Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, February 11, 2009 The free software hiring advantage This is one of those startup tips Im a little reluctant to share, because its been such a powerful source of competitive advantage in the companies Ive worked with. Especially for a startup, not taking maximum advantage of free software is crazy.

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

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. Do you fix bugs before writing code? Please leave feedback!)

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

conversionxl.com

SEPTEMBER 10, 2013

It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a Customer Development Problem. The product or website (be it software, e-commerce, or a service) might be awesome , but if it puts itself in front of the wrong market, or packages itself so the right market can’t figure out why it’s awesome, the startup will fail.

Customer Development 60

Customer Development Conversion Developer Customer 60

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

This article previously appeared in the Harvard Business Review. Disruption today is more than just changes in technology, or channel, or competitors – it’s all of them, all at once. And by product, I mean the creation of new hardware, services, software, tools, operations, tradecraft, etc. Between a Rock and A Hard Place.

Government 320

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 320

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 24, 2010

The United States is now a debtor nation to China and that the bill is about to come due. This doesn’t mean just more technology stuff, though we’ll get that. Over the last half a century, Silicon Valley has grown into the leading technology and innovation cluster for the United States and the world.

Silicon Valley 335

Silicon Valley United States Venture Capital Software Review 335

Steve Blank

JANUARY 22, 2014

Dino Vendetti a VC at Bay Partners, moved up to Bend, Oregon on a mission to engineer Bend into a regional technology cluster. Over the years Dino and I brainstormed about how Lean entrepreneurship would affect regional development. While the technology gap is closing, what’s still missing in local regions is early stage capital.

Early Stage 292

Early Stage Silicon Valley Oregon Technical Review 292

David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

You’ve got a great idea and domain expertise, but limited money and insufficient technology resources. Should you co-found your company with a software development shop? They’re well aware of the conventional VC bias against funding companies which externally develop their technology, but they do have relevant skills.

Software Developers 60

Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

YoungUpstarts

SEPTEMBER 4, 2014

Because of increased competition, changing customer expectations and innovative technology breakthroughs, the introduction of new equipment/merchandise, or updated versions of existing merchandise, can help drive sales and differentiate your business. Introduce New Merchandise As It Becomes Available. Utilize Online Sales Tools.

Customer 168

Customer PPC Software Review Finance 168

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 17, 2013

In 2007, I graduated United States Air Force Academy as a computer engineer and entered the Air Force’s acquisition corps , excited and confident about my ability to bring technology to bear for our airmen. In the first year, they had developed a proof of concept around the Xbox Kinect – and Ryan had high hopes for the future.

Lean 268

Lean Technical Review Acquisition Software Review 268

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.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

The previous post described how China built its science and technology infrastructure. This post is about the how the Chinese government engineered technology clusters. Torch has four major parts: Innovation Clusters , Technology Business Incubators (TBIs), Seed Funding (Innofund) and Venture Guiding Fund. Innovation Clusters.

Programming 176

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 176

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

I was having coffee with the CEO of a new startup, listening to her puzzle through how to communicate to potential customers. She was an academic on leave from Stanford now selling SAAS software to large companies, but was being inundated with marketing communications advice. “My Filed under: Customer Development , Marketing.

Marketing 316

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 316

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

If engineers want more time to spend making their old code more pretty, they are invited to do so on the weekends. The idea is that once we move to the new system (or coding standard, or API, or.) The current code is spaghetti, but the new code will be elegant. Its become "legacy code" and part of the problem.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

What does your Chief Technology Officer do all day? When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees. Heres my take.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 1, 2009

I know that this all seems obvious now with the movements started by Steven Blank ( Four Steps of Epiphany ) with the whole Customer Development processes / Lean Startup movements also popularized by people like Eric Ries. I used to always tell my development team, “you need to design a product that my dad could use.

Customer 280

Customer Technical Review Software Review Mexico 280

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 6, 2014

The embedded presentation above is filled with valuable data on the state of the Internet and trends in technology around the world. Mary Meeker of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers presented the data at the recent Code Conference. Customer] Retention is King (good insights on measurement) – crowdspring.co/1haiyJt.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design Software Review 94

Steve Blank

MARCH 19, 2009

When I went through their financials as part of my due diligence I realized that if they ditched their low margin disk drive products, it wouldn’t take much to make them a profitable company. They had an existing distribution channel and their dealers and customers thought they knew who the company was and what it stood for.

Silicon Valley 165

Silicon Valley Software Review Technical Review RSS 165

David Teten

SEPTEMBER 23, 2017

VCs tout themselves as frontier technology investors, but most are using the same infrastructure tools they have used for the past 20+ years: Excel and recent college grads searching Google. According to Knowledge.VC , under 5% of US VCs have a full-time team member focused on technology. . But we’re doing it slowly.

Private Equity 60

Private Equity Venture Capital Equity Technical Review 60

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 19, 2017

Among many other strategies employed by e-retailers, improving the customer experience seems to carry a significant weight in increasing revenues. Here are some of the practical and creative ways to improve your customer’s online experience: 1. Engage your customers.

Software Review 133

Software Review Technical Review Retention Channel 133

SoCal CTO

AUGUST 3, 2010

5 Lessons from 150 startup pitches - A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks , July 11, 2010 I just reviewed several hundred startup pitches for Capital Factory. Between this blog and reviewing applications to Capital Factory I see hundreds of pitches a year. Most were on paper and video; 20 were invited to pitch in person.

Software Review 217

Software Review Startup Venture Capital Technical Review 217

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 9, 2009

This required convincing software vendors to move their applications to our unique machine architecture. Oh, and we had no installed customer base. I had hired the VP of marketing from a potential software partner who was responsible to get all this 3 rd party software on our computer. – was his job.

Silicon Valley 331

Silicon Valley Software Review RSS Technical Review 331

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 12, 2009

Nuclear Weapons Laboratories which used supercompurters to run their hydrodynamics codes to simulate what went on in the first microseconds in a nuclear weapon and the National Security Agency (with Cray putting in a special population count hardware instruction) used to facilitate decryption of codes.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley RSS Software Review Technical Review 167

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 24, 2012

Instead, buyers are checking out product and service information in their own way, often through the Internet, their social network, or just plain word-of-mouth or customer reviews. It’s a myth that social networks and their technologies are creating new approaches to marketing. Get customers involved in the solution.

Marketing 234

Marketing Software Review Technical Review Social Network 234

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Its common to find a hacker at the heart of almost any successful technology company. When I want to know about some concurrency issues between services in his cluster, he doesnt blink an eye when I suggest we get the source code and take a look. He throws off volumes of code, and it works. All is not lost, though.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

Up and Running

MARCH 21, 2018

Even more so than pricing, reviews and location proximity. These don’t require coding skills—they’re usually visual templates that are easy to use but don’t allow for great customization (that would require technical skills). Custom development. Custom developers can really bring your vision to life.

Entrepreneur 107

Entrepreneur Technical Review Hosting SEO 107

ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 31, 2011

More than 90% of startups fail, due primarily to self-destruction rather than competition. After 50 years of technology entrepreneurship it's still an art. After 50 years of technology entrepreneurship it's still an art. 74% of high growth Internet startups fail due to premature scaling.

Software Review 134

Software Review Early Stage Startup Technical Review 134

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

That died with waterfall software development. Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? Ditto for enterprise software companies. It’s “lifetime value&# of a customer. Each quarter you should review your model.

Business Plan 334

Business Plan AJAX Venture Capital Technical Review 334

steveblank.com

JULY 8, 2011

Home Books for Startups Guide Secret History-Bibliography Steve Blank Startup Tools Steve Blank Entries RSS | Comments RSS Email Subscription Get Steve Blank via your RSS Feed RSS - Posts RSS - Comments Categories Air Force (12) Ardent (10) Audubon (1) Big Companies versus Startups: Durant versus Sloan (39) Business Model versus Business Plan (..)

Software Review 110

Software Review Startup Silicon Valley Analytics 110

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. link] [link] I guess you could call it the “Continuous Wave Radio&# technology period. Most of the ability to create a radio industry in the 1920s was due to the accident of ionospheric radio propagation.

Silicon Valley 297

Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 297

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, February 20, 2009 Work in small batches Software should be designed, written, and deployed in small batches. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. For software, the easiest batch to see is code.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Steve Blank

JULY 2, 2009

Video Games At SuperMac , Peter Barrett was the witty and creative 24-year old Australian engineer who had designed several of our most successful products, culminating with the software for the Video Spigot. Now he wanted to go off start his own company.

Silicon Valley 120

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS Software Review 120

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 10, 2012

Two studies have shown that only about 10 percent of promoters actually refer profitable new customers. Some of the most creative technology coming out of Silicon Valley is designed to do exactly that. Find and engage customer advocates using a gamification platform that makes it interesting and enjoyable to advocate.

Customer 154

Customer Fractional CTO Canada Technical Review 154

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

Posted on September 14, 2009 by steveblank Over the last 30 years Wall Street’s appetite for technology stocks have changed radically – swinging between unbridled enthusiasm to believing they’re all toxic. Large companies were acquiring technology startups just to get in the game at the same absurd prices.

Silicon Valley 235

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 235

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

Customer Development We were starting Epiphany, my last company. I was out and about in Silicon Valley doing what I would now call Customer Discovery trying to understand how marketing departments in large corporations worked. See part one for the first time it happened. This time it was serious. Are These Your Slides?

Silicon Valley 253

Silicon Valley Non-disclosure Agreement NDA Startup 253

David Teten

APRIL 1, 2021

This typically includes: Relationships with relevant service providers in your vertical, often with pre-negotiated discounts: coaches, lawyers, accountants, common software vendors, consultants. For technology vendors and models, see Venture capitalists eating our own dog food: Using technology and analytics to make better investments. .

Private Equity 78

Private Equity Venture Capital Portfolio Equity 78

ConversionXL

JANUARY 24, 2014

The importance of the customer feedback cycle & the role it plays for AWeber. How to get your software business to the point where you can hire a business development director. Hunter shares some extremely valuable insights that will prove useful in building beneficial relationships and getting highly qualified customers.

Developer 104

Developer API Cofounder New Jersey 104

www.vccafe.com

MARCH 11, 2013

VC Cafe highlights everything you need to know from hosting your code in hackathons to open source legal docs. Every startup faces multiple choices and decisions when it comes to technology. Steve Blank on Lean Customer Development. s the new way to code, and quite easy to learn. Code Igniter. Seed Startups.

Software Review 53

Software Review Technical Review Startup 53