Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. It took the idea of Customer Development and made it accessible to a whole new audience. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

Entrepreneur 167

Entrepreneur Lean Southern California San Diego 167

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Continuous deployment and continuous learning At long last, some of the actual implementers of the advanced systems we built at IMVU for rapid deployment and rapid response are starting to write about it. At IMVU it’s a core part of our culture to ship.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Accept that many successful companies are going to want to be backed by big-name firms in other cities. And do your customer development. Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. Yet there is one silver lining when it does happen: we wind up throwing out working code , debt-riddled and elegantly designed alike.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now A great checklist of techniques and tools for making your development more agile, written from a Rail perspective.

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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. It strokes your ego.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

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. Building on this, I’ve recently become fascinated with the notion of continuous deployment , a concept that has been popularized by Eric Ries and others. Read the rest.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. my startup is Blank Label (www.blank-label.com), which is a provider of custom dress shirts that empowers consumers to become the designer of their own product.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule. And yet their numbers continue to grow, month after month. Labels: agile , customer development 15comments: Scott Shapiro said.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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. Particularly the Continuous Deployment and Split testing posts. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

We're starting our new business, fanminder.com, to help small merchants instantly communicate with their customers, and I'm increasingly hearing your name and reading your keen insights. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

The key to successful integration of customer feedback is to make each kind of collection part of the regular company discipline of building and releasing products. The key to successful integration of customer feedback is to make each kind of collection part of the regular company discipline of building and releasing products.

Advisory Board 151

Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 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. For many projects, customer approval and sign off was required as well. It might be more precise to categorize them of two kinds of flaws: flaws in implementation, and flaws in design.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

If youre a startup investor, and you support the goals of the Startup Visa proposal, wed like you lend your name to our efforts. If youre a startup investor, and you support the goals of the Startup Visa proposal, wed like you lend your name to our efforts. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 118

San Francisco DC Startup Lean 118

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

First, a definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

The same is true of brand-name products in almost every category (and it can be measured ). Perceived value - This is the extra value a customer perceives as a result of good marketing, product design, product quality, or exception product/market fit. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. In a customer problem pivot, we try to solve a different problem for the same customer segment. When doing intense customer development, the problem team can attain a high level of empathy with potential customers.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

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. A/B testing is set-based design.

Lean 140

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 140

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

This is precisely the dilemma that the doctrine of minimum viable product is designed to solve. When people start using quality, reliability, or design as an excuse to delay, it used to make me nervous, even when these suggestions were well intentioned. Rules of thumb can be infuriatingly unhelpful. And it’s really hard.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

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. Its goal is to help us recognize that every artifact of our product development process is really just a proxy variable. This is not for the faint of heart.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

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. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Startup Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

I think this concept is necessary in order to answer the truly vexing startup questions, like: “Should startups charge customers money from day one?&# Let’s begin with the four customer currencies. I had a lot of use for this concept back when I worked on game design and virtual worlds.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

If necessary, consider doing this under a different brand name than the one you are wedded to using. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Dont do PR upfront, dont put out a press release.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

My guess is they have lots of people constantly working on interesting new tools for their designers to play with. Discover whats in customers heads, and tackle problems where design is a differentiator. There are some good anecdotes about Chief Engineers in the Toyota Product Development Book.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

I have personally taught many “non-technical&# people to program – graphic designers, QA folks, even artists and animators. Instead of focusing on programs designed to specifically benefit any one group, I think our focus should be on making our companies as meritocratic as possible. “Who is this guy?&#

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Pay attention to whether people are comfortable “naming names&# in the meeting. Five Whys is designed to avoid these nebulous arguments. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Some designers also hate optimizing (which is why the “41 shades of blue&# test is so famous – a famous designer claims to have quit over it ). After you’ve spent months on a painstaking new design, who wants to be told what color blue to use? It takes some getting used to for most designers, though.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Do some Customer Development instead. Who doesnt want to see their name in print? Now that were beginning our first marketing, the key partners we need have heard our name long enough to trust us. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Help you raise money.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

We would pretty much bid on any phrase that was "[name of competitive product] chat" and variations like that. And then we would use that simple analytics system I mentioned to monitor the conversion rates of customers from each campaign. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Even with only a few months of development, third parties have crammed every single category in the store full of apps. All I see is a name, an icon, a price, the developers name, and a review star-rating. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Most engineers are terrible visual designers, but if the designer on their team is struggling, maybe they can help out with an icon or two. And wait until you see a "non-technical" designer writing simple code to try and speed up a release. Simply put, we upload all the tasks and assign a name to each task.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ▼ 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

Imagine you want to store data about customers, each of whom has "last name" field in your database. The problem should be familiar to anyone who plays Scrabble: not all letter are equally likely to be used as the first letter of someones name. Give each entity a name. For example, lets say you have data about customers.

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Ironically, meetings like this had given data and experimentation a bad name inside this company. Ironically, meetings like this had given data and experimentation a bad name inside this company. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What a waste. What a waste.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Or take a recent TechCrunch article about a startup I wont name: “X billion messages sent since June 2009.&# My point is that this article does not contain the kind of information we’d need to draw reasonable inferences, which is by design. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2009

This is especially useful in situations, like most B2B businesses, where the total number of customers is likely to be small. This case study illustrates one company’s attempt to do customer development by testing their vision with customers before writing a single line of code. Oh, this is just a Photoshop file?

San Francisco 144

San Francisco Customer Wiki Lean 144