Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. For customer development, start with Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany or take a look at his recent Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Lecture.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

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. Yet there is one silver lining when it does happen: we wind up throwing out working code , debt-riddled and elegantly designed alike.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not? Platform selection and technical design - if your business strategy is to create a low-burn, highly iterative lean startup, youd better be using foundational tools that make that easy rather than hard.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Thanks to Suns amazing PR blitz, there was tremendous demand for experts on Java, and I did my best to convince people that I was one of that mythical breed. my startup is Blank Label (www.blank-label.com), which is a provider of custom dress shirts that empowers consumers to become the designer of their own product.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and.

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Customers kept demanding that we add this or that IM feature, and we were routinely refusing. We were afraid that this was just the tip of the iceberg, and that once we “gave in&# to these five demands there would be five more, ad infinitum. Every time you listen to customers, you fear diluting your vision.

Advisory Board 151

Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

But part was a recognition that we could gain substantial competitive advantage by leveraging a community of like-minded visionary customers to serve a wider (and more mainstream) audience than we could alone. Making UGC work requires good tools, open standards, and proper incentive design. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

Because of the extreme unknowns inherent in startup situations, we are all blind – to the realities of what customers what, market dynamics, and competitive threats. Periodic or on-demand reports are one possibility, but we can do much better. It was pretty ugly, the marketing and design sucked, and I was embarrassed by it.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

The other revels in the world as we all know it will be someday: limitless distribution enabled by new technologies, the importance of collaborative filters, and on-demand availability of all content for end-users. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

As a consumer internet company with millions of customers, it may seem to have little relevancy for an enterprise software company with only a handful of potential customers, or a computer security company whose customers demand a rigorous audit before accepting a new release. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 11, 2010

High-profile startup Friendster had first-mover advantage in the social networking space, but created openings for competitors when it could not scale to meet demand. High-profile startup Friendster had first-mover advantage in the social networking space, but created openings for competitors when it could not scale to meet demand.

San Francisco 120

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2010

Many journalists and conference organizers attempt to fill this demand by giving successful entrepreneurs the opportunity to tell their stories: in magazines, on blogs, and on stage. And the kinds of failures that do get airtime are usually failures to adequately plan, anticipate, or design in advance.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Metrics PR 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and.

Advertising 60

Advertising San Francisco Media Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

As I present in my blog, defining the MVP requires answering the following question: "Will our customers be willing to buy the product with these features - available at this date - at this price?" Iterate quickly to uncover true market demands. Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and what.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

This is precisely the dilemma that the doctrine of minimum viable product is designed to solve. When people start using quality, reliability, or design as an excuse to delay, it used to make me nervous, even when these suggestions were well intentioned. What if customers actually like the “crap&# product?

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

I think this concept is necessary in order to answer the truly vexing startup questions, like: “Should startups charge customers money from day one?&# Let’s begin with the four customer currencies. I had a lot of use for this concept back when I worked on game design and virtual worlds.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and.

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

Its nearly impossible to get a good read on all six attributes in a single interview, so its important to design an interview process that will give you a good sampling of data to look at. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development?

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

It’s important to note that system I’m about to explain evolved organically in response to new demands on the system and in response to post-mortems of failures. Nobody gets here overnight, but every step along the way has made us better developers. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

In the past, we invested in brilliant architecture, code reuse, refactoring, modular design, etc. By contrast, most investments in traditional prevention are designed to anticipate and fix a specific problem. In the past, we invested in brilliant architecture, code reuse, refactoring, modular design, etc.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Architecture Lean Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Five Whys is designed to avoid these nebulous arguments. oh, and on the book front, you'll be able to get all of my essays so far in ebook, print-on-demand, and kindle editions - coming soon. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? They seem to be liking it. (oh,

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Getting educated about advertising, agencies, and.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

As the company grows, hes the go-to person for almost everything technical, and so hes very much in demand. 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. But life is not easy, either.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Tech Gadgets Mobile Enterprise GreenTech CrunchBase TechCrunch TV Disrupt SF More TechCrunch TV Beta Invites Crunchies Elevator Pitches Gillmor Gang Podcasts TechCrunch Europe TechCrunch Trends TechCrunch France TechCrunch Japan Whats Hot: Android Apple Facebook Google Microsoft Twitter Yahoo Zynga Subscribe: From Nothing To Something.

Technical Review 84

Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder Software Review 84

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

Other methods for collecting data about customers have obvious drawbacks. Doing in-depth customer research, with long questionnaires with detailed demographic and psychograpic breakdowns, is very helpful for long-range planning, interaction design and, most importantly, creating customer archetypes.

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2010

This is just like a startup to me, complete with distribution and product development challenges, ecosystem design and many, many customers. Ive been blown away by the level of demand you all have expressed in having a forum for the whole community to come together and share what were learning.

San Francisco 122

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 122

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

(a guide for hackers) (This post was inspired by a conversation with Nivi from Venture Hacks , but is otherwise not his fault) There has been a proliferation of frameworks and metaphors lately that are designed to help startups avoid the all-too-common fatal mistake of failing to find a market. Tough sell.

San Francisco 89

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Ruby Lean 89

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

Wed train them on-demand as they came in, and send them into the world (or onto the phones) with written instructions and voter contact data. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online.

Campaign 84

Campaign San Francisco Lean Agile 84

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

or their privileging of only certain designers featured in Showcase and promos. until I couldn't seem to find a way from getting away from all these nasty, vulgar teens (or people pretending to be teens) demanding explicit sex every time I went there. Running a platform is a public trust and a publicly-accountable act.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158