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. Such direct experiences allows one to test critical “leap-of-faith” assumptions about what customers like and dislike.

Lean 193

Lean Technical Review North America Startup 193

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

And the results weren’t the traditional PR metrics of number of articles or inches of ink. We were constantly creating metrics to see the effects of different PR messages, channels and audiences on end-user purchases. I feel that I’ve derived as much value from this post as I would from reading 2 or 3 lengthy books on the topic.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Ben Horowitz ’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things is driving the conversation around startup management this year. Bob Sutton is a Stanford professor and the author of several best-selling books on standout management, including Scaling Up Excellence , an investigation of high-growth companies. Eric Ries will interview him.

Lean 165

Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

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. I am heavily indebted to earlier theorists, and highly recommend the books Lean Thinking and Lean Software Development. Labels: customer development , lean startup 8comments: Amy said.

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Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. What is customer development?

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Steve Blank

MARCH 25, 2009

When we looked at the color graphics board market, our competitors had defined the market as one measured by technical metrics: screen resolution, number of bits of color, screen refresh rates, acceleration, etc. It didn’t take much imagination to realize that what we had to do was to tell our story around one key metric performance ?

Silicon Valley 161

Silicon Valley Marketing RSS California 161

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

His book Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production is a fascinating read, even though its decidedly non-practical. Yet there is one specific technique that I learned most clearly from this book: asking why five times. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Up and Running

DECEMBER 6, 2012

In 2010, Alex Osterwalder published his book, Business Model Generation , where he created a framework for what Tim called “business identity.” Just this past year, in 2012, Steve Blank synthesized the ideas from his 1st book, “ Four Steps to the Epiphany ,” with The Business Model Canvas in his “ Startup Owner’s Manual.”

Lean 147

Lean Silicon Valley Forecast Technical Review 147

Steve Blank

AUGUST 18, 2010

Here’s his story of when Customer Development failed. We were lucky to learn about Customer Development early on in the life of our startup. More importantly, we’d witnessed Customer Development’s massive success at another local startup. So how did Customer Development fail us?

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. 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. Time-to-complete-a-sale is not a bad metric for validated learning at this stage.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Steve Blank

JULY 30, 2009

And other startups are in a New Market — creating a market from scratch (like Apple with the iPhone, or iPod/iTunes.) (“Market Type&# radically changes how you sell and market at each step in Customer Development. It’s one of the subtle distinctions that at times gets lost in the process.

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Silicon Valley RSS California Customer Development 146

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

That foundational idea, so clearly articulated in books like Lean Thinking, is what originally led me to start using the term lean startup. I had a background in lean manufacturing (book knowledge, anyway) and lean software development (hands on) before encountering Lean Startups. What is Lean about the Lean Startup?

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Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Startup 140

Steve Blank

MAY 26, 2009

Reply conversationalistOU812 , on November 9, 2009 at 10:31 am Said: Dmitriy is right – we should ban the use of industry buzzwords like “verticals&# , “metrics&# and “horizontals&# altogether. What is it that’s unique about the market I’m in?

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Vertical Silicon Valley Intellectual Property RSS 159

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. Creating a company-wide feedback loop that incorporates both customer development and agile development is a challenge.

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San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

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.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

I place them roughly in this order: Movies > Television > Books > Music > Magazines > Radio > Newspapers Each industry is watching the one in front of it sink into the quicksand. Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Distribution 113

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 4, 2008

Customer development. For those interested in getting started with agile or customer development, I thought Id include a few links. The best resources there are his book Extreme Programming Explained: Embrace Change and the gentle introduction at extremeprogramming.org. This post has been removed by the author.

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Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

In fact, this crisis was at the heart of Steve Blank ’s original impetus to develop customer development as an alternative set of milestones to use for startups.) I hear similar things for pre-revenue startups that are on schedule, on time, and on budget - even though they are busy building something that nobody wants. (In

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

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. Thats what business is designed to do.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs. In the meantime his two books, The Monk and the Riddle and Getting to Plan B are both a must-read. When I first encountered customer development , it was considered pure lunacy by mainstream entrepreneurs and VCs.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

As a shoestring entrepreneur with a SaaS (well, not really, but sort of) offering that we present to very large companies (think 10K+), I love your common sense suggestions about metrics and testing. My background isnt metrics, but we came to it as a matter of practicality. 4) More posts about metrics, scaling, and online games.

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I love Joels approach to usability, and I still recommend his free online book on UI design. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Are you afraid someone might be able to break your product without your automated defenses knowing about it? Do you do hallway usability testing?

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 12, 2010

Last, Ive tried to keep this blog updated with events , slides , audio , video and books that are helpful as well. Last, Ive tried to keep this blog updated with events , slides , audio , video and books that are helpful as well. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Lean San Francisco Wiki Startup 146

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

I'd be interested to hear your opinion of a book we published earlier this year: "Hello World! " The book teaches kids programming with examples written in Python, and is illustrated with fun kid-friendly characters. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Have you considered putting all these into a book? oh, and on the book front, you'll be able to get all of my essays so far in ebook, print-on-demand, and kindle editions - coming soon. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Great article as always, Eric.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

In fact, every single lean transformation documented in books like Lean Thinking took place in the midst of serious external threats. Customer Development : a disciplined approach to finding out if there is a market for your product before its too late. Once they attain sacred status, they are rarely questioned.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Steve Blank

FEBRUARY 9, 2012

Two years in the making and literally ten years in development, I’m proud to announce that my new book, The Startup Owners Manual , goes onto the printing press next Tuesday. I’ve spent the last two years cramming knowledge into this new book. Briefly, the new book. Let me be brief…. The Lean LaunchPad Online Class.

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Entrepreneur Lean Business Model Customer Development 298

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

This is another sub-optimization caused by incentivizing the wrong metric. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? This can be especially challenging for HR professionals who measure their success based on the number of jobs they fill.

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Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

ConversionXL

MARCH 28, 2014

In another study, Wistia dug into the visitor data for their own homepage video & found that roughly 30% of their video views came from prospective customers. ” The visitor/view metric is one you should only be competing against yourself on. A comic book version of the story. This is an example of “averages lie.”

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Video Software Review Cofounder Metrics 122

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 5, 2009

Imagine a general manager that has read The Innovator’s Dilemma and related books, and is therefore trying hard to help her organization make a transition to a new product category via disruptive innovation. In a startup context, numbers like gross revenue are actually vanity metrics, not actionable metrics.

San Francisco 102

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Startup 102

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 2, 2010

Writing a book. Im just starting the publishing process that should lead to a book for a general business audience in 2011. Writing a book. Im just starting the publishing process that should lead to a book for a general business audience in 2011. If youd like to be part of this, let me know in a comment.

San Francisco 122

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 122

Occam's Razor

APRIL 8, 2013

To win in business you need to follow this process: Metrics > Hypothesis > Experiment > Act. We are far too enamored with data collection and reporting the standard metrics we love because others love them because someone else said they were nice so many years ago. That metric is tied to a KPI. But it is not routine.

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Metrics Analytics Lean Churn Rate 157

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Turns out, what customers really meant was "let me use IMVU with somebody I dont know" so they could get a feel for the social features of the product without incurring the social risk of recommending it to their friend. Luckily, the metrics helped us figure out the difference. Lets run a thought experiment. Very exciting.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 68

ConversionXL

MAY 22, 2014

To guide the discussion, we’re going to be using Dave McClure’s Conversion Metrics as a framework to see where different conversion optimization opportunities lie. For Acquisition, we’re primarily asking how do first time visitors & potential customers find you? So Where Exactly Does “Conversion” Happen? image source.

Software Review 116

Software Review PPC Analytics Search 116

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

I have found James Surowiecki s book The Wisdom of Crowds particularly helpful in thinking through these issues. This book is Tipping Point - esque , full of anecdotes and interesting social science citations. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 83

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 83

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

I was in New York last week with my class at Columbia University and several events made me realize that the Customer Development model needs to better describe its fit with web-based businesses. In it, I got asked a question I often hear: “What if we have a web-based business that doesn’t have revenue or paying customers?

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