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Lessons Learned: The lean startup

Startup Lessons Learned

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. See Customer Development Engineering for my first stab at articulating the theory involved) Ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration, as exemplified by the Customer Development process.

Lean 168
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How to listen to customers, and not just the loud people

Startup Lessons Learned

This was 2004, and we had never even heard of MySpace, let alone had any understanding of social networking. It required hearing customers say it over and over again for us to take a serious look, and eventually to realize that social networking was core to our business. But the early customers all compared it to MySpace.

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The Steve Jobs method

Startup Lessons Learned

Also SJ's obsession with better taste (positively) contributes to the overall product development process. There are some good anecdotes about Chief Engineers in the Toyota Product Development Book. I really enjoyed this article, my first time reading any of your stuff. Will start to pay attention. Great post Eric.

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Lessons Learned: When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to.

Startup Lessons Learned

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. But none of that happened. How did they do it?

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Pivot, don't jump to a new vision

Startup Lessons Learned

Ive spoken in some detail about a specific pivot that we went through at IMVU , when we decided to abandon the instant messaging add-on concept, and switch to a standalone instant messaging network. We went through another pivot when we switched again from instant messaging to social networking.

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How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone

Startup Lessons Learned

As with services like Yelp, reviewers can tend to be the subset of people who were disappointed by the product, not those who liked it or even loved it. This can even vary by category, as people apply different criteria to games vs. utilities vs. social networking apps. Take a look and let me know what you think.

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Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

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. Does this sound familiar?