Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I believe it is the best introduction to Customer Development you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of Customer Development and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. You can imagine how well that worked. On the minus side, that has made it a wee bit hard to understand.

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Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. In most agile development systems, there is a notion of the "product backlog" a prioritized list of what software is most valuable to be developed next.

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Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 Thoughts on scientific product development I enjoyed reading a post today from Laserlike (Mike Speiser), on Scientific product development. Keep split-testing, but keep this iron rule: if it doesnt change customer behavior, its not a feature.

Product Development 68

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why vanity metrics are dangerous In a previous post, I defined two kinds of metrics: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. In this post, Id like to talk about the perils of vanity metrics. My personal favorite vanity metrics is "hits."

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

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Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. This is a customer development problem. So What is Customer Development? Change who your product is for.

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Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 3, 2009 Minimum Viable Product: a guide One of the most important lean startup techniques is called the minimum viable product. MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products. We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2012

Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or Customer Development there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. Frank Robinson of SyncDev has been helping companies figure out their minimum viable product and pivots since 1984, long before I even knew what it meant.

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San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 256

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Creators of new products in environments of extreme uncertainty, startups face enormous risks. Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. As a startup owner, what can you do to improve your chances?

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Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. The product manager was clearly struggling to get results from the rest of the team. Lets start with what the product manager does.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. We were lucky to learn about Customer Development early on in the life of our startup. More importantly, we’d witnessed Customer Development’s massive success at another local startup. So how did Customer Development fail us?

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Customer Development Developer Customer California 230

Steve Blank

MARCH 3, 2015

The disadvantage is that its methodology was based on the old waterfall model of product development and not the agile and lean methods that startups use today. It taught lean theory ( business model design , customer development and agile engineering) and practice. The Business Plan is Dead.

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Business Plan Silicon Valley Saudi Arabia Lean 120

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. Its the ultimate high-engagement product. You can learn more about the event here.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

In future posts I’ll describe how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for product development activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development. They never understood Market Type. Why does Market Type matter? End result?

Customer Development 196

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 196

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. Instead, we try to accelerate with respect to validated learning about customers. There are often counter-intuitive changes in customer behavior that depend on little details.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

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

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2010

This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for product development. Everyone was in the flow; the team was hyper-productive. In many cases, they did the impossible, building a new product faster, cheaper, and better than anyone could have predicted.

Software Review 141

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 141

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 16, 2013

Palantir is a deep technical play and we had a lot of code to write just to fill out the product vision that we had already validated with potential customers; it took us two straight years of development to go from early prototypes to software that could be used in production. So what was going on?

Lean 167

Lean Startup Software Engineering Agile 167

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? One last note on reporting.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Build a truly mainstream product. Build the product in stealth mode to build buzz for the eventual launch. The whole company and board play-tested the product to see its new features first hand. Everyone had fun; the product worked. But that was two full years before any customers were allowed to use it.

San Francisco 150

San Francisco Lean Agile Continuous Deployment 150

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

This may sound crazy, coming as it does from an advocate of c harging customers for your product from day one. Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. What’s going on?

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. This is precisely the dilemma that the doctrine of minimum viable product is designed to solve.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

Feld Thoughts

NOVEMBER 18, 2013

ASC starts building product, but as they get into the thick of it, the team realizes executing on their vision is going to be extremely hard. Early customer development talks are going great which keeps the team really excited. No updates, screen comps, or metrics have been publicly shared yet.

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Burn Rate Equity Software Review Early Stage 152

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 2, 2010

Five Whys has its origins in the Toyota Production System. And yet the key to startup speed is to maintain a disciplined approach to testing and evaluating new products, features, and ideas. Two Ways to Hold Entrepreneurs Accountable Beware of Vanity Metrics For Startups, How Much Process Is Too Much? Speed up or slow down?

Technical Review 132

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 132

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.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

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. ———– Whether your venture is a new pizza parlor or the hottest new software product, beware: These nine flawed assumptions are toxic.

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Balance Sheet Business Model Customer Development Metrics 335

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

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. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 28, 2009

I used to think that investments in metrics were a form of waste. Customers dont care if you have good metrics, only if you have a good product. The only reason we learned the art of metrics-based decision making at IMVU was out of necessity. We set sales targets from day one, $300 the first month.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 98

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

September, 2012 – Andrew Chen, who currently does growth at Uber , writes You don’t need a growth hacker , which encourages companies to really consider whether they have product-market fit before hiring a growth hacker. They need products that are really working in the market. via AndrewChen.co). ” Creativity.

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Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

Nick Kim , Crosscut’s Head of Platform, in his presentation at the 4th Annual VC Platform Summit, shared their Platform development methodology, which he viewed as an exercise in product development. For example, recruiting writ large is useful at all stages of development. Customer Development.

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Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. A description of the problem you’re solving for your customers, and your solution to the problem, which is usually your product or service. In the tactics section, list your sales channels and describe how you will be selling your products.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. Creating a company-wide feedback loop that incorporates both customer development and agile development is a challenge.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. 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 was painful.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 11, 2009 Innovation inside the box I was recently privy to a product prioritization meeting in a relatively large company. The team spent an hour trying to decide on a new pricing strategy for their main product line. It was fascinating. The whole process had taken.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. Nothing made any difference.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

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. SEM is a simple idea.

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SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164