Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. As a result, the standard product development model is not only useless, it is dangerous.

Customer Development 203

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 203

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Labels: product development Speed up or slow down? Hence, cutting corners often paid huge dividends.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration. In a lot of cases, this requires a lot of energy invested in talking to customers or metrics and analytics. Refreshing to finally see lean and agile thinking emerge in product/business-floors and not only in technology.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. As a result, potential customers are being turned away; they can only afford to engage with the customers that are best qualified.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

I used to think that investments in metrics were a form of waste. Customers dont care if you have good metrics, only if you have a good product. The only reason we learned the art of metrics-based decision making at IMVU was out of necessity. But code written that doesnt help the company succeed is a sunk cost.

San Francisco 98

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

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. I think Drucker said it best.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

Convertible debt financings have become an increasingly attractive approach for seed rounds because it delays the valuation discussion, costs less from a legal standpoint, and is an easier financial instrument to “keep raising more small amounts of money” on. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet.

Burn Rate 152

Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

. “Growth hackers have a passion for tracking and moving a metric. Without metrics or data, a growth hacker can feel out of place and uncomfortably exposed. This strong bias towards data drives a growth hacker away from vanity metrics towards metrics that will make or break the business.” ” Creativity.

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

While some cost-cutting measures reduce that number, others increase it. In lean times, it’s most important to focus on cutting costs in ways that speed you up, not slow you down. Otherwise, cutting costs just leads to going out of business a little slower. Getting started with split-testing and the one-line split-test.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Lean startups have the ability to use this commodity stack to lower costs and, more importantly, reduce time to market. Agile software development. Customer development. Its not enough just to build a product with great features - you have to figure out if there is a market for it.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

We spent weeks working on this new product, racing the clock so it would be done in time for the real presidential debates. We had endless arguments internally about what features it should include, how the avatars should look, and how much it should cost. Just load them all in and choose a low cost-per-click. I used to use $.05,

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. Creating a company-wide feedback loop that incorporates both customer development and agile development is a challenge.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

We wanted an agile approach that would allow us to build our software architecture as we needed it, without downtime, but also without large amounts of up-front cost. After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Steve Blank

MARCH 4, 2014

These groups are adapting or adopting the practices of startups and accelerators – disruption and innovation rather than direct competition, customer development versus more product features, agility and speed versus lowest cost. Our Investment Readiness Level is just one of those metrics.) StageGate Process.

IRR 335

IRR Startup Business Model Agile 335

Steve Blank

MARCH 11, 2015

And worse, even if someone does manage to start something new, our management structure has so many financial, legal and HR hurdles that every initiative needs to match our existing business financial metrics, processes and procedures. There are financial metrics (Return on Investment, Hurdle Rate, etc.) That’s now changed.

Widget 120

Widget Lean Business Model Metrics 120

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If the CEO wants to completely change the product in order to serve a new customer segment, you need someone in the room who can digest the needs of the new (proposed) business, and lay out the costs of each possible approach. In my mind, theyre racking up costs (one month for that part, two months for that other part, uh oh).

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

The software was sold based on installation cost running on local servers for enterprises—which was very, very expensive. Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP. This is the simplest version of your product minus the frills and frosting. Estimating Realistic Startup Costs.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

Some are r esegmenting an existing market– directed at a niche that an incumbent isn’t satisfying (like Dell and Compaq when they were startups) or providing a low cost alternative to an existing supplier (like Southwest Airlines when it first started.)

Silicon Valley 133

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

We ran ad campaigns against every single product we could think of in an adjacent market space to ours. Since we were only paying per click, it didnt cost us anything to cast a wide net. We would pretty much bid on any phrase that was "[name of competitive product] chat" and variations like that. I just came across this post.

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. Although it costs to pay down the principal, we gain by reduced interest payments in the future. One last thought.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

[link] And - of course - going through [link] and reading up on the various different approaches different companies have (successfully) taken towards getting scalability at reasonably low cost. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? So, for reference, I am Adam, of [link].

Open Source 107

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

It costs not just the time of the actual meeting, but the time getting there and back, and the time preparing for it beforehand and thinking about it afterward. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 125

San Francisco Software Review Technical Review Continuous Deployment 125

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I am convinced one of Joel Spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the Joel Test , a checklist of 12 essential practices that you could use to rate the effectiveness of a software product development team. He wrote it in 2000, and as far as I know has never updated it.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. I want to talk specifics, and when you come right down to it, most technology startups dont have a very interesting cost structure.

Lean 140

Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

The cost of creating new companies is falling rapidly, and access to markets, distribution, and information is within the reach of anyone with an Internet connection. The result is a profound democratization of the digital means of production. [.] We will not lose on their products -- after all, most of them are global.

San Francisco 121

San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Luckily, I now have the benefit of a forthcoming book, The Principles of Product Development Flow. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 11comments: Peter Severin said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Interesting post.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Ship more infrequently While this may decrease downtime (things break and you roll back), the cost on development time from work and rework will be large, and mistakes will continue to slip through. It would be hard to argue against this product development strategy, in general. If a feature worked, wed keep it.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. Thats why we need continuous integration and test-driven development.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

This approach is a the heart of breaking down the "time/quality/cost pick two" paradox , because these small investments cause the team to go faster over time. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Id like to point out something else about the example above.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Which comes to the second major principle: halt work that leads to more waste, even if it means abandoning sunk costs. Most executives, especially in startups, dont have the courage to hold their teams to a high standard for new products or features. This is a version of the andon cord technique from lean manufacturing.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

It cost us a few hundred thousand dollars to get our app up and running, but none of that was dollars spent on software licenses or professional services. We just had our app support a few tens of thousands of customers, and it did well. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Because, unless you are working in an extremely static environment, your product development team is learning and getting better all the time. Most importantly, I encouraged the leaders of the company to bring awareness of the business challenges to the product development team. Great post, Eric.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

As the costs of production fall, it’s getting easier and easier to send in a proposal or even a complete work. 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. Ever-more artists and authors are petitioning them.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

MARCH 1, 2010

Get to work and add all of these for first customer ship.”. Product development salutes and gets to work building the product. Only after the product ships does the company find out that customers couldn’t have cared less about most of the bells and whistles. No feature lists without facts.

Customer Development 260

Customer Development Metrics Differentiation Engineer 260

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

davemcclure : amazing concepts on Continuous Development => "Cluster Immune System" @EricRies #LeanStartup @fbFund [link] dalelarson : Because most features take longer to argue and prioritize than to build. Although there is cost and overhead associated with continuous deployment, the benefits are immense. Danger, Will Robinson.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics. As the product got better, we could see the rate getting closer and closer to the mythical “ one percent rule.&# If it costs $0.10 Even that early, it became clear that 4% was not an achievable goal. But $10.00?

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102