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. I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Small is beautiful.

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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? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal. More on that in a moment.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Behind this analysis is a spreadsheet model, complete with detailed metrics for a set of customer behaviors that show just how valuable the new product will be. They are on-schedule and on-budget, but their gross metrics are way off. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Expo SF (May.

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Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on. Expo SF (May. for Harvard Business Revie.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

For the rest of us, there is an alternative: to create credibility by building a lean startup. We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far. My 2008 revenues were over $100k on a 35k inventory. Retention cohort analysis.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This theory has become so influential that I have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it. The problem is that there are no other metrics they can look at to judge the content of a book to know if it’s worth reviewing. What is the right revenue model?

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

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.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, October 30, 2008 John Doerrs 10 lean startup tips I just saw video of John Doerrs talk yesterday at VentureBeat’s “How to manage your start-up in the downturn&# roundtable event. Not just about expenses, about increasing revenue. Everyone from the receptionist to engineers is selling.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 1, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, May 1, 2009 Lean Startup webcast post-game Wow, what an incredible turnout for webcast this morning, right on the heels of a phenomenal crowd at startup2startup last night. Its been a great twelve hours for the lean startup! wogsland : Still not understanding the "lean" aspect. What a thrill.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 16, 2010

First, SlideShare is a fantastic product (that I use on a regular basis) and an impressive company example of Lean Startup practices in action. Second, their story illustrates a key Lean Startup idea: proving the business in micro-scale. Second, their story illustrates a key Lean Startup idea: proving the business in micro-scale.

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San Francisco Lean Analytics Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

These are companies that generate revenue by offering a free product with an upsell or premium version. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 148

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, July 2, 2009 How to conduct a Five Whys root cause analysis In the lean startup workshops , we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the technique of Five Whys. My intention is to describe a full working process, similar to what I’ve seen at IMVU and other lean startups. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2009

We were focused on revenue, but we didnt understand that revenue is not important for its own sake in an early stage company. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science?

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 94

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 28, 2008 The lean startup comes to Stanford Im going to be talking about lean startups (and the IMVU case in particular) three times in the next two weeks at Stanford. Labels: events , lean startup 5comments: Hitchens said. How did we combat this tendency? When will you be speaking?

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 68

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

One of the most common questions I get about the lean startup methodology is, "but what about Steve Jobs ?" So how do you reconcile his success with the lean startup, which seems to suggest the opposite?" Plus, the premise of the question misunderstands the lean startup, too. Not even if its generating revenue.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem) Lean startups don’t optimize. At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. For example, I’m a big believer in split-testing.

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San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

In lean times, it’s most important to focus on cutting costs in ways that speed you up, not slow you down. To increase the number of iterations you have left, you can either increase cash on hand (by raising money or increasing revenues), reduce burn rate, or increase the speed of each iteration. Work in small batches.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

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). These concepts have important implications for any lean startup.

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

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SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

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. Expo SF (May.

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usersknow.blogspot.com

APRIL 30, 2010

It’s not enough to just launch a feature and see if your revenue increases. You need to have some sort of plan for testing to see how it’s affecting key metrics , whether those are revenue, retention, registration, user happiness, or some other number you care about. How Am I Going to Get Feedback on this Feature?

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

It is an essential lean startup tool that combines seemingly irreconcilable attributes: it provides operational, actionable, real-time feedback that is truly representative of your customers experience as a whole. The whole episode cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars in lost revenue. Unfortunately, revenue a trailing indicator.

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.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

They asked for my advice, and we went through a number of recommendations that readers of this blog will already be able to guess: adding revenue opportunities, engagement loop optimization, and some immediate split-testing to figure out whats working and whats not. And we all know what the success rates of rewrites are! Homer said.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

This single decision wound up costing the company significant revenue and over the course of several months sent its customer growth into decline. "This single decision wound up costing the company significant revenue and over the course of several months sent its customer growth into decline." Expo SF (May.

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