Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

The law of large numbers (of customers) says you cant help but make at least some money - your valuation is determined by how well you monetize the tidal wave of growth. Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth.

San Francisco 167

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 14, 2008 How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people Frequency is more important than talking to the "right" customers, especially early on. Youll know when the person youre talking to is not a potential customer - they just wont understand what youre saying.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times Ardent would be my third technology company as a VP of Marketing (Convergent Technologies and MIPS Computers were the other two.) I’ve convinced the team you’d be perfect, come join us as the VP of Marketing.” It would be the company where I actually earned the title.

North Carolina 125

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 125

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

As the (very junior) product marketing manager I got a call from our local salesman that someone at Apple wanted more technical information than just the spec sheets about our new (not yet shipping) chip. That is until I saw that in startup after startup customers come from places you don’t plan on.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

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

SVPG

OCTOBER 14, 2014

Ben uses the analogy of war time vs. peace time. We focus on scale and execution during times of peace, but once we encounter serious threats to our business from changing technology, evolving markets, and emerging competitors, this requires a war time mindset and a relentless focus on continuous innovation.

Product 91

Product Technical Review Engineer CTO Hire 91

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. Some startups avoid getting customer feedback for precisely this reason: they are afraid that if early reactions are negative, theyll be "forced" to abandon their vision. So how do you know its time to change direction?

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time! Even if, in a previous life, you were a world expert in some functional specialty, like in-depth market research or scalable systems design, the compressed timeline of a startup makes it irrelevant.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

In the early fall of 2009, as kaChing prepared for its marketplace launch, the management team showed the app—which included real time market data, SEC-grade accounting, analytics, compliance and customer management tools—to a number of investment pros to get feedback and endorsements. Which is a nice story.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

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. chatted five times?

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes. Scalable systems are no exception - if your assumptions about how many customers youll have, or how they will behave are just a little bit wrong, you can wind up with a massive amount of wasted code.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) That institution will touch many people in its life: customers, investors, employees, and everyone they touch as well. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

In my experience, the majority of changes we made to products have no effect at all on customer behavior. The report is set up to show you what happened to customers who registered in that period (a so-called cohort analysis ). This report is set up to tell you about new customers specifically. First of all, why split-test?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

As the product matured, they were able to ratchet up the quality to prevent regression on features that had been truly embraced by their customers. As Eric said, “at IMVU, ‘release’ is a marketing term&#. For people we hired from larger companies especially, this was challenging. And that was not a lot of fun.

Continuous Deployment 131

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

All of these are true waste, and they generally happen because somebody is optimizing for their particular part of the puzzle, not for the team as a whole. Labels: agile , listening to customers 3comments: hauteroute said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. A description of your target market or the different market segments you’re targeting. Also, make a bullet list of the marketing activities that will drive customers to your door.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

They’re well aware of the conventional VC bias against funding companies which externally develop their technology, but they do have relevant skills. Currently, I think the following points should be considered: The optimal structure is one that equalizes the contributions of the development shop and investors. What are the timelines?

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Open Source 107

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

Hearpreneur

JULY 30, 2016

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told Women don’t know how to work on cars! I always have to prove myself to customers, and I get many men who don’t know the first thing about taking care of their cars. If they are going to shop or hire out, why not buy and support local small business owners?

Technical Review 48

Technical Review Technical Cofounder Entrepreneur CTO Hire 48

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

So one of the first things we did was to hire an Oracle expert and get to work. 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? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

You can keep the team focused on customer-centric results, rather than conformance to spec. Joel is focused on the fact that in many environments, programmers are considered "just the hired help" akin to manual labor, and not treated properly. There are no customers for that feature, UI issues or no. I strongly disagree.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

But from a customer experience point of view, Im not yet sold. Even with only a few months of development, third parties have crammed every single category in the store full of apps. Not many customers ever browse the app directory or search for specific apps - they dont have to, they find out about apps by being invited by a friend.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

Add onto that the incredible amounts of infrastructure code that we reused, and we were able to bring our product to market months earlier. At IMVU, when wed hire a new engineer, we could get them to ship code to production on their first day, even if they had never programmed in PHP before. Yes, Python developers DO tend to cost more.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The opportunity isnt to give into temptation and figure out how to recklessly and expensively market the frontlist. It is to adopt a long and slow and ultimately profitable strategy of marketing your ever-growing backlist. I see startups struggle with this all the time. How to listen to customers, and not just the loud.

San Francisco 76

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 76

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. In my experience, the iceberg part of a code iceberg often involves handling of a lot edge cases. It may be that all the doomsayers are right.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC Lean 60

SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2011

This site aggregates and filters content from thought leaders who talk about topics such as Marketing , Sales , Design , Revenue , Hiring , Social Media , Business Models , Metrics , PR , Venture Capital , Angel Investors , Bootstrapping , Incubators , Agile and many others.

Intellectual Property 175

Intellectual Property Aggregator Startup IP 175

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

When you have an infinitesimal number of customers, it can be embarrassing. But as long as your ego can take it, there are huge advantages to having a small number of customers. Most importantly, you can get to know those few customers in a way that people with zillions of customers cant. You can even meet the friend.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Team Configuration 500 Startups Guerilla Marketing Organizations Entrepreneurship Startup Founders & Entrepreneurs Startups Startup Incubators and Seed Programs Seedcamp Y Combinator TechStars Lean Startups What is the perfect startup team? They are many more examples.

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

You delight customers just like before. In an eyeballs business, you just cant seem to acquire or activate that next step-up of customers. Or your cost of customer acquisition just magically floats up to match your customer lifetime value. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 16, 2008

Read more at How to Usability Test your Site for Free | Noah Kagans Okdork.com Labels: listening to customers 1 comments: HKagan said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 6, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? How to listen to customers, and not just the loud. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Sometimes, testing with existing customers is more complicated than with new customers. Existing customers already have an expectation about how your product works, and its important to take this into consideration when adding or changing features. On the other hand, existing customers can be a testing benefit.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68