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Lessons Learned: Product development leverage

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a key lean startup concept. Great post!

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Why vanity metrics are dangerous

Startup Lessons Learned

If you never have, you can create your own using Google Finance. If you never have, you can create your own using Google Finance. Have you ever built one of those charts that shows a metric over time, annotated with "key events" that explain what happened to the numbers at key inflection points? Go ahead and try it, then come back.

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Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Startup Lessons Learned

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

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Lessons Learned: The engineering manager's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. Good luck, engineering manager. It was painful for a lot of people.

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What is a startup?

Startup Lessons Learned

This is why so many small businesses can be financed with simple bank loans; the level of risk and uncertainty is well enough understood that a reasonably intelligent loan officer can assess its prospects. Thus, the land of startups is a unique place, where the risks themselves are unknown. Take a look and let me know what you think.

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Lessons Learned: Where did Silicon Valley come from?

Startup Lessons Learned

Among those: plentiful financing and nerds , a culture that celebrates both failure and success, and an ethos of openness and sharing. Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, November 11, 2008 Where did Silicon Valley come from? Its useful to look back to understand how we got those advantages. Take a look and let me know what you think.

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Fear is the mind-killer

Startup Lessons Learned

In the case of an entrepreneur pitching for finance, its the same fear that has them putting on a facade and not comfortable in what they do and dont know that will see them a long way off getting funded. Obviously they're not voicing their objections that way, but it isn't hard to read between the lines.