Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Metrics – Mine is Bigger Than Yours The first thing SuperMac needed to do was to change how our potential color desktop publishing customers viewed our products versus our competitors’ products. As hokey as it is, when confronted with uncertainty or unknowns, human beings like to be reassured by comparative metrics.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 127

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2013

To answer that question, we hosted a webcast conversation earlier this week with Eric Ries, Brant Cooper, and Patrick Vlaskovits. We’d like to share a few highlights and invite you to join the ongoing conversation by posing questions for Eric, Patrick, and Brant in the comments to this post. But you’re not going to your core business.

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Lean Silicon Valley Agile Cofounder 167

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. Other than measuring engineering progress, there’s no standard language to communicate progress. Enables better mentoring.

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Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 312

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. Some startups fail because the founders cant have this conversation - they either blow up when they try, or they fail to change because they are afraid of conflict. As the CTO/VP Engineering, I was the worst offender.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

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. If youre worried about disappointing some potential customers - dont be. Measure conversion rates. Eric -- This is a pretty interesting idea.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Heres an excerpt: The Startups Rules of Speed - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review Every startup that achieves success eventually faces a critical moment — whether to speed up or slow down.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

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. Instead, we try to accelerate with respect to validated learning about customers. When people (ok, engineers) who have been trained in this model enter most startups, they quickly get confused.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

The Five Whys for Start-Ups - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review Root cause analysis and preventive maintenance are concepts we expect to see in a factory setting. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Read the rest of The Five Whys for Start-Ups.

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

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? Trying to answer that question at IMVU led me to discover Google AdWords and the world of search engine marketing. SEM is a simple idea.

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SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Focus on the output metrics of that part of the product, and you make the problem a lot more clear. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. Labels: customer development , split-test 7comments: Editor said.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 8, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 8, 2010 Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Review) The next article in my series on entrepreneurship for Harvard Business Review is live today. Once again, we revisit the topic of Actionable metrics and their nemesis: Vanity metrics. Remember "metrics are people, too."

Metrics 121

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 121

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. Here are two specific ways it can go horribly wrong.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

Id be honored to have you join the conversation. The Conversation - Harvard Business Review For most of us, the phrase management science conjures up a decidedly non-entrepreneurial image, and for good reason. Read the rest at The Conversation - Harvard Business Review. Id be honored to have you join the conversation.

San Francisco 119

San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 4, 2013

And that’s not to mention the advice for very early-stage companies on topics like getting your first users, or choosing metrics. This includes developing and pitching a concept, customer development, idea validation, and creation of an MVP under guidance from an experienced mentor.

Lean 167

Lean San Francisco Conversion Startup 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Most of all, I encouraged them to start talking to their most passionate customers and running some big experiments based on that feedback. I thought we were having a successful conversation. I was told they werent sure, because all of their engineers were currently busy refactoring. In other words, it is dreaded legacy code.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

I thought a good place to start was with the origins of the idea that "software design" should be considered a discipline in its own right, on par with computer science, software engineering, and computer programming. Great engineers see it and smile. This is called set-based concurrent engineering (SBCE). [1]

Software Review 87

Software Review Design Software San Francisco 87

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable - The Conversation - Harvard Business Review Way back when the money was doled out, the team made a compelling pitch about the large market that was going to adopt their new innovative product or service. They are on-schedule and on-budget, but their gross metrics are way off.

Hockey Stick 105

Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

After quitting my job and starting Sorced , I spent a few months validating my business concept by creating the product mockups and doing customer development. Consequently, I either needed a tech co-founder or to pay someone to develop the product. Given those criteria, where are the watering holes to find these engineers?

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

I think this idea is particularly appealing to those of us from an engineering background. In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics. For example, say that your business model calls for a 4% conversion rate – as ours did initially at IMVU.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Noah Parsons says, “Start collecting contact information for interested, prospective customers. Develop a landing page, do some lightweight advertising, and generally reach out to as many potential customers as you can.”. We asked for feedback about our software and our growth ideas and took part in the conversation.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. 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. This is an incredible skill, one that most engineers overlook.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 29, 2010

The way forward requires getting everyone together in a room, and having a conversation about where were headed. My aspiration with the Lean Startup methodology has always been to provide such a framework, so that we have more intelligent conversations about what works and what doesnt for startups. Thats what this conference is for.

San Francisco 120

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MARCH 11, 2014

So conversion rate percentage, of course it can always be higher and we’re doing a lot of stuff to make that higher, but it’s in line with other applications. Jason: Yeah, one percent conversion rate is pretty normal. I’ve had some very good conversations with a large insurance company. So on the one hand.

Technical Cofounder 220

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Software Review Management 220

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

The human tendency to moralize about debt affects engineers, too. This reverses the standard intuition about what engineering activities add value, which usually concludes that test coverage is a form of necessary waste but a refactoring is value-added work. These kinds of design are mostly orthogonal.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2014

In that case, metrics and analytics are really important. Apply that within your company, apply that to your engineers. I''m a big advocate for having empathy for your engineers. LK: I just joined the team I’m working with as Head of Product a couple of months ago, and I''ve been working very closely with the engineering team.

Lean 167

Lean Design Mobile Engineer 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

Im excited that well get more than the usual few minutes of Q&A, so come with a healthy appetite for conversation. If you or your company is interested in sponsoring someone with a scholarship to travel to the expo and contribute to the conversation, please leave a comment or let me know. You heard me right.

Lean 76

Lean San Francisco Web Continuous Deployment 76

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. Unfortunately, the video of our sllconf conversation is not online (due to technical problems), but we have a physical tape backup which we are endeavoring to get online soon.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

He summarized that conversation well, so rather than re-tread that material, Ill quote it here: One thing that I was surprised to learn was that IMVU started out with continuous deployment. When a new engineer started at IMVU, I had a simple rule: they had to ship code to production on their first day. Heres the key point.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

whos on the engineering team? Most important slide: demo (if the product solves an obvious problem), engineering resumes (if the product is nearly impossible to build), " day in the life of a customer " (if neither of the above) Breakthrough technology Key questions: who owns the patents? how do you know anyone would want it?

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

signup, upgrade, trial pricing Zuora – online subscription management FeeFighters – find the cheapest credit card processors HealPay – Collections made easy Customer Support Tender – support, knowledgebase tool for your site GetSatisfaction - conversations between companies / customers.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2013

Last fall, I began teaching the Lean LaunchPad course at Princeton ( EGR 495: Special Topics in Entrepreneurship ) with four teams of undergraduates (ok, there were a few engineering grad students in the mix), a brave first-time LLP co-teacher (Cal Simmons), and a talented and dedicated teaching assistant (Ismaiel Yakub).

Lean 288

Lean Cofounder Dividend Business Model 288

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

Conversion optimization is a form of kaizen. Conversion optimization is a form of kaizen. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Why vanity metrics are dangerous What is Lean about the Lean Startup? A/B testing is set-based design.

Lean 140

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

Nothing is more demoralizing to an engineering team. leanstartup bmorrow : Not just for engineers: ask why 5x every time something unexpected happens. Use some customer development to find out. But its also amazing for testing big hypotheses, like what our customers really want to get out of our product.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 14, 2009

Through case studies, exercises, and discussions, Eric Ries will guide entrepreneurs of all stripes through the key areas that determine success for startups: product, engineering, QA, marketing, and business strategy. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

One hundred frustrated engineers were reporting to one overwhelmed senior executive. Each of Salesforce''s software teams was expected to complete a new software demo every 30 days, but every engineer was free to move to a new team without getting permission, which encouraged leaders to treat people well. What’s customer development?)

Lean 165

Lean San Francisco Cofounder Hosting 165

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So be sure to make a free user account and participate in the offline conversation there. Jason: get into customer development and it’s a big waste.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

So I generally feel right at home in these conversations. Unfortunately, this content-less decision-making process is inhibiting the ability of media companies to develop interesting new content at the very time when this supposed expertise should serve as their one true competitive advantage. Is that a lot?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113