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Quick summary: Be careful not to have too many co-founders. And you need to be careful about giving up control to cofounders as much as VCs. I don’t think VCs care as much about co-founders & economics as people think. Don’t hire a homogenous team. For the wrong reasons. Know the difference.
by Felix Winstone, Co-Founder and Managing Director at Talkative. As a new entrepreneur or business owner, the most important thing you will do is hire talent. As a startup co-founder with a growing team, here are the recruiting tips I’ve learnt over the last couple of years. Hiring = Sales. Be Specific.
Most of you aspiring entrepreneurs have no idea how dramatically your own role has to evolve as you develop a solution, start a business, and expect it to scale into a successful self-managed company. Thus my job as a small business advisor really is really more about getting you developed than perfecting the business.
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Productdevelopment leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in productdevelopment. Its a key lean startup concept.
The second thing that’s changed is that we’re now Compressing the ProductDevelopment Cycle. In the 20 th century startups I was part of, the time to build a first product release was measured in years as we turned out the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. Today startups build products differently.
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 19, 2009 Lean hiring tips In preparing for the strategy series panel this week, I have been doing some thinking about costs. And all of that cost was caused by one activity: hiring. Hiring is no different from any other company process. Sounds a little abstract, though, doesnt it?
They realized that they were selling a bunch of cool products but none that had enough economic value. They had wasted a lot of money because they had raised a lot of money and therefore hired a large staff. We couldn’t cut productdevelopment (we had 23 people!) Really nice guy and clearly smart.
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. After your product launch. Point #1: Developing a Proof of Concept. Introduction.
The graphic below balances the risks cofounders take with their relative contributions to help answer this question. This covers one of the most common situations I encounter: For a pre-funding web startup whose team includes only a non-technical cofounder, how much equity should an incoming technical cofounder get?
Don’t hire people with skills and qualifications similar to yours. If you have a technical background and you are focused on productdevelopment, consider a co-founder with a sales and marketing background that can focus on selling your world class product. Don’t make everyone a founder.
Home About Contact Me How To Make It as a First-Time Entrepreneur Vinicius Vacanti Guide to Finding a Technical Co-Founder September 7, 2010 | View Comments Steve Job's Technical Co-Founder “I’ve got this HUGE idea. I just need to find a technical co-founder.&# So, why should they pick you?
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.
My name is Richard Simms and, I am a Cofounder of Tech Talent South. Our mission at TTS is to develop more tech talent in the South through beginner-focused programs teaching web development and computer programming. We actually met taking some web development classes in Chicago. Who are you and what do you do?
I’m reproducing in full here because it’s a great explanation of our solo-founder hypothesis and how we work more generally. Are you a solo founder with an idea? Snaptrip started as an idea, an excel spreadsheet and a passionate founder called Matt. THE DYNAMIC BETWEEN FOUNDER AND TEAM. FINDING A COFOUNDER.
The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in productdevelopment. 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.
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment I enjoyed reading a post today from Laserlike (Mike Speiser), on Scientific productdevelopment. I agree with the less is more productdevelopment approach, but for a different reason. Now that is fun.
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. Kelsey Meyer , Influence & Co. Hire T-Shaped People. Cross Train Members.
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, February 11, 2009 The free software hiring advantage This is one of those startup tips Im a little reluctant to share, because its been such a powerful source of competitive advantage in the companies Ive worked with. This approach gives you an edge in hiring. Instead, engage with the project.
Therefore, if you want to bring an MVP ( Minimum Viable Product ) to market, Werdelin approximates that you’ll need $50,000 to $250,000 , depending on the skill sets of the developers and designers you hire. Werdelin equates building a successful product to building a nightclub. 3) Facebook. 6) Pinterest.
Customer development is a parallel process to productdevelopment, which means that you dont have to give up on your dream. Our goal in productdevelopment is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers. Instead, we do everything possible to validate the founders belief.
This approach worked much better, but by this point one of the co-founders was frustrated with the customer dynamics (all business facing) and decided to leave to start a new consumer-facing business (he left on good terms, we are still good friends, and he’s much happier today).
Refreshing to finally see lean and agile thinking emerge in product/business-floors and not only in technology. Critical also, as the lean company/start-up can not be lean by just using lean principles in IT and not in ProductDevelopment/Management - a common misinterpretation of the Toyota Production System.
After all, if you already have an all-male startup, you’re already at a disadvantage when it comes to hiring the very women that could fix that imbalance. And yet, when I suggest this practice to hiring managers and recruiters alike, they rarely do it. Beyond hiring, our actual work process matters, too.
This post was written by Sarah Milstein, co-host of The Lean Startup Conference. Often, in very young organizations, those people are simply the founders. Last year, the co -founders of B ack to the Roots talked about their innovation accounting and how they were ignoring sales metrics in order to grow.
So what does CTO mean, besides just "technical founder who really cant manage anyone?" Labels: productdevelopment 15comments: mukund said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?
In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown, and the key to success is building an integrated team that includes productdevelopment in the feedback loop with customers. 2008 09 06 Eric Ries Haas Columbia Customer Development Engineering View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.
It should be even more important to the founders themselves, because it demonstrates that their business hypothesis is grounded in reality. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. In fact, this company hasn’t shipped any new products in months.
I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. To promote this metrics discipline, we would present the full funnel to our board (and advisers) at the end of every development cycle. Take a look and let me know what you think.
Luckily, I now have the benefit of a forthcoming book, The Principles of ProductDevelopment Flow. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , productdevelopment 11comments: Peter Severin said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Interesting post.
But first I think we need to save the product manager from that special form of torture only a waterfall productdevelopment team can create. Labels: productdevelopment 8comments: Vincent van Wylick said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?
I am convinced one of Joel Spolskys lasting contributions to the field of managing software teams will turn out to be the Joel Test , a checklist of 12 essential practices that you could use to rate the effectiveness of a software productdevelopment team. He wrote it in 2000, and as far as I know has never updated it.
They couldn’t keep up with the fast productdevelopment times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products. Hiring a VP of Sales in customer discovery typically sets a startup back.
This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for productdevelopment. Labels: productdevelopment Speed up or slow down? This is the first post that moves into making specific process recommendations for productdevelopment. Take a look and let me know what you think.
Ever since that time, I have struggled to explain how the feedback loop in customer development should interface with the feedback loop in productdevelopment. Eric Ries Lean Startup Schematic View Of Agile Development And Customer Development View more presentations from Eric Ries.
Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their productdevelopment leverage. The biggest source of waste in new productdevelopment is building something that nobody wants. Leverage productdevelopment with open source and third parties.
► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Take a look and let me know what you think.
Its inspired by the classic OODA Loop and is really just a simplified version of that concept, applied specifically to creating a software productdevelopment team. There are three stages: We start with ideas about what our product could be. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?
None of it would have happened if we had plenty of cash, or were content to count our progress by traffic or productdevelopment milestones. Luckily for me, my co-founders eventually prevailed and we went on to build a product that customers actually wanted. Labels: productdevelopment 4comments: Doug said.
► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Take a look and let me know what you think.
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. Are we solving the right problem? We can do better by focusing on process instead of personality.
Now he really thought I was nuts, replying "from the recruiter who hired me, of course!" If youre hiring creative, resourceful and smart people (and you are screening for that , right?) post) is very similar, I think the key is to hire smart people first, though. Are you hiring sysadmins? It was my turn to be dumbfounded.
► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Take a look and let me know what you think.
► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Take a look and let me know what you think.
The team hired only the best and the brightest. They are leaders, visionaries, founders and managers having tremendous success. They either had to hire a developer onto the art team itself (unthinkable) or learn those development skills themselves (which was, to be fair, really hard).
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