Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. And yet their numbers continue to grow, month after month.

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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.

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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. Some caveats right off the bat. August 3, 2009 11:49 AM Jason Brownlee said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, February 20, 2009 Work in small batches Software should be designed, written, and deployed in small batches. Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. I dont think so.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2010

For "cure for cancer" type businesses, there is no question about who the customer is and what the customer wants, and therefore there is no market uncertainty. It is written by Ronald Mannak, who is currently the CEO of a startup named Yobble. Continuous deployment of hardware is an exciting new capability.

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Feld Thoughts

MARCH 11, 2010

I’ve become a big advocate of true Agile development (partly because of my experience with Rally Software – the leader in Agile software development environments) and – more recently – the notion of trying to get to continuous deployment which has been popularized by Eric Ries. Designate one person in charge of managing the hackathon.

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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.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. We finally settled on a $1.99 Setup a simple website.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

In my experience, the majority of changes we made to products have no effect at all on customer behavior. The report is set up to show you what happened to customers who registered in that period (a so-called cohort analysis ). This report is set up to tell you about new customers specifically. First of all, why split-test?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. Some startups avoid getting customer feedback for precisely this reason: they are afraid that if early reactions are negative, theyll be "forced" to abandon their vision. One such practice is to pivot from one vision to the next.

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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. We can choose to continue paying the interest, or we can pay down the principal by refactoring the quick and dirty design into the better design.

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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. These quotes are, as is my custom, straight from twitter. Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. Articulate, inspirational.

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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.

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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. Product development deals in designs, which are fundamentally intangible. Team New Zealand designed the yacht that won the Americas Cup.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 13, 2008 SEM on five dollars a day How do you build a new product with constant customer feedback while simultaneously staying under the radar? Slowly, over time, we optimized (or eliminated) each step in the process of becoming a customer by giving us money. SEM is a simple idea.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) 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. November 25, 2009 9:54 AM Danny Wong said.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

When I try to unpack what people mean by the question, heres my best take on what they are asking: "Look, Steve Jobs doesnt go out and ask customers what they want. He tells customers what they want, and he gets it right. When a customer tells you how they feel about your ideas, that doesnt tell you anything about your ideas.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Instead, we try to accelerate with respect to validated learning about customers. There are often counter-intuitive changes in customer behavior that depend on little details. You only learn which specific shade of blue customers are more likely to click on. For example, I’m a big believer in split-testing.

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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.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

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. How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

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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. Customer data is normally partitioned according to customer id.

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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.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

Many of these companies are started by entrepreneurs, and are now household names: Google, Yahoo, eBay and Intel. Many of these companies are started by entrepreneurs, and are now household names: Google, Yahoo, eBay and Intel. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

Some of them are probably still cursing my name, because - lets face it - PHP can be pretty painful. Youll notice a pattern: most of the key features that enabled PHPs success are considered among its defects by experts in language design. Ironically, as PHP has grown up, its designers have been busy "fixing" these shortcomings.

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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?&#

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

He has a good team, and theyve shipped a working product to many customers. But they are pushing for the things that matter to customers - features. And they are cognizant that their funding is limited, and if they dont find out which features are absolutely critical for their customers soon, they wont be able to survive.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

When customers are affected, try to have someone who experienced the customer problem first-hand, like the customer service rep who took the calls from angry customers. Pay attention to whether people are comfortable “naming names&# in the meeting. Otherwise, key details are likely to be missed.

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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. If youre coming in to work groggy and therefore are not spending time with customers, Im willing to bet it is. Particularly the Continuous Deployment and Split testing posts.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

That’s because the model is based on assumptions about customers that are totally unproven. If we already knew who the customer was, how they would behave, how much they would pay, and how to reach them, this wouldn’t be a disruptive innovation. The solution is to change our focus from outputs to inputs. If it costs $0.10

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

But from a customer experience point of view, Im not yet sold. All I see is a name, an icon, a price, the developers name, and a review star-rating. Not many customers ever browse the app directory or search for specific apps - they dont have to, they find out about apps by being invited by a friend. I cant really tell.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. 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. Do your customers really read TechCrunch?

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

The larger-account division wanted to move the pricing in just the other direction – making the low-end products more expensive, so their large customers would have an increased incentive to upgrade. Many custom reports had been created for this meeting, and the data warehouse team was in the meeting, too. What a waste.

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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.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

In most applications, most of the time, customers return to use the application not in response to a notification or event, but under their own volition. These decisions are critical to the success of any high-engagement product, and they take place entirely inside the minds of customers.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, October 23, 2009 Case Study: Using an LOI to get customer feedback on a minimum viable product How much work should you do on a new product before involving customers? But other times, the right way to learn is actually to show a product prototype to customers one-on-one.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

There are many articles by many experts ( myself included ) extolling the virtues of listening to customers. In fact, there are so many of these propaganda pieces that this question might naturally cross your mind: if listening to customers is so great, why do we need so much propaganda? We did not take this step lightly.

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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. Heres Mashables coverage of Facebook chat reaching "a billion messages a day."

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