Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2013

Problems arise when companies isolate areas of the business in what Eric refers to as “functional silos”—independently operating teams (design, engineering, marketing, legal, etc.) You have to go find your own customers to experiment with, you have your own brand, so you have to think like a Lean Startup.

Lean 167

Lean Silicon Valley Agile Cofounder 167

Steve Blank

JULY 1, 2014

Investors sitting through Incubator or Accelerator demo days have three metrics to judge fledgling startups – 1) great looking product demos, 2) compelling PowerPoint slides, and 3) a world-class team. Other than measuring engineering progress, there’s no standard language to communicate progress.

Sacramento 311

Sacramento Framework Customer Development Lean 311

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So I initially gravitated to the CTO title, and not VP of Engineering. But since I spent a long time in a hybrid CTO/VP Engineering role, I still have this nagging question. I want to add one last idea, even though I recognize it is controversial, bordering on the boundary between the CTO and VP Engineering. Heres my take.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

In a lot of cases, this requires a lot of energy invested in talking to customers or metrics and analytics. You refer to an anonymous Valley-based MMORPG that consumed years and tens of millions in development, but got little commercial traction. In fact, MVP is quite annoying, because it imposes extra overhead.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

MAY 14, 2012

The excerpts, which appeared first at Inc.com , highlight the Customer Development process, best practices, tips and instructions contained in our book. These founders specify, design, and build a fully featured product using classic product development methods without ever leaving their building. Focusing on the launch date.

Balance Sheet 335

Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

The human tendency to moralize about debt affects engineers, too. Leverage product development with open source and third parties. Financial leverage refers to investing that is supplemented by borrowed money. Technical debt only refers to the latter. Sometimes quick and dirty actually incurs less debt.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

www.women2.org

MARCH 8, 2012

After quitting my job and starting Sorced , I spent a few months validating my business concept by creating the product mockups and doing customer development. Consequently, I either needed a tech co-founder or to pay someone to develop the product. Given those criteria, where are the watering holes to find these engineers?

Cofounder 47

Cofounder Technical Review San Francisco Founder 47

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

First, because the amateurs weren’t SEC-registered, the site had to refer to them with awkward terms like “geniuses.&# First, because the amateurs weren’t SEC-registered, the site had to refer to them with awkward terms like “geniuses.&# Within a month, kaChing observed several interesting things.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule. This is an incredible skill, one that most engineers overlook. Great Post on Start Ups.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

So, for reference, I am Adam, of [link]. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

Open Source 107

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 2, 2008

Alas, they arent published in a dead-tree medium yet, so I cant say something like "they are the essential reference on my bookcase." The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? but rest assured they would be. 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

MAY 31, 2010

Its in reverse-chronological order, so start with page 3 or just use Seans handy reference. When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. Its in reverse-chronological order, so start with page 3 or just use Seans handy reference.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

One is used by engineers to refer to the process of getting code fully integrated into production. Another is used by marketing to refer to what customers see. In traditional batch-and-queue development, these two concepts are linked. All customers will see the new software as soon as it’s deployed.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Steve Blank

JANUARY 21, 2013

Last fall, I began teaching the Lean LaunchPad course at Princeton ( EGR 495: Special Topics in Entrepreneurship ) with four teams of undergraduates (ok, there were a few engineering grad students in the mix), a brave first-time LLP co-teacher (Cal Simmons), and a talented and dedicated teaching assistant (Ismaiel Yakub). Beertending.

Lean 287

Lean Cofounder Dividend Business Model 287

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

We started with a simple wiki page with a few bullet points of things that new engineers had tripped over recently. In response to Five Whys that noticed that not all new engineers were reading the list, we expanded it into a new engineer curriculum. We never set out to build a world-class engineering-training process.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

It’s more reference material. Thus, these pages. I’ll add more as time goes on.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 3, 2009

In order to give people the data they need to apply the strategy, we were very open with our company metrics, making all reports generally available and easy to run. When you think a certain feature will give a 50% boost to a given metric, and it only eeks out a 5% boost, you cant spin that as failure. Also, I gotta add.

Employee 146

Employee San Francisco Lean Software Review 146

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

That’s because many of our reports feed us vanity metrics: numbers that make us look good but don’t really help make decisions. Yet even among those who have access to good actionable metrics, I’ve noticed a phenomenon that prevents taking maximum advantage of data. Too much of this data is non- actionable.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 29, 2010

Each part of the program is organized around one phase of the Build-Measure-Learn feedback loop and begins with a keynote address from a heavy hitter: Steve Blank on Customer Development, Randy Komisar on "Getting to Plan B" and - a third person, not-yet-announced-but-extremely-cool-trust-me. I think this is a fair question.

San Francisco 120

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 120

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 24, 2011

Because then you’d miss out on: Whether it’s better experience to build a complete, tiny startup or to do more in-depth customer development for a meatier problem. So that means stuff like thinking about what a business model might be, it does mean customer development. So I have a question for you, Jason.

Cofounder 208

Cofounder Technical Review Software Review Differentiation 208

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Engineers are offenders in this category too, but so is any gender-segregated activity, like an all-female PR or marketing team. To be clear, though, this diversity refers only to diversity of opinion, not necessarily to demographic diversity. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Many great engineers Ive worked with (especially the type I talked about in the hackers lament ) seem to think that if they get along well with someone in an interview, theyll be a good addition to the team. They work steady hours, but not for lack of drive; their references say they have exceptional output.

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 18, 2010

Lean, when used in the context of lean startup, refers to a process of building companies and products using lean manufacturing principles applied to innovation. That process involves rapid hypothesis testing, validated learning about customers , and a disciplined approach to product development.

Lean 167

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 8, 2009

I started my last company with 100% off-shore resources because I could never have completed Customer Development at a reasonable cost of money or regulatory burden had I employed US Citizens. What were you referring to? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

DC 90

DC Washington San Francisco SBIR 90

maplebutter.com

JANUARY 8, 2013

Written By Dan Martell on February 2nd, 2012 | Category: Hiring LeanStartup Marketing Metrics Startup Life | 6 Comments. Building Metrics / Usage Reports / KPI 3. Product/Metrics (70%/30% time) * Get your product activation (sign-up + meaningful action) to 60% * then, Get your product retention to 20% weekly. Why do I do it?

Technical Review 44

Technical Review Startup Cofounder Software Review 44

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

And in MMOs, of course, it was a fiction-derived term for parallel servers which has managed to stick (many people refer to parallel VW servers as "shards" now). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? which came of course, from an MMO project (Game Neverending).

San Francisco 151

San Francisco Architecture Startup Database 151

market-by-numbers.com

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Market By Numbers on Twitter | Entries RSS | Comments RSS Market By Numbers High-Tech Marketing and Customer Development Home What is Customer Development? User Class refers to a specific set of users. Examples include Coca-Cola, most automobile manufacturers, Zappos. Please Share!

San Diego 40

San Diego RSS Lean Elevator Pitch 40

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 9, 2009

Or, for something more substantive, how about the top five-most-read posts: Why PHP won Dont launch Five Whys Work in small batches The engineering managers lament But wait, theres more! First OODA reference: Ideas. Validated learning about customers * 8.0 As for top posts we have: * 10.0 Don't launch * 8.9

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 84

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 20, 2009

In a presentation you gave to one of Steves classes you mentioned how common sense all this customer development stuff seems in theory, but is relatively difficult to pull off on in practice. It would be nice if you could deconstruct why the customer development model is challenging to pull off in practice?

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 68

andrewchenblog.com

MARCH 10, 2010

Coupled with A/B testing, customer development, and thinking through business problems in a scientific, hypothesis-driven way, you end up with a powerful cocktail of techniques to build a modern startup in the most iterative way possible. The “technical debt term&# is very popular amongst engineers. Please comment!

Technical Review 47

Technical Review Design Las Vegas Product 47

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 19, 2009

Take this fictional example of a Seedcamp attendee (actually a composite), which I will refer to as Hairbrush 2.0. Take this fictional example of a Seedcamp attendee (actually a composite), which I will refer to as Hairbrush 2.0. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 111

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 111

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 12, 2009

Its important to understand how these companies see you: your resume looks like crap, your references are poor or nonexistent, and you dont have the mandated 10 years of experience in J2EE ERP CRM WTF. In the world of startups, this is like trying to sell a product to a very demanding customer who needs to see a lot of features before buying.

San Francisco 89

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Ruby Lean 89

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 22, 2008

Our response time to the crisis was much too slow, and as part of the post-mortem analysis of why , I took a look at the various metrics that all took a precipitous turn for the worse during that summer. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? What is customer development?

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 31, 2009

Know someone whod make a great engineer at a startup? I'm finding many people coming to me with jobs, not to offer to me necessarily, but to say, "hey do you know any good designer/engineer/product person looking for a new opportunity?" I've been copy pasting large chunks of my reference emails.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Startup Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

I agree that listening and communicating is a key to success, but customer development can only do so much. Eric, I agree with everyone above about referring to people who loudly voice their opinions as trolls. And good reference how after years of problems exposed, nothing or very little has IMVU done.

Community 158

Community Management Lean Software Review 158

www.rocketwatcher.com

DECEMBER 5, 2011

The big things to consider is how easy your name is to spell and how unique it looks to search engines. And for the LOVE OF GOD, keep the engineers our of the decision loop. You will either get references to whatever video game is rockin, or some unintelligible string of letters and numbers. customer development.

Naming 41

Naming Startup Product Name Framework 41