Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 28, 2009 Continuous deployment for mission-critical applications Having evangelized the concept of continuous deployment for the past few years, Ive come into contact with almost every conceivable question, objection, or concern that people have about it.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 5, 2013

This post was co-written by Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries, co-hosts of The Lean Startup Conference. We’ve just published the program for this year’s Lean Startup Conference , December 9 to 11 in San Francisco, and we can say without hesitation that it’s completely unlike any other entrepreneurship conference in existence.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 10, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, February 10, 2009 Continuous deployment and continuous learning At long last, some of the actual implementers of the advanced systems we built at IMVU for rapid deployment and rapid response are starting to write about it. At IMVU it’s a core part of our culture to ship.

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The Equity Kicker

OCTOBER 2, 2014

Our other category of investment is ‘idea stage’, often with solo-founders.). We got to know David Gildeh, the CEO and one of three co-founders, around this time last year. That means they are up and running and on a 12-18 month path to their Series A. The starting point with this one was the team.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, February 16, 2009 Continuous deployment with downloads One of my goals in writing posts about topics like continuous deployment is the hope that people will take those ideas and apply them to new situations - and then share what they learn with the rest of us. Thanks for the comments.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? But I dont think most startups really have a need for someone to do that on a full time basis. So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" What does your Chief Technology Officer do all day?

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 8, 2008 The lean startup Ive been thinking for some time about a term that could encapsulate trends that are changing the startup landscape. After some trial and error, Ive settled on the Lean Startup. Of course, many startups are capital efficient and generally frugal.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

It seems your cluster architecture is one of the key architectural constraints making continuous deployment possible. If you cant deploy to 5% of the nodes and check the results, then how would you accomplish continuous deployment? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

For startups (and other innovators ), that’s a decisive advantage. The work itself, especially in startups, depends primarily on intelligence, communication, creativity and empathy. Vivek Wadhwa and his team continue their excellent work investigating the true nature of entrepreneurship.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. When operating with continuous deployment, its almost impossible to have integration conflicts. No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

(Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) 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).

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

I spent some time with his company before the conference and discussed ways to get started with continuous deployment , including my experience introducing it at IMVU. Moreover, approaching the problem from the direction that I had intuitively is a recipe for never reaching a point where continuous deployment is feasible.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

kaChing has been very active in the Lean Startup movement. If you havent seen it, Pascals recent presentation on continuous deployment is a must-see; slides are here. With case studies like this, we aim to illustrate specific Lean Startup techniques through the stories of current practitioners.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage. In a startup, we should take full advantage of our options, even if they feel dirty or riddled with technical debt. Startups are always moving, so invest in moving faster and better.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

Yet startups rely on collective learning in order to find their way. I believe this is one reason why the myth of the dictatorial startup founder has such enduring appeal. Startups are different, leading to this axiom: if you do not know who the customer is, you do not know what quality is. Data can undermine this field.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

Startups are companies. Startups aspire to become big companies. Therefore, startups should have departments. Each of these benefits also exists in startups, which is why most startups are also organized in departments. I once worked at a startup with an exceptional functional department system.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 22, 2009 Pivot, dont jump to a new vision In a lean startup , instead of being organized around traditional functional departments, we use a cross-functional problem team and solution team. Thats not the goal of a lean startup. It increases the runway without additional cash.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 15, 2008 The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time Split-testing is a core lean startup discipline, and its one of those rare topics that comes up just as often in a technical context as in a business-oriented one when Im talking to startups. First of all, why split-test?

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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. After all, our startup is on a fixed budget.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 16, 2009 What is Lean about the Lean Startup? That foundational idea, so clearly articulated in books like Lean Thinking, is what originally led me to start using the term lean startup. The following is a guest post for Startup Lessons Learned by the legendary Kent Beck.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

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. I highly recommend this book for all entrepreneurs, in startups as well as in big companies. Very few startups fail for lack of technology.

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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 ?" So how do you reconcile his success with the lean startup, which seems to suggest the opposite?" Plus, the premise of the question misunderstands the lean startup, too. And he doesnt shy away from big-bang launch events.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

I have been thinking a lot about what a new version of this test would look like, given what Ive seen work and not work in startups. but I have not seen that dysfunction in any of the startups I advise, so hopefully its behind us. For more on continuous deployment, see Just-in-time Scalability. Youd better.

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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. First, a caveat.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 4, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, January 4, 2009 Sharding for startups The most important aspect of a scalable web architecture is data partitioning. Sharding for startups To support a single partitioning scheme is easy, especially if you design for it from the start. But startups rarely have either luxury. to store it.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

By far the most important thing you want to hire for in a startup is the ability to handle the unexpected. Those people also tend to go crazy in a startup. The "lone wolf" superstar is usually a disaster in a team context, and startups are all about teams. Still, a startup product development team is a service organization.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

Then you set up a web app to co-ordinate volunteers who can wipe a hard drive and install Ubuntu. You can find out more at: manning.com/sande Many thanks in advance, Todd -- Todd Green Manning Publications Co. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Good Post. Expo SF (May. .

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Managing these situations is hard for any company, but potentially lethal for a startup. There are just so many ways for a startup to fail. If we’re practicing continuous deployment, we can be confident that we’ll be able to rush an emergency fix into production without risking introducing further problems.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

It was one of those brilliant startup brainstorms that comes to the team in a flash, with a giant thunderclap. Eric, Excellent article about an essential technique for startups. To help find the right keywords, Ive written an article on my blog Web Startup Help that details How to Do Keyword Research for startups.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, August 3, 2009 Minimum Viable Product: a guide One of the most important lean startup techniques is called the minimum viable product. I was delighted to be asked to give a brief talk about the MVP at the inaugural meetup of the lean startup circle here in San Francisco. Expo SF (May. .

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

But I have a special sympathy for the "product manager" in a startup that is bringing a new product to a new market, and doing their work in large batches. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? No departments The Five Whys for Startups (for Harvard Business R. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 13, 2009

and the resulting extreme uncertainty that is, incidentally, the environment where startups thrive. Startups are frequently guilty as charged - the 4-year death march example above could be written about dozens of venture-backed companies slogging it out in the land of the living dead. will this bug take 5 minutes or 5 weeks to fix?),

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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? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Let’s start with a simple question: why do early-stage startups want revenue?

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 3, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 3, 2009 Employees should be masters of their own time Every startup should have a culture of learning. Without entering into that theoretical domain, in this post Id like to try and offer a specific and concrete suggestion for how to build a culture of learning into a startup.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, August 26, 2009 Building a new startup hub Last week, I had a unique opportunity to spend some time in Boulder at the behest of TechStars. It was a great experience to see a relatively new startup hub in action - and thriving. Their model looks like a key ingredient in the startup brew there.

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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. In my opinion, every startup needs to "pick a major" among these three drivers of growth. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, March 13, 2009 Dont launch Heres a common question I get from startups, especially in the early stages: when should we launch? In fact, in most situations its a bad idea for startups to synchronize these events. Most startups arent so fortunate. My answer is almost always the same: dont.

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