Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Ive attempted to embed the relevant slides below. Talk about waste.

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SoCal CTO

MARCH 16, 2010

I am hearing from my project management team a bit of distrust in the technical capacity of our web development team. I think we suffer because of the distance and culture but the project management team takes every late delivery or small bug as evidence that the development team may not be capable. No communication between developers.

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Version One Ventures

SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

Today we’re excited to share the official launch of Replay , a browser that records all of the context that developers and engineers need to fix bugs faster. Despite being decades into coding, most developers still debug with “printf” statements, essentially adding code to generate specific output while the program is executing.

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Cracking the Code

MAY 2, 2019

Team building is top of mind for any start-up founder or exec. Recruiting and retaining top talent is even more challenging for software engineers. To get an insight into how successful start-ups approach team building, we spoke to Sylvain Utard, employee number 1 and VP of Engineering at Algolia, an Accel portfolio company.

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SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 10, 2012

I did a presentation recently for a graduate class from The Founder Institute around getting online/mobile products out the door. I LOVED it because, the presenting part was over quickly and we got into specific issues that the founders had in terms of getting things built. Do you really have control of the development?

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Technical Review CTO Hire Fractional CTO Software Review 332

YoungUpstarts

NOVEMBER 21, 2018

by Saeju Jeong, CEO and Co-founder of Noom Coach. Here, I outline five principles all co-founders must agree on before working together. It’s important for co-founders to each have their own personal strengths in a business so they can divide the responsibilities and succeed in their respective roles.

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Eric Friedman

FEBRUARY 7, 2023

Why Shipping Is Important When Building Shipping defines software engineering in a magical way that is challenging to understand. In the fintech ecosystem, the development of a product could mean the transfer of billions of dollars per month, and consumer product creation and delivery can have an impact on a vast network.

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ReadWriteStart

AUGUST 1, 2014

Nearly 10 years ago, Excite founder Joe Kraus, now an investor at Google Ventures, declared “there has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur.” So, too, is the level of competence required to engineer a product. In other words, even an engineering nobody can start a company. Software was expensive.

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TechEmpower

SEPTEMBER 25, 2023

When speaking with founders and CEOs, we often hear concerns like this: My project manager is losing confidence in the development team. The Founder-Developer Gap and A, B, C Players The challenges that business leaders face when assessing development teams are a good example of the Founder-Developer Gap.

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Development Team Review Developer Software Review Technical Review 260

David Teten

MAY 20, 2016

My colleague Sebastian Soler, software engineer at ff Venture Capital, is leading the launch of a new Meetup with me. Engineers, product managers, and platform managers building tech solutions for private market investing. I also teach Front-End Web Development at General Assembly. I asked him to write a guest post: Hi!

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YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 4, 2017

Varsha not only invests but also provides operating and strategic advice based on her experiences as a former founder and operating executive. Sam Decker is the founder of Mass Relevance, Clearhead and Mashbox so he is in the perfect position to help entrepreneurs. Mark Andreessen. Sam Decker. And Valuable Business Contacts.

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YoungUpstarts

APRIL 17, 2018

by Felix Winstone, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Talkative. As a startup co-founder with a growing team, here are the recruiting tips I’ve learnt over the last couple of years. Robert Metcalfe, co-founder and CEO of 3Com, says you need to think about it as “recruiting, not hiring”. Hiring = Sales. Be Specific.

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This is going to be BIG.

JUNE 11, 2018

Time and time again, I hear how hard of a time startups are having recruiting, especially for software developers. When I was a startup founder, I had this same issue. That's when I had a conversation with Max Ventilla, the founder of AltSchool, who at the time was running Aardvark. The team already had a lead on board.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2013

We think teaching teams a formal methodology around the Lean Framework (Business Model design, Customer Development and Agile Engineering) is a natural evolution of how successful incubators/accelerators will build startups. The next customer segment we tried was startup founders. Customer Development Lean LaunchPad Teaching'

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YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 7, 2018

by Humberto Farias, CEO and co-founder at Concepta. In light of this, software developers are beginning to cater to the digital transformation needs of SMBs. Owners no longer have to buy management software meant for big business. Solutions aimed at SMBs are more widely available.

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ReadWriteStart

MAY 10, 2012

The Developer Bootcamp is designed to help anyone get started coding - and they might even get a job at a startup or tech heavyweight out of it as well. San Francisco-based Developer Boot Camp was an idea that started with a friend in need. You are a developer and you don't know it,'” Bishay said. So began Developer Boot Camp.

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YoungUpstarts

JULY 5, 2011

Mawuna Koutonin is the founder of London-based GoodBuzz , and his story is the stuff of dreams. He later worked for eight years at the European Union commission helping to develop the cultural industry in Africa (cultural products being the main exports – and revenue – for poor African countries). The African Boy Who Could.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

. + 1,000 startup founders, investors, and press! Vinod Khosla Founder Dave McClure Founding Partner Eric Ries Author Steve Blank Serial Entrepreneur & Professor Todd Park CTO Travis Kalanick CEO & Co-Founder Joe Zadeh Director of Product Sam Shank Co-Founder & CEO NEW!

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blog.captainrecruiter.com

MARCH 8, 2012

Technical Co-Founders Are A Myth. Two years ago I got the bug to do an online recruiting startup and I began the hunt to find a technical co-founder - a software engineer who works for no cash - to help me build my dream website. I learned something: technical co-founders are a myth. Captain Recruiter. Real Advice.

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Feld Thoughts

JUNE 6, 2016

Too often, aspiring engineers who lack the funds to pursue a computer science degree from a university or take part in a bootcamp find themselves locked out of technology jobs, despite often severe talent shortages. After about six months, graduating apprentices are qualified junior developers, ready to work.

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Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Jon Sebastiani , founder and CEO of KRAVE Jerky , a company that got its start in my class at Berkeley back in 2011 and was recently acquired by Hershey. Taking My Class. Hear Eric explain what they learned.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 5, 2010

I’ve been meaning to write this post since September of last year when Brad Feld first wrote about the The Founders Visa Movement. TWTFelipe is the founder of TWTApps , who had developed some really cool add-on applications for Twitter to extend its functionality. university in math or science&# (Thomas Friedman).

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide.

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The Next Web

NOVEMBER 17, 2013

Tal Raviv is the co-founder of Ecquire. Whether that means chasing down a technical co-founder, learning to code, or even building that “Lean MVP” – the conventional wisdom is that without tech abilities you’re nothing more than a dude (or dudette) with a Powerpoint. This post was originally published on OnStartups.

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Austin Startup

MAY 7, 2017

Some of the most interesting events in Austin for the week of May 8 through May 14 are as follows: Mon, May 8 thru Thurs, May 11: OSCON OSCON brings the software engineering and developer community together to explore what’s new and useful in open source languages, tools, and techniques. At Galvanize at 10:30 am. $79

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Transformify

MARCH 23, 2020

Traveling around the world, I met startup founders, forex traders, marketers, online shop owners, travel bloggers, Instagram influencers and digital business entrepreneurs of all kinds. Speaking of sales and business development, during the first few years, it was hard to convince businesses to create remote jobs.

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This is going to be BIG.

JANUARY 12, 2016

That was the Datadog pitch in late 2010, my first full year of leading deals, that I got from two software engineers. I'm much more open these days to checking my industry knowledge at the door and leaving it to the founders to explain the market to me. Makes sense, no? Doesn't sound crazy, does it?

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 15, 2016

The show follows the journeys of founders who share what it takes to build a startup – from restaurants to rocket scientists, to online gifts to online groceries and more. Jeremy Johnson , founder of Andela , which embeds talented software engineers on the African continent into top engineering organizations worldwide.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 27, 2012

A Strong Pool of Tech Founders – Stating the obvious. But I would point out that these days there are really talented tech developers & teams everywhere. Second-Time Entrepreneurs – The other byproduct of “wins” is you have second-time entrepreneurs who want to be founders of their next company.

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Both Sides of the Table

OCTOBER 8, 2014

The monetization engine of the Internet that powers the most profitable business perhaps in history was invented and perfected in Los Angeles and is what you now know as Google Ad Words. It may surprise you to learn that LA graduates more engineers than anywhere else in the country. Where do all of these engineers end up?

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Los Angeles Silicon Valley Entrepreneur Seattle 376

rob.by

MARCH 8, 2012

He argued that software engineers don’t finish what they start, and that you’re better off paying a technical person than partnering with one. Twelve months into my startup journey I had four half-built websites that had been built by my four ex-technical co-founders. Finding Technical Cofounders Is Hard.

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ConversionXL

APRIL 13, 2017

Jonathan Price wrote on the same Quora thread that he believes growth marketing to differ from regular marketing because it “is technology-centric and it blurs the boundary between marketing and product development.” A growth team, however, is largely overlapped with product, engineering, and design as well. Software Engineer.

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Austin Startup

AUGUST 13, 2018

JD Weinstein , head of Oracle Global Startup Ecosystem in Austin; Karen Kilroy, entrepreneur and CEO of Kilroy Blockchain; Sabrina Wojtewicz, co-founder of Bunker Labs; and Sara Chapman, Director of Entrepreneurship Strategy & Partnerships at Dell will discuss how both startups and corporations can work together and find the right fit.

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The Next Web

OCTOBER 17, 2012

From what we know, founder Bill Nguyen has been away from the office for three months, after a period of intense strain between him and the board. Or its software engineering team could be the target, if Apple was impressed by their work. Some of that has come out in stories so far.

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mashable.com

NOVEMBER 30, 2010

Brett Miller is the president of Custom Software by Preston (CSP). For more than 10 years CSP has impressed clients with highly effective software solutions and teams of multi-talented software engineers. Convenience First and foremost, you must decided whether to work with individuals or development companies.

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techcrunch.com

JUNE 22, 2012

This is where a lot of founders get stuck. Not to mention, once the founder and advisor have nominally agreed to a relationship, law firms enter the mix and seed the new advisor with a mountain of paperwork — legal agreements, options agreements — documents stuffed with legalese and binding statements.

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ReadWriteStart

FEBRUARY 21, 2013

One of the company’s four employees, its software engineer, is not an American citizen. But if he were to lose his job, the developer would face the prospect of being forced to return to his native India, relinquishing his toehold in the States. To remain competitive, we need more engineers and scientists.

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