Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? All things being equal, of course, you’d rather have more revenue rather than less. And yet revenue alone is not a sufficient goal.

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Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

is an elegant way to model any service-oriented business: Acquisition Activation Retention Referral Revenue We used a very similar scheme at IMVU, although we werent lucky enough to have started with this framework, and so had to derive a lot of it ourselves via trial and error. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

Up and Running

JULY 26, 2016

Between January 2015 and January 2016, we grew our platform Slidebean from $1K to $20K in monthly recurring revenue. Getting the first tracks of revenue is one of the toughest processes of building a startup. 1x hacker in charge of product/development. 1x hipster working with both product and growth.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 21, 2013

Lean Analytics is the latest addition to the Lean Series. For example, in the revenue stage—where the company is busy growing revenues and pouring a percentage of them back into user acquisition—there are several places where analytics and iteration can help increase revenues.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 28, 2008 The lean startup comes to Stanford Im going to be talking about lean startups (and the IMVU case in particular) three times in the next two weeks at Stanford. Labels: events , lean startup 5comments: Hitchens said. How did we combat this tendency? When will you be speaking?

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 68

Steve Blank

MAY 9, 2017

The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the Product Development Cycle. In the 20 th century startups I was part of, the time to build a first product release was measured in years as we turned out the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. That’s no longer the case. We now understand that’s wrong.

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Restful Silicon Valley Puerto Rico San Jose 222

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. The batch size is the unit at which work-products move between stages in a development process. Luckily, I now have the benefit of a forthcoming book, The Principles of Product Development Flow.

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San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

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 the local maximum.

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San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

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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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

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 ?" He doesnt put out crappy, buggy products and then ask for feedback. So how do you reconcile his success with the lean startup, which seems to suggest the opposite?" Not even if its generating revenue.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 166

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

In a lot of cases, thats just a fancy name for revenue or profit, but not always. This development philosophy created a culture around rapid prototyping of features, followed by testing them against large numbers of actual customers. It would be hard to argue against this product development strategy, in general.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Software Review Lean 123

Up and Running

JANUARY 17, 2014

The phrase “lean startup” comes up a lot in conversations about entrepreneurship. I’ve been to several panel discussions on the topic, had it taught to me in a business school classroom, and read a book dedicated to lean startup methodology. Revise your product or service as quickly as possible. Deploying resources stringently.

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Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

In fact, SaaS industry revenue is projected to grow from $49 billion in 2015 to $67 billion in 2018, a compound annual growth rate of approximately eight percent. Step 1: Start with a lean plan. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. Introducing Lean Planning: How to Plan Less and Grow Faster.

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Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

This is going to be BIG.

AUGUST 22, 2012

Who should you hire? In a way, you can think of BD as “sales when you don’t know what the product is yet.” It’s basically working with potential outside partners to reach your business goals--which could be revenue, distribution, financing, product development, awareness, etc. How are you ever going to get it done?

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Of all the tactics I have advocated as part of the lean startup , none has provoked as many extreme reactions as continuous deployment , a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. It lets the customer and development team spot problems with calculations almost immediately.

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Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

Gregg Fraley, Author of Jack's Notebook

MAY 22, 2019

Companies are investing in innovation training, mostly learning frameworks like Lean, Agile, or Design Thinking. Nearly all that training is for dedicated innovation teams , or employees who are focused on new product development. Engaged support for strategic and tactical innovation initiatives developed by others.

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Operations Employee Technical Review Agile 54

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Steve Blank has devoted many years now to trying to answer that question, with a theory he calls Customer Development. 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. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

And one day a remarkable thing happened: we started making more than five dollars a day in revenue. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

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SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. They were accustomed to measuring their progress primarily by gross revenue compared to their targets. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science?

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2009

For the rest of us, there is an alternative: to create credibility by building a lean startup. At IMVU, we were terrified by how early we shipped (and charged for) our first product. We were even more embarrassed by the pathetically small number of customers we had, and the pathetically low amount of revenue we had earned so far.

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San Francisco Tampa Continuous Deployment Lean 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 15, 2010

Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. Usually, they are delivering only a fraction of the revenue they promised. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Expo SF (May. for Harvard Business Revie.

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Hockey Stick San Francisco Entrepreneur Lean 105

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Strategy - startups first encounter this when they have the beginnings of a product, and theyve achieved some amount of product/market fit. If youre making revenue, you should be finding ways to grow it predictably month-over-month; if youre focused on customer engagement, your product should be getting more sticky, and so on.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 28, 2009

Still, theyre not really hitting it out of the park, because their product isnt growing new users as fast as theyd like, and they arent making any money from the current users. Because, unless you are working in an extremely static environment, your product development team is learning and getting better all the time.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

And so the spreadsheet is built with conservative assumptions, including a final revenue target. No matter how low we make the revenue projections for this new product, it’s extremely unlikely that they are achievable. In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Thats a perfectly reasonable reaction, given that most releases of most products are bad news. Even worse, the sad state of product development generally means that the new "features" are as likely to be ones that make the product worse, not better. Its likely that the new release will contain new bugs.

Continuous Deployment 122

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

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. To increase the number of iterations you have left, you can either increase cash on hand (by raising money or increasing revenues), reduce burn rate, or increase the speed of each iteration. Work in small batches.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Now, Andrew’s excellent piece that I quoted from above correctly diagnoses two situations where consumer internet companies often get in trouble: They focus too much on short-term revenue, getting caught in a local maximum via constant optimization. These concepts have important implications for any lean startup. Expo SF (May.

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Customer San Francisco Viral Lean 156

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

When I reviewed a recent product development book, it immediately shot up to Amazon sales rank 300. Just like in the world of startups, we can start to use micro-scale pilot programs, executed in lean fashion, to gather real facts for making ROI decisions about new project investment. What is the right revenue model?

San Francisco 113

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

This post describes how the traditional product development model distorts startup sales, marketing and business development. For example, some startup sales execs believe hiring the core sales team is a key objective. Here’s what the product development diagram looks like from a sales perspective.

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Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 215

Hearpreneur

APRIL 13, 2022

Thanks to Fletcher Wimbush, The Hire Talent ! #2- One of the most important lessons entrepreneurs can learn from Dropbox is to adopt the lean start-up methodology and start. Businesses that operate online are the most likely to use the freemium revenue model. 2- Dropbox. Photo Credit: Jared Stern. 14- The Farmstand.

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Artificial Inteligence Entrepreneur Technical Review Software Review 77

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. Not just about expenses, about increasing revenue. Everyone from the receptionist to engineers is selling.

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment DC 121

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 12, 2022

Learn why the traditional way of writing a five-year business plan is often a waste of time and how to use a Lean Plan instead for smarter, easier strategic planning to establish your long-term vision. These goals can be used to motivate your team and even help in the hiring process as you get up and running. Develop your Lean Plan.

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Business Plan Lean Forecast Exit Strategy 83

mashable.com

JUNE 11, 2013

Hiring Poorly. Make sure that new hires understand your rate of innovation. If you dont manage this expectation upon hiring, you will be managing employee issues six months down the line. Someone told me recently, Any time Im talking to someone who doesnt work for me already, Im evaluating if I should try and hire them.

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Steve Blank

MAY 28, 2009

Market Risk vs. Invention Risk - Click to Enlarge For companies building web-based products, product development may be difficult, but with enough time and iteration engineering will eventually converge on a solution and ship a functional product - i t’s engineering, not invention.

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David Teten

OCTOBER 1, 2015

I’ve talked with a number of software development shops who are eager to get into the business of cofounding companies, i.e., getting product revenue and equity instead of just consulting revenue. Second, the company must eventually own the product development and maintenance functions in-house.

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Software Developers Software Development Software Review Technical Cofounder 60

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 Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Expo SF (May. for Harvard Business Revie.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

I firmly believe that in this age where the product development life-cycle is so short and user feedback comes so quickly, you will know within a year whether you are focusing on a worthwhile one thing. The most important hiring criteria for your executives is cultural fit. As CEO, you are responsible for every hire.

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Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108