Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why vanity metrics are dangerous In a previous post, I defined two kinds of metrics: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. In this post, Id like to talk about the perils of vanity metrics. My personal favorite vanity metrics is "hits."

Metrics 167

Metrics San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

What had previously been a strength – their great management processes – now holds back their ability to respond to new challenges. HR processes, legal processes, financial processes, acquisition and contracting processes, security processes, product development and management processes, and types of organizational forms etc.

Government 322

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 322

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. This engineering manager is a smart guy, and very experienced.

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Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

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.

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Agile Software Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 99

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 27, 2013

He wrote a post this long weekend on how he manages the board of DataSift. In this period (less than 2 years) he has brought on incredibly talented senior execs is sales, marketing, product management, client services, finance, vp engineering and more. Manages board meeting expectations (before & after). You should read it.

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Advisory Board Fractional CTO CTO Hire Los Angeles 365

Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2014

But the world you lead will be much different from the one your professors knew or your predecessors managed. Yet in the face of all this change, traditional firms continue to embrace a management ethos that values efficiency over innovation. To manage these employees companies create metrics to control, measure and reward execution.

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Private Equity Metrics China Intellectual Property 330

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 27, 2019

Thus I was pleased to see the evidence confirming that perspective in a new book, “ The Amazon Management System ,” by Ram Charan and Julia Yang. In my view, every startup in today’s world would do well to adopt a management system with the same key objectives: Start with a customer-obsessed business model.

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Global Marketing Technical Review Algorithm 308

Steve Blank

MARCH 15, 2017

We’d managed to secure another infusion of cash, but it wasn’t going to last long. When I asked our trade show manager, she looked surprised and said, “Steve, don’t you know that my job is to take our booth to trade shows and set it up?” What I was hearing was a failure of management. This is a big idea.

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ConversionXL

OCTOBER 14, 2021

In this article, we’ll share key brand tracking metrics and methods for how to measure and optimize your success. Key brand tracking metrics. Supplement brand loyalty metrics with qualitative measures such as brand associations and perceived quality, as these can give you insight into why customers intend to repurchase.

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Metrics Marketing Campaign Audience 157

David Teten

NOVEMBER 26, 2019

Instead of budget approvals, monitor key metrics and give managers more flexibility. How should a growth company manage their budget? So here’s the solution I have recommended to some of my portfolio companies: “ agile budgeting ”, i.e., monitoring a few key variables while giving managers significant flexibility.

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Agile Management Forecast Silicon Valley 60

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

Tech IPO prices exploded and subsequent trading prices rose to dizzying heights as the stock prices became disconnected from the traditional metrics of revenue and profits. Massive liquidity awaited the first movers to the IPO’s, and that’s how they managed their portfolios.

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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.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration. In a lot of cases, this requires a lot of energy invested in talking to customers or metrics and analytics. I do this as a core part of the Product Management process I use at all startups. In fact, MVP is quite annoying, because it imposes extra overhead.

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San Francisco Product Lean Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, July 9, 2010 Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# theory of management At any given time, something like four percent of the US population is engaged in some form of new-company-creation. But I’m not convinced those labels are right at all.

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San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 6, 2013

Seth Sternberg Co-Founder & CEO Scott Chacon CIO Kevin Hale Senior Product Manager NEW! 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

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

ConversionXL

NOVEMBER 10, 2020

Metrics for this depth are rare and only long-term. We might have medium-term goals like “adopting agile methodologies” or “getting everyone on the same page with a project kick-off” as the outcomes for the reader. The metrics for this level are more concrete and objective.

Agile 139

Agile Social Media Audience Software Review 139

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. Managing timelines instead of queues. Reinertsen is the book for you.

Product Development 153

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 153

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 17, 2017

Army’s Rapid Equipping Force on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan finding and deploying technology solutions against agile insurgents. The solution is to understand that an innovation pipeline requires different people, processes, procedures, and metrics, then execution. Newell ran the U.S. Problem 6: How to get started?

Community 244

Community Silicon Valley Technical Review Incubator 244

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. Customer development (the understanding of customer needs) must be married to agile development (a process which drives waste out of product development).

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 19, 2010

Turns out that for big-business project management it's more valuable to be a sensible thinker and counselor than to be an expert in debugging legacy C++ code.). On the surface, it's yet another "marketing metrics" company. Even "cool, agile" companies like 37signals are trapped. Now Adriana has an epiphany?:

Software Review 325

Software Review Technical Review Development Team Review Bolivia 325

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Because five whys kept turning up a few key metrics that were hard to set static thresholds for, we even had a dynamic prediction algorithm that would make forecasts based on past data, and fire alerts if the metric ever went out of its normal bounds. Wed never heard of five whys, and we had plenty of "agile skeptics" on the team.

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 4, 2022

I’m sorry to predict it will never happen, so the agility you may have learned over the past couple of years will continue to be critical to your survival. Bezos believes that if you double the number of experiments you do per year, you’re going to double your agility, and thus outpace your competitors.

Agile 371

Agile Metrics Demand Internet 371

Steve Blank

APRIL 21, 2011

All the teams were showing us what agile looked like, but this week several would remind us what focused and relentless really meant. PersonalLibraries was focused on creating a reference management system for discovering, organizing and citing researchers’ readings. Should they look at the Document Management market?

Channel 234

Channel Artificial Inteligence San Francisco Business Model 234

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, January 7, 2010 Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? My explicit goal in working with HBR is to foster a dialog between entrepreneurs and more traditional general managers. Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? - Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Without further ado.

San Francisco 119

San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 29, 2019

Institute deep metrics measuring all aspects of the customer experience. Amazon is famous for their Two-Pizza.Teams (no bigger than two pizzas will feed), allowing an entrepreneurial mindset more autonomy, agility, and accountability. Make sure everyone knows it’s their job to maintain empathy and exceed customer expectations.

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Artificial Inteligence Agile Technical Review Demand 222

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. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Expo SF (May.

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Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" I always assumed I wouldnt manage anybody. Being a manager didnt sound fun - deep down, who really wants to be held accountable for other peoples actions? So I wound up learning the discipline of managing other people.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# Especially in teams that are managing by objectives (or OKRs), the pressure to deliver is intense. Good managers work hard to create an environment where this courage thrives. But action/paralysis are not the only options.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Software Review 167

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 5, 2024

Paul Graham’s recent essay, Founder Mode , describes the mindset that founders need to adopt to navigate the early stages of building a startup, and how they’re different than ‘manager mode’ which is traditional management/corporate best practices.

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Management Technical Review Venture Capital Generative AI 103

ReadWriteStart

MARCH 7, 2022

Whether you’re managing a digital business or a brick-and-mortar storefront, marketing is a practical necessity. If you use the wrong tools, or if you dump money into a technology that isn’t a good fit for your brand, you could suffer some severe consequences. Misleading metrics. The Competition Apocalypse.

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Marketing Advertising Metrics Technical Review 198

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 16, 2013

One good example is the way in which we''ve adjusted the length of different phases of our agile sprints. We don''t follow a set agile methodology, but rather follow a more home-grown, minimal version of various approaches. The new process let us manage the velocity of change in the codebase low, keeping the resistance manageable.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Software Engineering Agile 167

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

—– Lean Innovation Management. Each horizon requires different focus, different management, different tools and different goals. To move innovation faster, we now have 21 st century tools — Business Model Canvas , Customer Development , Agile Engineering – all adding up to a Lean Startup. Here’s how.

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Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

Balancing competing objectives is a recurring theme on this blog - its the central challenge of all management decisions. 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. Communication.

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San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content. But I managed a few "good learning experiences" before throwing myself full-bore into IMVU. So much for timing. Expo SF (May.

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San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Kent Beck keynote, "To Agility, and Beyond" Six streaming locations Interviews ► March (7) New conference website, speakers, agenda Two new scholarship programs for lean startups Speed up or slow down? Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Expo SF (May.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively. At this meeting, we would present our goals for the cycle, all the raw results wed managed to collect, and our conclusions about what was next. Leading up to a pivot, each cycle, despite our best efforts, the metrics werent good enough.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167