Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 8, 2009 Datablindness Most of us are swimming in a sea of data about our products, companies, and teams. That’s because many of our reports feed us vanity metrics: numbers that make us look good but don’t really help make decisions. Too much of this data is non- actionable.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Now its time to start to think seriously about how to find a repeatable and scalable sales process, how to position and market the product, and how to build a product development team that can turn an early product into a Whole Product. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Our goal in product development is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers. In order to do this, we have our customer development team work hard to find a market, any market, for the product as currently specified. If I get sales I will expand on the site. This is a common mistake.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

The idea of leverage is simple: for every ounce of effort your product development team puts into your product, find ways to magnify that effort by getting many other people to invest along with you. That engine of creativity has led to a catalog of something like 2 million virtual goods authored by a hundred thousand developers.

Product Development 88

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 88

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Of course, the sales folks had new features as their #1 priority. We ended up rethinking our entire product development process, top to bottom, start to finish. But the results were excellent - customer satisfaction, sales, profits, quality, attitudes all improved dramatically. Top managements #1 was usually ROI.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Sometimes, a great hacker has the potential to grow into the CTO of a company, and in those cases all you need is an outside mentor who can work with them to develop those skills. At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94