Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

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. Seems like a fairly low-cost method of gauging customer interest for a would-be product. We finally settled on a $1.99 I used to use $.05,

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

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. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

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 cost will be felt in jobs -- thousands of new jobs that could have been created here, but werent. Read the rest of The New Startup Arms Race at Huffington Post.

San Francisco 121

San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

It seems many startups these days are under a lot of pressure to outsource their development organization to save costs. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

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

APRIL 9, 2009

dalelarson : "Metrics are people, too." leanstartup ericnsantos : #w2e #leanstartup Metrics should be Actionable, Accessible and Auditable. Metrics are a key questions startups face. Metrics are people too" is a reminder I constantly needed when I was a manager. ericries s talk on Lean Startups absolutely fantastic.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

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. The biggest source of cost/time advantage that all lean companies have is avoiding building features that customers dont want. Agile software development. This speeds up the Ideas-Code-Data feedback loop.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

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. sadly, this blog forces you to use a google account. So, for reference, I am Adam, of [link]. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Open Source 107

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Since we were only paying per click, it didnt cost us anything to cast a wide net. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. We tried obvious competitors as well as long-shots.

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 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. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

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

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 9, 2009

The Lean Startup is a practical approach for creating and managing a new breed of company that excels in low-cost experimentation, rapid iteration, and true customer insight. Expo San Francisco 2009 The current macroeconomic climate presents unparalleled opportunities for those that can thrive with constrained resources.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Web Advisory Board 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics. Luckily, we also discovered that certain other metrics, like LTV and CPA were much better than we initially projected. 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

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Or, if it really was prevented, what was the opportunity cost of choosing to prevent it ahead of time? And in most situations, there is significant cost involved in negotiating over the right estimates to plug in. How much will it cost to solve this problem now? They are usually among the most heated arguments a company has.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

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. These techniques only catch the failures your organization as a whole already was capable of discovering.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

If you can start getting ROI on a feature in month one of a twelve month project versus waiting until the end, youve comparatively reduced the cost of development by the revenue generated by that feature over 11 months. Small batches also help deliver value earlier in the project. February 25, 2009 8:12 PM Anonymoussaid. Small is beautiful.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

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. I cant really imagine how much it cost our "grownup" counterparts at other dot-com startups to get their first app up and running. Looking back, that was a special moment.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

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. I’ve met a lot of gatekeepers in the past few months.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. They know how much it costs to bring in a customer and they know how much money they can expect to make on each one. Our cost to acquire a customer on AdWords was only a few cents. Time-to-complete-a-sale is not a bad metric for validated learning at this stage.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

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. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 27, 2009

The Lean Startup is a practical approach for creating and managing a new breed of company that excels in low-cost experimentation, rapid iteration, and true customer insight. Ship new software at a dizzying pace: multiple times a day while improving quality and lowering costs. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Lean 60

Lean Austin San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Its obvious that can lower your development costs, but I think its even more important that it can reduce your time to market. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

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. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 29, 2010

And do I still need to get out of the building if Ive got great metrics and surveys?" Of course, readers of this blog know that the lean in "lean startup" doesnt refer to cost, but - rather - to Lean Thinking. And do I still need to get out of the building if Ive got great metrics and surveys?" I think this is a fair question.

San Francisco 120

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 120

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Stick to some kind of absolute-cost rule, like "no one is allowed to spend more time on the refactoring for a given feature than the feature itself, but also no one is allowed to spend zero time refactoring." Only one occasion was a substantial rewrite justified based on performance metrics. January 29, 2009 12:48 AM mooderssaid.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

There are three fundamental situations that change what your company needs to do: creating a new market (the original Palm), bringing a new product to an existing market (Handspring), and resegmenting an existing market (niche, like In-n-Out Burger; or low-cost, like Southwest Airlines). Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Plus, we saw some of the intrinsic limitations of supporting such a large staff: slower cycle times, higher cost basis, and - most importantly - the ability to serve only a limited number of customer segments. Other companies accomplish this by hiring a large staff of content production experts - and get a very good result.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Then we could render the whole site with much less latency, bandwidth usage, and server cost. Its design goals arent geared towards efficiency in terms of technical costs. By deferring their selection until later in the process, we can give up a lot of bookkeeping (again trading off for considerable costs).

Continuous Deployment 68

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

Although there is cost and overhead associated with continuous deployment, the benefits are immense. Split-testing is great for linear optimization; making our landing pages, conversion rates, and retention metrics incrementally better day-in day-out. Danger, Will Robinson. If youre not doing both, youre missing out.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Who will ultimately bear the cost of their mistakes? One of the distinctions that has helped at the executive level is to stress that you're reducing the COST of failure, rather then its PROBABILITY. If the cost of each failure is dirt cheap, then you can afford to make a lot more failures in the course of learning.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 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 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.

San Francisco 122

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 122

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. we dont talk enough about how it feels.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

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. Just because something looks pretty, or feels like a good idea, or has a lot of sunk cost in it, does not mean it should be pursued. 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

MAY 7, 2009

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. The interesting thing about fear is that to reduce it requires two contradictory impulses. First, we can reduce fear by mitigating the consequences of failure.

Continuous Deployment 131

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Automated testing dramatically reduces the cost of certifying changes, because it removes all of the grunt work QA traditionally does in software. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Yet in every situation where I have asked, nobody has been tasked with making a realistic estimate, either of the impact of this lack of training or the real costs of the solution. Remember that the cost of the solutions is proportional to the problem caused. In fact, even the investigation itself is considered too much work.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

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). Why vanity metrics are dangerous What is Lean about the Lean Startup?

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156