Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

Starting with Facebook s developer program, social networks are all jumping on the apps bandwagon. If you ask an expert in Facebook apps to come help build yours, youll usually hear the same advice: build your app for virality. Thats sensible advice; most people who have made a business on Facebook rely on the viral driver of growth.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them. We cultivated a passionate community that nurtured a skilled set of developers. Let’s look at a viral growth company, like Facebook.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. If your app has strong word-of-mouth or viral components, your retention drives new acquisition, and its not so important to have good placement in the store. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

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. On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join. This is essentially a version of the viral loop.

Viral 140

Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Every experiment has to be evaluated based on a single standard report of 5-10 (no more) key metrics. Any team that creates an experiment must monitor the metrics and customer reactions (support calls, forum threads, etc) while the experiment is in-progress, and abort if something catastrophic happens. It promotes rapid iteration.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. For example, I’m a big believer in split-testing.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Do some Customer Development instead. If the viral coefficient is 0.9, Know what the success metrics are for the launch. Hold yourself and your PR agency accountable for developing a high level of understanding of these questions ahead of time. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Integration risk is the term I use to describe the costs of having code sitting on some, but not all, developers machines. Maybe two different developers made changes to the same underlying subsystem, but in incompatible ways. Maybe two different developers made changes to the same underlying subsystem, but in incompatible ways.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Luckily, the metrics helped us figure out the difference. Question 2: If your product has areas where people read and then different areas where people interact, are there ways to do metrics to determine where people spend their time? Were looking to metrics to determine how users interact with our product.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

One experience I had was with a candidate who was absolutely convinced that our development methodology wouldnt work. The process was great -- and our development manager would always listen to all of our views independently. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Sometimes, a great hacker has the potential to grow into the CTO of a company, and in those cases all you need is an outside mentor who can work with them to develop those skills. At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization. So, fellow hackers, Id love to hear from you.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

When youve mastered that, consider adding operations, customer service, marketing, product management, business development - the idea is that when the team needs to get approval or support from another department, they already have an "insider" who can make it happen. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 74

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 13, 2010 The Superbowl ad test I am a firm believer in the danger of vanity metrics , numbers that give the illusion of progress but often mask the true relationship between cause and effect. Vanity metrics are generally bigger. Vanity metrics. The solution? Is that really news?

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 132