journey and their business, and what drives them personally. These are the “metrics” you should live by. Are there men-only lists? Would that be considered ok?).

San Francisco 136

San Francisco Cofounder Founder Poland 136

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Now, whenever I screen resumes, I ask the recruiter to black out any demographic information from the resume itself: name, age, gender, country of origin. One last suggestion, which is a technique I learned from my IMVU co-founder Will Harvey. “Who is this guy?&# “Who is this guy?&#

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

For startups that are tempted to mimic this behavior, I suggest reading the great account of the early Apple in Founders at Work.) ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Ironically, meetings like this had given data and experimentation a bad name inside this company. Every experiment has to be evaluated based on a single standard report of 5-10 (no more) key metrics. True split-test experiments are easy to classify as successes or failures, because top-level metrics either move or they don’t.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

All I see is a name, an icon, a price, the developers name, and a review star-rating. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. April 23, 2010 in San Francisco.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A business that strives for something like this should absolutely be charging money from day one, in order to establish baselines for their two key metrics: CPA (the cost to acquire a new customer) and LTV (the lifetime value of each acquired customer). Founders struggle with this question. Successful startups don’t.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156