Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customer development Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. Jim Murphy is a long-time agile practitioner in startups. But startups sometimes have trouble applying agile successfully. Thats pretty clear.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Steve Blank

JUNE 11, 2009

Posted on June 11, 2009 by steveblank When my students ask me about whether they should be a founder or cofounder of a startup I ask them to take a walk around the block and ask themselves: Are you comfortable with: Chaos – startups are disorganized Uncertainty – startups never go per plan Are you: Resilient – at times you will fail – badly.

Cofounder 230

Cofounder Founder Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder 230

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 13, 2009 The Principles of Product Development Flow If youve ever wondered why agile or lean development techniques work, The Principles of Product Development Flow: Second Generation Lean Product Development by Donald G. Reinertsen is the book for you.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

YoungUpstarts

MAY 30, 2014

by Sam Bahreini, co-founder and COO of VoloForce. Google is notorious for this, releasing many of its products in beta form — and sometimes even leaving them in that phase for years. When a product is ready for beta testing, that doesn’t necessarily mean it came right out of alpha testing. Bridges between gaps.

Customer 231

Customer Development Team Review Cofounder Agile 231

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 27, 2011

We had a wide-ranging discussion which included discussions of Eric’s early career (including his failures), how he came to focus on the Lean Startup movement (at the encouragement of Steve Blank who was an investor in the company he co-founded) and what he wants to do next. functional workgroups vs. product workgroups).

Silicon Valley 301

Silicon Valley Lean Social Media PR 301

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. I met one recently that is working on a really innovative product, and the stories I heard from their development team made me want to cringe.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Steve Blank

APRIL 3, 2018

Until we start giving grades for resiliency, curiosity, agility, resourcefulness, pattern recognition, tenacity and having a passion for products and customers, great grades and successful entrepreneurs have at best a zero correlation (and anecdotal evidence suggests that the correlation may actually be negative.). Lessons Learned.

Technical Review 335

Technical Review Entrepreneur Artificial Inteligence Cofounder 335

View from Seed

NOVEMBER 6, 2014

Isaac Cambron is co-founder and CTO of Zensight.co , whose pre-launch product enables sales reps to find and use their best content to close more deals. Below, he answers questions about developing products from scratch, as well as the difficult technology choices and tradeoffs CTOs must make.

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Technology Ruby Startup Engineer 334

YoungUpstarts

JANUARY 29, 2020

This start-up is headed by industry-leading professionals including its CEO and co-founder, Ido Susan, and Hillel Kobrinsky the CSO and co-founder. The company is headed by Shimon Hason, the CEO, and Erez Fliess , Omer Raviv and Alon Fliess all of whom are cofounders of the startup. oz-code.com.

Cofounder 147

Cofounder Software Review Israel Technical Cofounder 147

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? Where is it?

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 4, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 4, 2010 Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Kent Beck will give the opening keynote at the Startup Lessons Learned conference on April 23. Labels: sllconf Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Kent Beck will give the opening keynote at the Startup Lessons Learned conference on April 23.

Agile 99

Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 24, 2017

Why do these founders get to stay around? Because the balance of power has dramatically shifted from investors to founders. VCs competing for unicorn investments have given founders control of the board. Twenty-five years ago, to go public you had to sell stuff – not just acquire users or have freemium products.

Founder 281

Founder Technical Review CTO Hire IPO 281

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.

Lean 335

Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

. + 1,000 startup founders, investors, and press! Vinod Khosla Founder Dave McClure Founding Partner Eric Ries Author Steve Blank Serial Entrepreneur & Professor Todd Park CTO Travis Kalanick CEO & Co-Founder Joe Zadeh Director of Product Sam Shank Co-Founder & CEO NEW!

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Lean Cofounder Startup Software Engineering 165

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

He previously co-founded and served as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting. October 13, 2008 6:47 PM Luke G said. Eric, love the blog.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

But by taking advantage of open source, agile software, and iterative development, lean startups can operate with much less waste. So far, I have found "lean startup" works better with the entrepreneurs Ive talked to than "agile startup" or even "extreme startup.") Of course, many startups are capital efficient and generally frugal.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

During a lull in her practice she got a serendipitous opportunity to shift gears completely and ended up leading software product development teams. Adriana holds a unique position: Expert in the industry, able to "geek out" with her target customer, yet capable of leading a product team. At best, they could copy. The Dream Team.

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

SoCal CTO

APRIL 28, 2014

I guess it should not be a surprise that Founders have lots of challenges working with developers. Challenges I started by asking the founders in the room to tell me some of the challenges they have working with developers. Developers (and Founders) are challenged to know how much is okay in terms of bugs.

Technical Cofounder 280

Technical Cofounder Developer Fractional CTO CTO Hire 280

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

When we build products, we use a methodology. We know some products succeed and others fail, but the reasons are complex and the unpredictable. a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit." The theory of Product/Market Fit is one key component of customer development, and I highly recommend Marcs essay on that topic.

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 30, 2010

He blogs to 10,000 web entrepreneurs at Software by Rob and co-hosts the podcast Startups for the Rest of Us. A virtual assistant (VA) is a remote worker hired to complete tasks you should not be doing as the founder of a startup. Agile Development, meet Agile Business. After your product launch. Introduction.

Software Review 284

Software Review Startup Technical Review Hosting 284

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Thats the conclusion Ive come to after watching tons of online products fail for a complete lack of customers. Our goal is to find out whether customers are interested in your product by offering to give (or even sell) it to them, and then failing to deliver on that promise. Nothing made any difference.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

Jon Sebastiani , founder and CEO of KRAVE Jerky , a company that got its start in my class at Berkeley back in 2011 and was recently acquired by Hershey. Eric Ries co-founded Catalyst Recruiting while attending Yale, and continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com. Taking My Class.

Lean 120

Lean Silicon Valley Technical Cofounder Channel 120

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 13, 2018

I worked with engineering to try to find product/market fit ( big endian or little endian ?) I was agile enough to keep up with innumerable changes and I was changing lots of things myself. Some (like your peers or even the founders) don’t understand it, and others (the VCs) realize it’s not in their interest to let you know.

Part-Time VPE 334

Part-Time VPE Employee Cofounder Hiring 334

YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 2, 2020

They’re still built that way by the product’s engineers. As a result, entrepreneurs, founders, CEOs, marketers, and anyone in between can take advantage. They hire a team, spend months planning, their engineers build it, and… the final product isn’t quite right. How no-code tools work.

CTO Hire 264

CTO Hire eCommerce Engineer Cofounder 264

The Next Web

MARCH 6, 2014

Here’s a problem I bet every non-technical founder has experienced: the communication gap between what the biz dev team wants and what the tech team thinks they want, and vice versa. It’s disruptive, and for founders, very frustrating to watch. Practice Agile Development. Kelsey Meyer , Influence & Co. Build Trust.

Technical Review 129

Technical Review Development Team Review Developer Agile 129

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. As Steve writes in the Four Steps to the Epiphany , we always seek to find a market for the product as currently specified , not conduct a focus group to tell us what the spec should be. And how do you pick a new direction?

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In addition to presenting the IMVU case, we tried for the first time to do an overview of a software engineering methodology that integrates practices from agile software development with Steves method of Customer Development. Unfortunately, positioning our product as an "IM add-on" was a complete mistake.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

The Next Web

OCTOBER 18, 2013

Anthony Bosschem is the founder and head of Darwin Analytics. Before our company even had a product, we acquired our first customers just by selling our ideas alone. Your product could function well, but if it isn’t easy to use, it won’t retain fans. Search for your non-technical cofounder. Hire a designer on day one.

Technical Cofounder 130

Technical Cofounder Cofounder Agile Design 130

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 13, 2008 Five Whys Taiichi Ohno was one of the inventors of the Toyota Production System. His book Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production is a fascinating read, even though its decidedly non-practical. Each five whys email is a teaching document. and so forth.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

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. He has a good team, and theyve shipped a working product to many customers.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

OCTOBER 4, 2017

Idealistic founders believe they will break the mold when they scale, and not turn into a “typical big company.” But, an illness takes the velocity of the product or quality of support from heroic to zero. Or it’s fatal because that was a co-founder. Small companies operate this way by necessity, and it works!

Government 223

Government Startup Cofounder Technical Support 223

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2017

Guest Post by Misti Yang, Writer for Lean Startup Co. To confidently answer no, co-founder of Strategyzer Alex Osterwalder told our attendees, “What you really want to do is work more like Amazon. … You’re kind of looking for founders,” not friends, remarked Jeff. “If Second, don’t simply hire your buddies.

Lean 245

Lean Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 245

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. The six key attributes spell ABCDEF: Agility. When talking about their past experience, candidates with agility will know why they did what they did in a given situation.

San Francisco 146

San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# This is precisely the dilemma that the doctrine of minimum viable product is designed to solve. I believe this is one reason why the myth of the dictatorial startup founder has such enduring appeal.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

YoungUpstarts

JULY 21, 2019

While large corporations are struggling with the digital transformation, small agile firms emerge every day and challenge traditional retailers. One of the cofounders explains how he witnessed first-hand while working at a bank that a lot of traditional retailers were in trouble as internet retailers ate away their margins.

Cofounder 113

Cofounder Technical Review Technology Netherlands 113

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

I hope to show why lean and agile techniques actually reduce the negative impacts of technical debt and increase our ability to take advantage of its positive effects. Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

In spite of this, private equity funds have used the rallying cry of efficiency to hijack corporate strategy and loot the profits that historically would have been reinvested into research and development and new products. Smart companies are always looking to make their current products better – and there are many ways to do this.

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Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 330