Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

kaChing has been very active in the Lean Startup movement. With case studies like this, we aim to illustrate specific Lean Startup techniques through the stories of current practitioners. To shed some light, I talked with kaChing , a destination that enables individual investors to find outstanding money managers to manage their money.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 17, 2009 Join the Lean Startup discussion at Web 2.0 Expo for free Im honored to announce that my Lean Startup session at the Web 2.0 Everyone else can register to come to both sessions for free, including the Lean Startup talk in the main conference. What does this mean for you?

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, March 25, 2009 The Lean Startup at Agile Vancouver April 21st A surprising number of respondents in the latest Lessons Learned survey hail from one of the flourishing startup hubs in Canada. This workshop brings together leading thinkers from Lean Production and Lean software.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

In theory when you went public, everyone’s shares were now tradable on the stock exchange, but usually the underwriters required a six month “lockup” when company insiders (employees and investors) couldn’t sell. The IPO Bubble – August 1995 – March 2000 In August 1995 Netscape went public, and the world of start ups turned upside down.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, July 2, 2009 How to conduct a Five Whys root cause analysis In the lean startup workshops , we’ve spent a lot of time discussing the technique of Five Whys. My intention is to describe a full working process, similar to what I’ve seen at IMVU and other lean startups.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# Especially in teams that are managing by objectives (or OKRs), the pressure to deliver is intense. Good managers work hard to create an environment where this courage thrives. But action/paralysis are not the only options.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 30, 2009

Insist on the incredibly high-IQ employees and hold them to incredibly high standards. It never generated positive returns for its investors, and most of its employees walked away dejected. This company had disciplined schedules, milestones, employee evaluations, and a culture of execution. Build a truly mainstream product.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

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. So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?"

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

In the case of C3, that was to run payroll for 87,000 employees, who were presumably receiving payroll before the project began. Notice that the unit of progress changes as we move from waterfall to agile to the lean startup. Both Scrum and XP had a role which you could happily call by the modern title "Product Manager".

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) But I managed a few "good learning experiences" before throwing myself full-bore into IMVU. That institution will touch many people in its life: customers, investors, employees, and everyone they touch as well.

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Reid Hoffman

DECEMBER 10, 2020

With Airbnb’s IPO, I thought the time was right to take a look back at the past decade (Greylock led Airbnb’s Series A in November 2010) and reflect on what I learned from the journey. And if the reference checks come back positively, then if I believe at startup is a good opportunity, I can lean in right away.

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Mucker Lab

OCTOBER 12, 2016

Why should a public market downturn determine an investment in a startup that has seven to 10 years to go before it can even think about an IPO? But many of today’s billion dollar venture firms invest in four-person startups as well as pre-IPO startups with thousands of employees. The road ahead for entrepreneurs.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

We eventually discovered (via five whys ) that we also had to get each new employee acculturated to a fearless way of thinking. I tried to make sure we always gave the same answer: "if you manage to take the site down, thats our fault for making it too easy. For people we hired from larger companies especially, this was challenging.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I used to give copies of Four Steps out to my employees, in the hopes that it would instantly indoctrinate them into the methodology of Customer Development. Ill give them the last word: You are already skeptical of Customer Development and Lean Startups and the slew of emerging buzzwords and supple-to-the-point-of-meaningless terms.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This theory has become so influential that I have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. Tom Peters called the Management By Walking Around - MBWA. Otherwise it is just Management By Wandering Aimlessly.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. Instead, five whys kept leading to problems caused by an improperly trained new employee, and wed make a small adjustment. why did that code get written?

Software Review 167

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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. Please leave feedback!) Joels Painless Bug Tracking is still the gold standard.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

On the one hand, it gives you insight into what kind of employee the candidate might be. Balancing competing objectives is a recurring theme on this blog - its the central challenge of all management decisions. The best candidates have managed to teach me something about a topic I thought I already knew a lot about.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

They are leaders, visionaries, founders and managers having tremendous success. Not to be outdone, the technologists on the team had also brought their big guns, and the meeting was packed with employees of every level – from VP’s all the way down to me. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

Technical Review 164

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 26, 2009

Every two months, the company would have a big end-of-milestone meeting, with our Board of Directors, Business Advisory Board, and all employees present. And, as you can see in my previous post on “ The cardinal sin of community management &# the feedback could be all over the map. In fact, we often got a failing grade.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

One of the most common questions I get about the lean startup methodology is, "but what about Steve Jobs ?" So how do you reconcile his success with the lean startup, which seems to suggest the opposite?" Plus, the premise of the question misunderstands the lean startup, too. And he doesnt shy away from big-bang launch events.

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Hunter Walker

SEPTEMBER 29, 2022

Below I’ll share some of the principles we use at Homebrew , knowing that there’s not really a single ‘right’ answer for a fund manager. So for the most part a venture investor holds their equity until the company exits via an acquisition, IPO, or some sort of other liquidity event (management buyout, whatever).

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Up and Running

JUNE 16, 2014

That’s what you’re supposed to be doing and what your partners and employees are supposed to help with. For venture capitalist, Paul Suster , it’s not just the individual; the ‘management team’ is essential. I’m personally 70% management, 30% product […] If I feel a priori that the CEO can’t cut it I’m highly unlikely to invest.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

We pitch to potential partners, vendors, publishers, conferences, employees, and even lawyers. Ill exclude those non- lean startups who basically exist for the purpose of raising bigger and bigger sums of money. How does a lean start-up find the all-star team worthy of pitching? 2comments: King of the Herd said. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

In lean times, it’s most important to focus on cutting costs in ways that speed you up, not slow you down. These successful startups managed to have enough tries to get it right. In fact, every single lean transformation documented in books like Lean Thinking took place in the midst of serious external threats.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. I think Drucker said it best. Its hard to get buy in.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

In a few cases, they are clearly smart people in a bad situation, and Ive written about their pain in The product managers lament and The engineering managers lament. The last thing you need is a manager telling you how to do your job. If youve ever been abused by a bad manager in your career, its easy to become traumatized.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

They spend so much of their time trying to convince everyone around them that their idea is great and the company is doing well: employees, investors, partners, friends, family, significant others - its a long list. We didnt manage todo that yet. I think it comes down to managing risk. How do they know they are making progress?

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, December 6, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part three Those startups that manage to build a product people want have to deal with the consequences of that success. You could easily manage that as two 30-day scrums, or four two-week sprints.

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Both Sides of the Table

AUGUST 30, 2010

This affects M&A activities for startups, which with the reduction of the IPO market could spell lower returns in the short-term for technology startup investors. Additionally, those who run lean operations and raised money from supportive investor bases will be best positioned.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Thats all helpful for recruiting, retaining, and ramping-up a new employee. ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. . The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, October 30, 2008 John Doerrs 10 lean startup tips I just saw video of John Doerrs talk yesterday at VentureBeat’s “How to manage your start-up in the downturn&# roundtable event. Over-communicate with employees, investors, customers. All cash in most secure possible instruments.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

But they are often counter-productive when placed in a management role for other kinds of work. This can lead to a lot of needless politics and needless suffering if it is not proactively managed. It has to balance competing goals of establishing clear ownership, while avoiding talented employees getting stuck. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

These founders have not managed, to borrow a phrase from Steve Blank , to create a scalable and repeatable sales process. This is why companies often get out-competed by former employees (Palm vs Handspring to name just one), even though the upstart lacks all of the familiar resources, tools, processes, and support they used to have.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

JULY 25, 2011

Fifteen months later eight of Shockley’s employees (three physicists, an electrical engineer, an industrial engineer, a mechanical engineer, a metallurgist and a physical chemist) founded Fairchild Semiconductor. This all changed in 1980 with the Genentech IPO. In 1980 Genentech became the first IPO of a venture funded biotech company.

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Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 12, 2015

Now the organization needs to put in place culture, training, product management, processes and procedures, (i.e. This Build phase typically begin with around 40 employees and will last to at least 175 and in some cases up to 700 employees. Filed under: Family/Career/Culture , Lean LaunchPad , Venture Capital.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2009

But it also seems like it could severely limit your long-term options: Once youve actually managed to make it through the first couple years and build up a customer base, you now have to invest thousands of man-hours into aggressively refactoring, and replace reams of PHP code with code thats secure, maintainable, and reliable. Expo SF (May.

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