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. Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. That meant getting designers, programmers, and QA folks to cross-train and work together as peers. Articulate, inspirational.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The new design improved on the old one in several ways, but these improvements didnt translate all the way through the funnel. Usually, I think that means youve lost some good aspect of the old design. The designers might be telling you that the new design looks much better than the old one, and thats probably true.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

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

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

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.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 30, 2009

Traveling to new startup hubs is one of my favorite things about being able to do this full-time. 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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. 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

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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Pivotal Labs doesn't carry "Pivot" in its name by accident. I'm glad there's a 'name' for this part of the process Eric. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Pivot, don't jump to a new vision Why Continuous Deployment? Thank you for your nice posting.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Startups are the lifeblood of our economy.

San Francisco 121

San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121

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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

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.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

I think Jim Murphys confusion comes where many peoples did, with the XP term "Customer", which was XPs name for the product management role. That naming issue aside, I think its probably good that Scrum and XP didnt really say much about how to manage products. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

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. Those new capabilities must translate into a constant stream of prototypes - most of which turn out to be utterly bad ideas. Discover whats in customers heads, and tackle problems where design is a differentiator.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

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

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.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This is a self-published book, originally designed as a companion to Steves class at Berkeleys Haas school of business. The book takes its name from Steves theory of the four stages of growth any startup goes through. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Heres the catch.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

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, consider this simple scheme.

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

I had a lot of use for this concept back when I worked on game design and virtual worlds. In order to maintain game play balance, game designers have to take into account the needs of customers who have an excess of four different assets: time , money , skill , and passion. Having a balanced ecosystem is what game designers strive for.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. The blog is fantastic as well.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

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

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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Pivot, don't jump to a new vision Why Continuous Deployment?

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

All I see is a name, an icon, a price, the developers name, and a review star-rating. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. And what distinguishes a good app?

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

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. In fact, this company hasn’t shipped any new products in months. And yet their numbers continue to grow, month after month.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 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. If new employees are causing problems, that will be a routine topic. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. There’s no easy fix to this problem.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

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

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 13, 2009

New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, the works. 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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Founders push for it.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

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. Most of the other processs changes - mandatory design reviews (prelimninary, critical, etc), - documenting all our procedures, and so on - were to support those two factors. Im keen on the two-kinds-of-bugs thing.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

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. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. What a waste. And who can blame them? What a waste. And who can blame them?

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

It then proceeds to list a whole host of cool new features the Warhammer team has added since I last logged in. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ▼ 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

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

DECEMBER 7, 2008

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on split testing SSL certificates and the effect of domain names. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 132

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

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

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

(a guide for hackers) (This post was inspired by a conversation with Nivi from Venture Hacks , but is otherwise not his fault) There has been a proliferation of frameworks and metaphors lately that are designed to help startups avoid the all-too-common fatal mistake of failing to find a market. Is a market a set of paying customers?

San Francisco 89

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Ruby Lean 89

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

or their privileging of only certain designers featured in Showcase and promos. It took hundreds of years for newspapers to learn to behave as worthy holders of this public trust and cover the news without fear or favour, and create a firewall between news and views and the ad-sales side of the operation. Clifford Hicks?

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158