Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May. .

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 15, 2008 The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time Split-testing is a core lean startup discipline, and its one of those rare topics that comes up just as often in a technical context as in a business-oriented one when Im talking to startups. First of all, why split-test?

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 29, 2020

There has never been a viral outbreak of such magnitude before. In other words, you must start bootstrapping an online startup , because the future of the global business world is online. What is a startup? Before we look at ways to bootstrap a startup, let’s consider a comprehensive definition of what a startup is.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 29, 2016

A common pain of startups after an exhilarating first surge of early adopters is a long and frustrating plateau of slow growth, where it seems like nothing you do will get your business to profitability. Others do far too little, assuming the viral effect and word-of-mouth will soon kick in, and sales will suddenly grow exponentially.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

It was one of those brilliant startup brainstorms that comes to the team in a flash, with a giant thunderclap. We spent weeks working on this new product, racing the clock so it would be done in time for the real presidential debates. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order?

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Product second. 2) B2B startups have high margins. Many serial entrepreneurs tend to gravitate towards building B2B startups. Marketing first.

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Hippoland

AUGUST 8, 2018

One thing I’ve noticed is that almost every repeat, previously-successful-founder focuses on the same thing for their respective startups: customer acquisition. Product second. 2) B2B startups have high margins. Many serial entrepreneurs tend to gravitate towards building B2B startups. Marketing first.

Founder 48

Founder Sales Cycle Affiliate Retention 48

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Getting the first tracks of revenue is one of the toughest processes of building a startup. One of the most commons problems I see with startups that I’ve come across is the lack of a “growth team.”. Let’s face it, working on the product is awesome—seeing it evolve, figuring out new features, and witnessing them as they come alive.

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ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 27, 2011

And, oh by the way, we also really like the idea of the 1M/1M entrepreneurs building valuation and negotiating leverage through these business development efforts, instead of signing off large chunks of their company in form of equity early on. The game has started getting some traction already, and has a good virality index.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# A successful startup strives for this latter case. As soon as possible!&#

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

This model has not translated well to the world of social networking, because customers of social networks engage sites in a different way than customers of search engines. If you ask an expert in Facebook apps to come help build yours, youll usually hear the same advice: build your app for virality. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

At a high level, anything that drives virality should be free. To take your specific example about virality - why do we want to have more users sign up? Is it that they act as free advertising for our premium product? I also work for a startup and we have been grappling with the same problem ever since we went public.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join.

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Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. If your app has strong word-of-mouth or viral components, your retention drives new acquisition, and its not so important to have good placement in the store. Labels: iPhone , search engine marketing 3comments: Th.Khangs said. Expo SF (May. .

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San Francisco Lean Retention SEM 68

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

2010 – Sean Ellis, who currently runs Qualaroo , coins the term “growth hacking” in his article, Find a Growth Hacker for Your Startup. ” April, 2012 – Andrew Chen writes Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing , which goes viral (2.4K Andrew Chen , Uber : “Startups don’t need growth hackers – at first.

Retention 48

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion 48

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive. Those companies who have learned to build apps that optimize the viral loop dominate in every category where they compete. So far, I dont see any apps that have much in the way of viral distribution. Labels: iPhone , search engine marketing 3comments: Blake Engel said.

Distribution 74

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 74

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem) Lean startups don’t optimize. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. That’s right.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

The first few changes, like a price change, may not require a lot of engineering effort. But they require coordination across departments – engineering, marketing, customers service. The team was adept at responding to changes in direction from the product owner, and always delivered quality code.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment 133

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

When I work with startups on improving engagement, I really try to emphasize the importance of their most powerful lever: positioning. This is a common problem that results from viral-loop optimization. By copying the exact same registration flow as every other successful viral app, many viral apps completely lose their positioning.

Metrics 88

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral 88

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. Those who have the endurance are the ones that tend to lead teams and join startups, because you just cant be successful in a startup situation without empathy.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review Part-Time VPE San Francisco 94

mashable.com

SEPTEMBER 12, 2011

One of the things we hear a lot about in Silicon Valley is how cheap and easy it is to launch a startup these days. While all of these factors are true to an extent, the truth of the matter is that the reduced costs of hardware and software are easily offset by the expense of engineers and experienced business people.

Startup 79

Startup Social Media RSS Social Network 79

Software By Rob

AUGUST 5, 2010

Join nearly 6,000 startup entrepreneurs by subscribing to my RSS feed. You’re a startup founder, whether actual or aspiring. The problem is that the premise of all of them – whether true or false – is irrelevant to you as a startup founder. You’re a constant learner; a student of life.

Founder 78

Founder Startup Software Review Software 78

ConversionXL

APRIL 3, 2018

Ed Fry – Customer Data Operations: Unleashing your hidden growth engine. Virality: # of users that refer your product for you: exponential growth if your K factor is greater than 1. Dropbox: first achieved growth through virality. Be agile, move at the speed of business, don’t hold up product development.

Retention 106

Retention Artificial Inteligence Channel Email 106

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

As with many lean startup practices, its getting started thats the hard part. At IMVU, we eventually built out a system that preserved the speed feedback, but had finer-grained effects on each persons productivity. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , Test-driven development 3comments: Chris said. Expo SF (May. .

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

To give you a better idea of what entrepreneurs in this industry are thinking about during each phase of the startup process, I interviewed SaaS entrepreneurs from all over the world, including our own COO Noah Parsons. Noah has been a key figure in the making of LivePlan, our own SaaS product. Estimating Realistic Startup Costs.

Software Review 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

If you're working on the Sticky Engine of Growth , you're focused on very different metrics from those that you care about in the Viral Engine of Growth. Similarly, a two-sided marketplace cares about different things from a traditional e-commerce product. to 3% a month.

Analytics 167

Analytics Lean Metrics Churn Rate 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? Marketing launch) Make a new product available to customers in the general public. In fact, in most situations its a bad idea for startups to synchronize these events.

San Francisco 168

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage 168

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Many great engineers Ive worked with (especially the type I talked about in the hackers lament ) seem to think that if they get along well with someone in an interview, theyll be a good addition to the team. I experienced this when I was the engineering manager at a small company. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Either way, you would have been better off focusing your split-test on high level metrics that measure how much customers like your product as a whole. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

Find Questions, Topics and People Add Question Add Question Non-Technical Co-Founders Co-Founders Technical Co-founders Finding Co-Founders Startups & "How Important Are Ideas?" " Web Development Startups Solo Founders I am a creative guy with a startup idea. Rockstar v.

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Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder 42

mashable.com

MARCH 7, 2011

Mashable | The Social Media Guide Viral Topics Twitter YouTube Facebook iPhone Google Video About Mashable Company About Us Advertise Submit News Contact Us Announcements Resources Guidebooks Lists How To Trending Twitter List Directory Mashable Awards Subscriptions Partners W3 EDGE Rackspace Concentric Sky Dynect DNS Intridea Welcome to Mashable!

Developer 93

Developer HTML API Ruby 93

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. And still being a startup means continuing to innovate as well as keep the lights on. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 74

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment 74

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

Editor's note : This is the second in a two-part excerpt from the book The Startup Owner’s Manual , a step-by-step how-to guide for entrepreneurs. In this excerpt, authors Steve Blank and Bob Dorf continue to explain the Customer Discovery Philosophy (see Part One, " Is Your Startup a Valid Vision or Just a Hallucination? ").

Customer 119

Customer Advisory Board Engineer Cofounder 119

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

It has been awesome, flattering, and humbling to see that post went viral and has been seen by so many thousands of people — mainly aspiring entrepreneurs — and has been translated into many languages. There’s no time to dicker around at a startup. Startups are hard work. Make deliberate decisions. Fire fast.?.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Or take a recent TechCrunch article about a startup I wont name: “X billion messages sent since June 2009.&# Is the company growing because of an amazing viral loop paired with a strong engagement loop? Most of the article is about the features – new and old – of the product. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 154

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR 154

mashable.com

MAY 24, 2011

May 23, 2011 by Christina Warren 20 Share on Tumblr email share Share on Tumblr email share The Mobile App Trends Series is supported by Sourcebits , a leading product developer for mobile platforms. Sourcebits offers design and development services for iOS, Android, Mobile and Web platforms. ); // Welcome to Mashable!

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Mobile Web Social Media Software Review 90

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, December 7, 2008 Getting started with split-testing One of the startup founders I work with asked me a smart question recently, and I thought Id share it. Split-testing, like almost everything in a lean startup , requires judgment. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 132