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Why vanity metrics are dangerous

Startup Lessons Learned

If all the engineers work on the same thing at the same time, and all the marketers do the same, and QA, and ops, all the way down the line, then each department develops its own team-based private reality. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. If those teams are functionally organized, the problem is amplified.

Metrics 167
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Paul Graham on fundraising

Startup Lessons Learned

But the investor is already being compensated for that risk in the low price of the stock, so it is unfair to delay. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica. Even VCs do it.

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How to Get Picked as a Speaker for The Lean Startup Conference

Startup Lessons Learned

Most commonly, that’s uncertainty about whether you can build the product at all (what MBAs call “technical risk”) or whether anybody will use or buy it (“market risk”). For example, when your company adds ano ther blade to its disposal razors , the product’s technical development, marketing and sales will follow relatively predictable paths.

Lean 165
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Building a new startup hub

Startup Lessons Learned

They take common stock, not preferred, a fact that the entrepreneurs mentioned to me many times. Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n. Articulate, inspirational. jdegoes : Great talk from @ericries last night.

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Lean Startup at Scale

Startup Lessons Learned

Shutterstock is in a competitive market, but we have the most traffic and the most usage, meaning that we can run more tests (achieve significance sooner) and learn faster than our competitors. Continuous deployment: A key component of speed is to keep pushing out work.

Lean 167
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Assessing fit with the Wisdom of Crowds

Startup Lessons Learned

Similar mechanisms are at work in the stock market, Google PageRank , and guessing an oxs weight at the state fair. Remove any of these essential ingredients, and you can find examples of groups gone bad: the Bay of Pigs invasion fiasco , market bubbles, and pretty much every one of Dilbert s team meetings. Anyway, back to fit.

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What would you want to tell Washington DC about startups?

Startup Lessons Learned

The US was once known as a free market democracy that could make the trains run on time. Sarbanes Oxley has made it impossible to go public reducing financial capital for start-ups and the FASB rules on stock options have made it harder to attract human capital to start-ups. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

DC 90