Business Plan Blog

OCTOBER 4, 2013

Don’t hire people with skills and qualifications similar to yours. If you have a technical background and you are focused on product development, consider a co-founder with a sales and marketing background that can focus on selling your world class product. Hiring the right people at the right time is key.

Part-Time VPE 79

Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE Cofounder CTO Hire 79

The Next Web

DECEMBER 2, 2013

Could $100,000 and the right developer skills make you an overnight billionaire? How much does it really take to build a product like Twitter or Instagram? Still, a product is nothing without scalability. You can’t just build a product today, you need to build a venture. 3) Facebook.

Cost 168

Cost San Francisco New York City Ruby 168

Spencer Fry

DECEMBER 16, 2019

Throughout my career as an entrepreneur, I've gotten my hands dirty in every area of the business: product, marketing, support, community, success, and so on, but at 19 people, I just haven't had the time to be everywhere at all times. New hiring responsibilities. It's even difficult for me at times as the CEO.

CTO Hire 44

CTO Hire Wiki Product Development Matching 44

Up and Running

MAY 13, 2015

In the webinar, Lara offered some excellent time management tips and productivity hacks. Her passion is helping entrepreneurs create and run businesses that honor their priorities and values. Thanks so much for having me and letting me be a part of the Bplans community. At this point, I’d like to say welcome, Lara.

Management 60

Management Product Video Fractional CTO 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

You get increasing growth by optimizing the viral loop , and you get revenue as a side-effect, assuming you have even the most anemic monetization scheme baked into your product. 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

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

In a few cases, they are clearly smart people in a bad situation, and Ive written about their pain in The product managers lament and The engineering managers lament. And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time! Just change it. All is not lost, though.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

So far, I have found "lean startup" works better with the entrepreneurs Ive talked to than "agile startup" or even "extreme startup.") One that is powered by three drivers, each of which is a part of a major trend: The use of platforms enabled by open source and free software. What are the characteristics of a lean startup?

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Hippoland

OCTOBER 9, 2016

As an entrepreneur, you think your idea is unique. If you’re still in the early stages of your entrepreneur-education/journey, you may even think you need to protect your idea and not share it with anyone. Most entrepreneurs overpitch their ideas but underpitch how they’ve been executing. And convey this in your pitch.

Seed Stage 48

Seed Stage CTO Hire Email Later Stage 48

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

Should you co-found your company with a software development shop? I’ve seen a range of options for supporting entrepreneurs, which I can rank from least to most involvement in companies by investors: financier VCs, e.g., Correlation Ventures. mentor VCs, e.g., most VCs. incubators, e.g., the many options in New York.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown, and the key to success is building an integrated team that includes product development in the feedback loop with customers. 2008 09 06 Eric Ries Haas Columbia Customer Development Engineering View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

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? ) In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech and in 2009 he was honored with a TechFellow award in the category of Engineering Leadership. Would love to get in touch.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Lean Startup Circle - a mailing list of dedicated and helpful entrepreneurs.

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. But I don’t think so. By doing the job.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

It’s common, perhaps the norm, for startups to pivot like that—to discover that a product is catching on in unintended ways worth pursuing. Yet there’s a lot of mystery around pivots, and entrepreneurs ask all the time how you know it’s time to commit to a new direction. Which is a nice story.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

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

Up and Running

OCTOBER 8, 2015

I fell victim to a trap that plenty of entrepreneurs fall into every day: I fell in love with a product idea. Back in the late 2000s, my team and I came up with what we thought was a great idea for a product. What happened was that we all loved the idea of what this product could do. Or so we thought.

Marketing 60

Marketing Forecast CTO Hire Finder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

Its inspired by the classic OODA Loop and is really just a simplified version of that concept, applied specifically to creating a software product development team. There are three stages: We start with ideas about what our product could be. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Bring your questions.

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

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? In a mature company with a mature product, the goal is to pay for lots of people to come to your website. chatted five times?

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

They were deploying to production with every commit before they had an automated build server or extensive automated test coverage in place. Initially, IMVU sought to quickly build a product that would prove out the soundness of their ideas and test the validity of their business model.

Continuous Deployment 131

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Lean Startup Circle - a mailing list of dedicated and helpful entrepreneurs.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Lean Startup Circle - a mailing list of dedicated and helpful entrepreneurs.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Lean Startup Circle - a mailing list of dedicated and helpful entrepreneurs.

Open Source 107

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

If you want a slice of the pie, there isn’t a better time to get involved. To give you a better idea of what entrepreneurs in this industry are thinking about during each phase of the startup process, I interviewed SaaS entrepreneurs from all over the world, including our own COO Noah Parsons. The business model.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

In the very early days, the trick is to find anyone at all who can understand you when you are talking about your product. In our first year at IMVU, we thought we were building a 3D avatar chat product. As product people, we thought of competition in terms of features. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

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. This kind of result is typical when you ship a redesign of some part of your product. Without split-testing, your product tends to get prettier over time. First of all, why split-test?

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 1, 2008 Test-Driven Development as andon cord You cannot control what you cannot see, and the hardest part of managing software projects is that the final product is so intangible. These tests are written by the engineers themselves, and they must all pass every time.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Lean Startup Circle - a mailing list of dedicated and helpful entrepreneurs.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

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?

Technical Review 51

Technical Review Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 51

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2008

So one of the first things we did was to hire an Oracle expert and get to work. You can turn your entire application infrastructure investment into a pay-as-you-go variable cost, and bring new products to market at speeds an order of magnitude faster than just 10 years ago. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Technology Continuous Deployment Lean 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

As Steve writes in the Four Steps to the Epiphany , we always seek to find a market for the product as currently specified , not conduct a focus group to tell us what the spec should be. It gave the whole company license to go heads-down building product as fast as possible during the development cycle, acting as a solution team should.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

It is the first in a series of posts he’s writing about the decisions a young entrepreneur needs to make when she/he is first starting a business. The timing is perfect, there is more than a little overlap with Vivek Wadhwa’s guest post on venture capital earlier today. I don’t know any developers. Need proof?

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha. Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Lean Startup Circle - a mailing list of dedicated and helpful entrepreneurs.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC Lean 60

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. Market Type But most startups aren’t in existing markets. Whenever he did that most vendors would ignore him in the meeting.

Silicon Valley 131

Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

When we started IMVU in 2004, we could rely on a staggering amount of open source software that jumpstarted our initial product offering. Add onto that the incredible amounts of infrastructure code that we reused, and we were able to bring our product to market months earlier. Yes, Python developers DO tend to cost more.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Many of them have really cool products shipping or about to be released, and I wholeheartedly agree with my friends at the iFund that the next generation of applications is going to be amazing. The store determines which products sit on which shelves, and which yours sits next to. Ive also been playing around with the App Store.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

A growing startup with a well-run product team will have a history of steady progress. For readers concerned about the chasm, I recommend reading Seth Godin's thoughts on "Being remarkable" and finding a unique edge/twist for your products and marketing (edgecraft). Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 16, 2008

Usability testing is great for coming up with ideas about what to change in your product, but dont forget to split-test those ideas to make sure they work, too. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable (for Ha.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60