Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2017

Guest Post by Misti Yang, Writer for Lean Startup Co. Editor’s Note: We wrapped up the 2017 Lean Startup Week in San Francisco just a few weeks ago, and we’re excited to share with you some of the best lessons learned in entrepreneurship and corporate innovation. Because these Lean Startup people, they do crazy stuff,” Alex joked. “So

Lean 245

Lean Startup CTO Hire Cofounder 245

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

VCs and Angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. More executives, or other more creative titles are seen as a big red flag. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales).

CTO Hire 252

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 252

Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 16, 2009

You develop a cynicism that the future will be better. Ryan was the most talented technologist we had hired at BuildOnline. We hired Ryan at a really young age and without a tremendous amount of prior experience. We had a strategy of hiring people really young because we couldn’t afford to hire too many senior people.

San Francisco 322

San Francisco South Africa CTO Hire Fractional CTO 322

Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

“Lean” is great in the early days but if you discover an attractive market opportunity you need to get “fat” really quickly or somebody else will. And the “stay lean” argument isn’t only good for entrepreneurs, it can be good for VCs, too. Ryan Lissack is the CTO of Maker Studios.

Silicon Valley 390

Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

VCs and Angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. More executives, or other more creative titles are seen as a big red flag. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales).

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

VCs and angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. More executives, or other more creative titles are seen as a big red flag. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales).

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

Up and Running

OCTOBER 13, 2022

As you find your footing and begin to scale, you might feel ready to hire a formal executive team. What’s right for one company may not make sense for another, but the goal is always the same — to hire talent that will ultimately help the business thrive. When is the right time to hire an executive team?

CTO Hire 163

CTO Hire Fractional CTO CTO Hiring 163

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 Customer Development Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Ive attempted to embed the relevant slides below. Talk about waste.

Customer Development 131

Customer Development Engineer San Francisco Developer 131

ReadWriteStart

JANUARY 16, 2020

Being relatively a new service trend in today’s tech-driven world, CTO-as-a-Service (CaaS) is notably gaining its momentum. Though CTO as a traditional full-time position exists for decades, some companies do not feel they need a technology executive. Ideal scenario assumes there’s a CTO in house. Early-stage startups.

Fractional CTO 85

Fractional CTO CTO CTO Hire Part-Time VPE 85

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

In this model, you take some fraction of the lifetime value of each customer and plow that back into paid acquisition through SEM, banner ads, PR, affiliates, etc. Beware the new hire who has "extensive experience" in startups or big companies - using a different growth driver. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire 167

SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

aka: An Open Letter to the Next Big Social Network) - 500 Hats , November 1, 2010 I've held off writing this post for a long time, because I couldn't quite get my head around all the issues. Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ? Call it facts for hire. How to Take Down Facebook -- Hint: It Ain't Twitter. But I don’t think so.

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

VCs and Angel investors like to see a startup that is running lean and mean, with no more than three or four of the conventional C-level or VP titles. The most common ones I see and salute are CEO, CFO, and CTO. More executives, or other more creative titles are seen as a big red flag. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales).

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

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? ) 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.

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

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. This is not what I have in mind.

San Francisco 166

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

kaChing has been very active in the Lean Startup movement. With case studies like this, we aim to illustrate specific Lean Startup techniques through the stories of current practitioners. “Everybody felt the burden of supporting all those transactions every day,&# says Pascal-Louis Perez, kaChing’s CTO.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 14, 2011

Open data, open innovation, and big data are enablers of this new management method, by making it possible for organizations to continuously - in real-time - evaluate whether their work is having an impact. But I talked to a number of people in agencies across the executive branch that are actually using a lean startup approach.

DC 167

DC CTO Hire Fractional CTO Silicon Valley 167

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. Each has its own iterative process: customer development and agile development respectively.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

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 product development team. Joel said it: "Top notch development teams dont torture their programmers."

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

And we cant hire new engineers any faster, because you cant be interviewing and debugging and fixing all at the same time! Even with the highest standards imaginable, theres no way to hire just genius hackers. This is one of the bedrock practices of any lean startup , and so its a common piece of advice I give out.

Software Review 94

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Part-Time VPE 94

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

For people we hired from larger companies especially, this was challenging. For one, it required us to keep our developer sandbox setup procedure simple and automated. Such changes inevitably waste a lot of time, since we generally build a lot more developer sandboxes than we realize. May 11, 2009 9:42 PM Artem said.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2008

Only much later did I realize that this was an application of customer development to online marketing. There is much work that I need to do (the only developer so far) before we have something customers can use. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Expo SF (May. .

SEM 164

SEM San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

After all, the worst kind of waste in software development is code to support a use case that never materializes. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science?

San Francisco 94

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Agile Lean 94

blog.chrisomeara.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

Chris OMeara Main | Probing Code Quality » 01/31/2010 Startup CTO: Could It Work? A CEO friend of mine recently asked my opinion about Tony Karrers Startup CTO or Developer article. I think the part time CTO could work. Assuming your business succeeds and grows youll need a proper CTO at some point.

Fractional CTO 40

Fractional CTO CTO Hire Startup Cofounder 40

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 2, 2008

This simple feedback loop has proven its worth to me time and again. Its inspired by the classic OODA Loop and is really just a simplified version of that concept, applied specifically to creating a software product development team. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 142

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean DC 142

konamoxt.com

OCTOBER 23, 2010

January 21, 2009 Why Your Startup Can’t Afford To NOT Hire a CTO As I mentioned in my last post, one of the many things I do as an entrepreneur is to advise other start up companies. One of the common requests I get as an adviser is the help interview and vet potential CTO candidates. This is critical!

CTO Hire 40

CTO Hire CTO Hiring Engineer 40

crowdSPRING Blog

NOVEMBER 11, 2011

Zynga Leans On Some Workers to Surrender Pre-IPO Shares – [link]. Graphic Design Basics Part 2: Design Principles – [link]. Legal Contracts for Software Developers Who Hate Contracts (w/free contract template tco use today) – [link]. Pandora CTO Reveals Half of The U.S.

Social Media 94

Social Media Small Business Design CTO Hire 94

crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 4, 2013

Dharmesh Shah , Founder and CTO at HubSpot and Blogger at OnStartups.com wrote in a recent post on this topic: Never automatically discount a message simply because you discount the messenger. For example, I recently wrote about ways that business owners can apply lean startups principles to marketing and test ideas in small batches.

Small Business 125

Small Business CTO Hire Startup Cofounder 125

Steve Blank

OCTOBER 5, 2009

Supercomputers get Personal Back in Sunnyvale my friend had not only been hired but had convinced the team that we should be building hardware – making a new class of computers not a software application. Wasn’t he a CTO or something? (He Reply Karma in the Lean Startup Era , on January 28, 2010 at 5:26 pm Said: [.]

North Carolina 133

North Carolina Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 14, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Customer Lean Continuous Deployment 131

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

0comments: Post a Comment Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Subscribe via email Blog Archive ► 2010 (48) ► October (3) Case Study: Rapid iteration with hardware The Lean Startup Bundle Stop lying on stage ► September (4) Good enough never is (or is it?) Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

Audience 119

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 119

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 1, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 1, 2008 Test-Driven Development as andon cord You cannot control what you cannot see, and the hardest part of managing software projects is that the final product is so intangible. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco 68

San Francisco Developer Continuous Deployment DC 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 Thoughts on scientific product development I enjoyed reading a post today from Laserlike (Mike Speiser), on Scientific product development. The goal of iterative development is to give us guard rails so we dont veer off to either extreme. you can be incredibly scientific.

Product Development 68

Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 5, 2008

October 13, 2008 9:44 PM Post a Comment Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Subscribe via email Blog Archive ► 2010 (48) ► October (3) Case Study: Rapid iteration with hardware The Lean Startup Bundle Stop lying on stage ► September (4) Good enough never is (or is it?) Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

Open Source 107

Open Source San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean 107

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 28, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 28, 2008 The lean startup comes to Stanford Im going to be talking about lean startups (and the IMVU case in particular) three times in the next two weeks at Stanford. Let me end with a challenge: see if you can find and kill just one myth in your development team.

Lean 68

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 68

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

Like gmlk, I usually subscribe the first time I find something useful. I originally thought I might get some development process tips (I manage developers), but I find that Im really enjoying your business tips (SEM, listening to customers, etc.). Lean Start-up SlideShare prez at Web 2.0 9 - Retweeted "2." So why you?

San Francisco 133

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 133

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, September 10, 2008 Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now Smarticus — 10 things you could be doing to your code right now A great checklist of techniques and tools for making your development more agile, written from a Rail perspective. Expo SF (May. . Expo SF (May.

Software Review 68

Software Review San Francisco Technical Review Continuous Deployment 68

The Next Web

DECEMBER 4, 2013

These categories came from Yonder conference , a conference held to discuss just such challenges and solutions: hiring and onboarding. In short, these are the top 10 remote team management lessons I have learned: Find a way to meet at the same time. Hire those you trust. when to meet face to face. timezones and calendar issues.

Management 152

Management SCRUM CTO Hire Distribution 152