Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Anyone who has worked in a real-world product development team can tell you how utopian that sounds. As a result, we tried many different stratagems to avoid giving the impression that we were a fully-featured IM system, going so far as to build our initial product as an add-on to existing IM programs.

Advisory Board 151

Advisory Board Customer San Francisco Lean 151

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

You can learn about customer development, and quite a bit more, in Steves book The Four Steps to the Epiphany. This is a self-published book, originally designed as a companion to Steves class at Berkeleys Haas school of business. Our goal in product development is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 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

Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. As the company grows, this kind of work generalizes into "executing the companys current strategy."

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

Periodic or on-demand reports are one possibility, but we can do much better. I got a powerful taste of datablindness recently, as I’ve started to work with various large companies as partners in setting up events, speeches, and other products to sell around the Lean Startup concept. We can learn to see.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 18, 2008

I believe its important that product teams be cross-functional, no matter what other job function the product champion does. What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. Its even more critical in lean startups when they need to manage growth. Take a look and let me know what you think.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 60

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. When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. Is that a lot?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

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

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

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. Failures, pivots , and crappy minimum viable products are generally elided. Failures, pivots , and crappy minimum viable products are generally elided.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Metrics PR 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

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Refreshing to finally see lean and agile thinking emerge in product/business-floors and not only in technology. Critical also, as the lean company/start-up can not be lean by just using lean principles in IT and not in Product Development/Management - a common misinterpretation of the Toyota Production System.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2008

What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: Five Whys Where did Silicon Valley come from? Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campa.

Advertising 60

Advertising San Francisco Media Continuous Deployment 60

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. If a feature worked, wed keep it. If it didnt, wed trash it. But it worked.

Continuous Deployment 123

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. Still, a startup product development team is a service organization. Labels: hiring , product development 5comments: TedHoward said.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2008

What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: Five Whys Where did Silicon Valley come from? Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campa.

San Francisco 60

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Five Whys is designed to avoid these nebulous arguments. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 15comments: Anonymoussaid. 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. Leave your thoughts in a comment.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 11, 2008

What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: Five Whys Where did Silicon Valley come from? Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campa.

Silicon Valley 68

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

I had a lot of use for this concept back when I worked on game design and virtual worlds. In order to maintain game play balance, game designers have to take into account the needs of customers who have an excess of four different assets: time , money , skill , and passion. Having a balanced ecosystem is what game designers strive for.

Customer 156

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

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

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

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: Five Whys Where did Silicon Valley come from? Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campa.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: Five Whys Where did Silicon Valley come from? Stevey's Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile Learning from Obama: maneuver warfare on the campa.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

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

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. Designing the survey The NPS question itself (again, "How likely are you to recommend X to a friend or colleague?")

.Net 158

.Net Operations San Francisco Lean 158

techcrunch.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

If your school doesn’t already have a student group designed to foster collaboration between groups of students with the skills necessary to get a startup rolling, start one! It brings together students from both the undergraduate and graduate levels, across disciplines such as design, computer science and business.

Cofounder 66

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 66

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. What is customer development? Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online. Act Each morning, volunteers would arrive and be handed packets with instructions.

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