Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

When you look through the list , you’ll see big names that we’re very pleased we landed, epic companies we really want to hear from, and people we’re particularly excited to present because they have incredible stories to share--and you won’t hear them anyplace else. For example: Mitch Kapor was a founder of Lotus.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

YoungUpstarts

DECEMBER 9, 2013

“Getting personal” doesn’t mean that you need to become your customers’ best friend — simply that you need to get engaged in their experience and show them that they matter, that you understand their needs. Yes, it’s true that customers aren’t always convenient. If it improves the customer’s experience, it’s worth adapting.

Customer 170

Customer Technical Review Florida Cofounder 170

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 20, 2022

When I asked what they already knew about it, they tossed me a tall stack of industry and stock analyst reports, company names, web sites, blogs. He quickly came up with a list with 9 names/terms. In exchange I shared with him the news that he was on step one of a ten step industry mapping program. See Mapping – First Pass).

Forecast 384

Forecast China Demand Web 384

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 11, 2015

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs, lows and pivots that pushed them forward. program to become an entrepreneur: …I was on my way to the Ph.D… So I started my PhD program.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder India Entrepreneur Maryland 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. We were looking for four students for the program, four developers in training, and we ended up getting 700 applicants in a week.

Cofounder 145

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 145

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

For those whove heard it, it contains a length discourse on the subject of agile software development and extreme programming, including its weaknesses when applied to startups. As Im pontificating about agile, I see the name Kent Beck in my peripheral vision. Eric Names matter. There is a dark side to naming.

Lean 140

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 140

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 12, 2009 Why PHP won When I first learned to program on the web, Perl + CGI was the dominant platform. Since then, PHP (as part of the LAMP stack ) has really been the dominant development platform, at least in the free software and startup worlds. As a language, its inelegant.

PHP 166

PHP Software Review Ruby San Francisco 166

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

These companies would take our computers and put their name on them and resell them to their customers. Business customers were starting to ask for “office automation solutions” – word processing, spreadsheets, graphing software on a desktop. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.

Technology 143

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 143

Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 15, 2010

Finally, I HATE the name. Golden rule of branding for me: 1) name your company or product your URL and 2) don’t paint yourself into a corner. &# Tweet&# = corner. My bet: within 18 months they will change the name and go multi-stream. Sounds like somebody didn’t do their homework on this name. uh, hello!

Venture Capital 271

Venture Capital Affiliate Valuation San Francisco 271

Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. We were looking for four students for the program, four developers in training, and we ended up getting 700 applicants in a week.

Cofounder 120

Cofounder Entrepreneur Africa Sales Cycle 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

So, if youre interested in helping avoid mistakes like that, here are the steps: Get a domain name. It doesnt have to be the worlds catchiest name, just pick something reasonably descriptive. If youre concerned about sullying your eventual brand name, dont use your "really good" name, pick a code name.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 10, 2016

The program examines the DNA of entrepreneurs: what makes them tick, how they came up with their ideas; and explores the habits that make them successful, and the highs and lows that pushed them forward. Filed under: Customer Development , SiriusXM Radio Show. Orders increased.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Ohio Columbus Entrepreneur 120

Steve Blank

JUNE 4, 2012

As the morning fog burns off the California coast, I am working with Steve Blank, preparing for the Lean LaunchPad Faculty Development Program we are running this August at U.C. His name is Alex Lawrence. Alex had been recruited back by his Alma Matter to create an entrepreneurship program. Serendipity. Lessons Learned.

Silicon Valley 311

Silicon Valley Lean Utah Customer Development 311

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

A large number of these customers had mailed back their registration cards (this was pre-Internet) with their names, phone numbers, job titles, etc. So I asked the fatal question, “Has anyone ever looked at the customer registration cards? Has anyone ever spoken to a customer?” Was our compensation program good, great?

Silicon Valley 210

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 210

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

First, a definition: the minimum viable product is that version of a new product which allows a team to collect the maximum amount of validated learning about customers with the least effort. MVP, despite the name, is not about creating minimal products. Some caveats right off the bat. August 3, 2009 8:08 PM William Mitchell said.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. In a customer problem pivot, we try to solve a different problem for the same customer segment. When doing intense customer development, the problem team can attain a high level of empathy with potential customers.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. Given the hardware I had worked on at ESL, learning microprocessors wasn’t that hard but figuring out how to teach hardware design and assembly language programming was a bit more challenging. You created it and own it.

Silicon Valley 200

Silicon Valley Chad RSS San Francisco 200

Steve Blank

APRIL 2, 2009

Now we needed to put the tactical programs in place to make this repositioning strategy happen. Tell Me How to Find You But having benchmarks in hand that showed us as the winner did us no good unless all our potential customers could see them.

Silicon Valley 127

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 127

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Often companies think their Rock Star customers are the biggest spenders, or the most loyal customers, or perhaps the marquee names or brands. So who are your potential high-value Rock Star customers? In my book, “ The Hidden Wealth of Customers “, I provide a model for helping you find and cultivate them.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Steve Blank

JULY 15, 2013

. ——— For those of you who haven’t kept up, the National Security Agency (NSA’s) Prism program has been in the news. Yet the one company’s name that hasn’t come up as part of the surveillance network is Intel. Filed under: Customer Development , Secret History of Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley Russia Security Customer Development 335

Rob Go

SEPTEMBER 9, 2013

For example: Dropbox, Reddit, and Birch Box, to name a few. Olin College Foundry Program. link] – Not a meetup, but a great mentorship program started by serial CTO Sean Lindsay. Startup Institute – Practical training program to prepare you to join a startup. The Grand-daddy. University Resources: MIT 100K. Harvard iLab.

Boston 71

Boston Technical Review Community Cofounder 71

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Return the name of the hypothesis chosen or assigned.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

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. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). Learning is better than optimization (the local ma.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

automatic links to generated images Rietveld - asynchronous code reviews on changesets Tech*if*er0*urs – blog on roadmap for learning rails Best free programming books Project Management Basecamp - web-based project management and collaboration tool. WebSequenceDiagrams - sketch sequence diagrams. It’s more reference material.

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

ConversionXL

JULY 3, 2014

Mindset – Your customers come to the buying experience with expectations and preconceived notions. Selling a weight loss program will be more emotionally charged than, say, selling routers. Giving your personas names and faces are less important than ensuring they are based on real people, not stereotypes.

Customer 133

Customer Analytics Conversion Lead Generation 133

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

And, as one entrepreneur put it to me, "we understood that a big part of our responsibility in the program was to make sure the mentors have a good experience, by taking their advice to heart and giving them a feeling of being part of our evolution as a company." And do your customer development. for Harvard Business Revie.

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Silicon Valley Startup Lean 113

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

I have personally taught many “non-technical&# people to program – graphic designers, QA folks, even artists and animators. Instead of focusing on programs designed to specifically benefit any one group, I think our focus should be on making our companies as meritocratic as possible. “Who is this guy?&#

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

APRIL 6, 2009

If you are a practitioner of Customer Development, ESL was doing it before most us were born. From 1977 to 1981 Perry cranked up spending for research and development on a massive scale. Their code name was UTR (Up The River) in reference to their geographic location up the Potomac River.

Silicon Valley 194

Silicon Valley Stealth RSS California 194

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 8, 2010

The new device could hold names, email addresses, phone and fax numbers and incoming and outgoing messages. In today’s language of Customer Development , RIM positioned the Blackberry as a segment of an existing market – pager users who needed two-way communication. It let users record from the familiar program guide.

Hockey Stick 276

Hockey Stick Customer Development Silicon Valley Networking 276

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now A great checklist of techniques and tools for making your development more agile, written from a Rail perspective. for Harvard Business Revie.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

We would pretty much bid on any phrase that was "[name of competitive product] chat" and variations like that. And then we would use that simple analytics system I mentioned to monitor the conversion rates of customers from each campaign. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

It’s easy to overestimate the impact of this kind of traffic because it just feels good to have your name and company featured. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? It strokes your ego. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Amazon PostRank

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Steve Blank

APRIL 27, 2009

—————- The next piece of the Secret History of Silicon Valley puzzle came together when Tom Byers , Tina Selig and Mark Leslie invited me to teach entrepreneurship in the Stanford Technology Ventures Program ( STVP ) in Stanford’s School of Engineering. My office is in the Terman Engineering Building.

Silicon Valley 203

Silicon Valley Technical Review Europe Germany 203

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 12, 2012

They need to get creative about bringing customers into these programs. Intel, for example, credits well-designed customer testimonials and other customer content for an explosion in the creation of qualified prospective customer interest and inquiries through its once-lagging social media and web marketing efforts.

Customer 168

Customer Social Media Retention Canada 168

ConversionXL

JULY 1, 2014

If you want to start a loyalty program to improve customer retention , survey frequent buyers. If you want to start a VIP program for top spenders, survey customers who spend a lot of money with you. Were unsure if the program would work for them. You can attach code names to those people.

Customer 76

Customer Design Software Review Lead Generation 76

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

As Ive argued elsewhere , my belief is that startups (and anyone else trying to find an unknown solution to an unknown problem ) have to measure progress with validated learning about customers. In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. Continuous learning -> Continuous feedback!

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 22, 2010

Many of these companies are started by entrepreneurs, and are now household names: Google, Yahoo, eBay and Intel. Many of these companies are started by entrepreneurs, and are now household names: Google, Yahoo, eBay and Intel. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 121

San Francisco Indiana Lean Startup 121