Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2010

(I am often asked to explain how to apply Lean Startup approaches to domains beyond software. The key to understanding Lean Startup is to recognize two things: Lean Startup techniques confer maximum benefit in the upper-right quadrant, namely high market uncertainty coupled with fast cycle time. The company was doomed.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

Since then, Brant and Patrick have been tireless advocates for the whole Lean Startup movement. From Lean Startup Machine , Lean LA and San Diego Tech Founders , to countless speeches and workshops, I have seen the impact that their leadership has had first hand.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, June 15, 2009 Why Continuous Deployment? Of all the tactics I have advocated as part of the lean startup , none has provoked as many extreme reactions as continuous deployment , a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months.

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www.subelsky.com

FEBRUARY 25, 2010

Mike Subelskys Blog Wednesday, November 11, 2009 Lean startup tools for Rails apps A few months ago I was invited to dinner with the Geeks on a Plane crew when they stopped in Washington, and had the opportunity to meet one of my heroes, Eric Ries , author of the Startup Lessons Learned blog. I thought Heroku would be on your list.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, January 18, 2010 Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases non-events The following is a case study of one entrepreneurs transition from a traditional development cycle to continuous deployment. Continuous Deployment is Continuous Flow applied to software.

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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

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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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 7, 2013

Last May, I shared the news that long-time Lean Startup advocates Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits were working on a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur featuring illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. LitMotors approach to using Lean Startup to create a new vehicle category. Startup blogging was hardly "cool" back then.

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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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usersknow.blogspot.com

APRIL 30, 2010

A good answer to this question should really include all of the following: I have both development and design time scheduled for quick follow up work on the feature over the next few sprints. Come hear me speak at the Startup Lessons Learned conference in San Francisco on April 23rd. Please plan for iteration. Follow me on Twitter.

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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.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Like a financial debt, the technical debt incurs interest payments, which come in the form of the extra effort that we have to do in future development because of the quick and dirty design choice. We can choose to continue paying the interest, or we can pay down the principal by refactoring the quick and dirty design into the better design.

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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. If youre trying to design an architecture to maximize agility, how can that work if some people are working in TDD and others not?

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Friday, February 20, 2009 Work in small batches Software should be designed, written, and deployed in small batches. Its had tremendous impact in many areas: continuous deployment , just-in-time scalability , and even search engine marketing , to name a few. I dont think so.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

This is precisely the dilemma that the doctrine of minimum viable product is designed to solve. 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. Rules of thumb can be infuriatingly unhelpful.

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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

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

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

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. Im keen on the two-kinds-of-bugs thing.

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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

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

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

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

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.

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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

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.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, August 8, 2009 Revisiting the Software Design Manifesto (and whats changed since then) My recent article on technical debt and its positive uses generated a fair bit of controversy. The argument itself got me thinking a lot about design and its role in building products.

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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. Expo SF (May.

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2009

In the past, we invested in brilliant architecture, code reuse, refactoring, modular design, etc. 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. Managing these situations is hard for any company, but potentially lethal for a startup.

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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. These specs are handed to a designer, who builds layouts and mockups of all the salient points. Then the designs are handed to a team of programmers with various specialties.

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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

JULY 13, 2009

Product development deals in designs, which are fundamentally intangible. and the resulting extreme uncertainty that is, incidentally, the environment where startups thrive. Reinertsen does not speak about startups specifically - his book is meant to speak broadly to product development teams across industries and sectors.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, April 7, 2010 Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem) Lean startups don’t optimize. When people (ok, engineers) who have been trained in this model enter most startups, they quickly get confused. And they’re not the only ones. That’s right.

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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

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 14, 2009 Business ecology and the four customer currencies Lately, I’ve been rethinking the concept of “business model&# for startups, in favor of something I call “business ecology.&# A successful startup strives for this latter case. And this is true outside of games.

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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

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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