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Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? Often times, it seems like people are thinking its synonymous with "that guy who gets paid to sit in the corner and think technical deep thoughts" or "that guy who gets to swoop in a rearrange my project at the last minute on a whim."
But the thing I am most proud of about Rob is that he has taken a company with a uniquely talented founder & CTO – Nick Halstead – and managed to build a very tight working relationship with Nick where we drive world-class productdevelopment without having the usual founder / CEO conflicts. Further Reading.
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.
Focus on the output metrics of that part of the product, and you make the problem a lot more clear. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. Its one of those situations where more data can impede learning.
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.
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.
Maybe youd like to start with The lean startup , How to listen to customers , or What does a startup CTO actually do? ) Eric, I landed upon your blog when I was searching for the path to CTO a couple of months back and I have been a frequent to the site since then. Your "startup-lessons-learned" are very valuable.
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. Hire a CTO or VP Engineering. Worst of all, your teammates are constantly wanting to have meetings.
Metrics for cyclical businesses. Productdevelopment. Queuing theory and productdevelopment. The Essential Product Investigation Phase Gate. What does a CTO do? What does a CTO do? What does a CTO (Chief Technology Officer) do in a high-tech company? So what is the CTO job?
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.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
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 productdevelopment team. There are three stages: We start with ideas about what our product could be.
“Everybody felt the burden of supporting all those transactions every day,&# says Pascal-Louis Perez, kaChing’s CTO. “It took a ton of our time, and just wasn’t contributing to our long term vision.&# “It took a ton of our time, and just wasn’t contributing to our long term vision.&#
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
For people we hired from larger companies especially, this was challenging. When a new engineer started at IMVU, I had a simple rule: they had to ship code to production on their first day. Making this fear-reduction strategy work required more than just the core team getting used to continuous deployment. Interesting article, Eric.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
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.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
.&# Most startups tend to think they are selling into an Existing market – a market exists and your company has a faster and better product. If that’s you, by all means hire a VP of Sales with a great rolodex and call on established mainstream companies – and ignore the rest of this post.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
So one of the first things we did was to hire an Oracle expert and get to work. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?
If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. If you don’t yet have a team yet, list the roles you need to hire for. Another great way to test your idea is to create a minimum viable product, or MVP. This is the simplest version of your product minus the frills and frosting. The business model.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
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. More importantly, it must not create a time sink.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
I used to think a giant flat-panel screen that broadcast our companys key metrics would be what was required to get everyone to pay attention to them. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.
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. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.
The more work youve sunk into a product or vision, the harder it is to let it go. As the CTO/VP Engineering, I was the worst offender. Leading up to a pivot, each cycle, despite our best efforts, the metrics werent good enough. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.
LawnStarter is one such company, so we sat down with their CTO, Jonas Weigert , to learn about how they experiment across their product and communication and how they deal with optimization as a company. They also experiment frequently with their own product’s functionality. Introducing Jonas Weigert and LawnStarter.
At IMVU, when wed hire a new engineer, we could get them to ship code to production on their first day, even if they had never programmed in PHP before. Which makes them exactly the kind of programmers companies should want to hire. In my role as a CTO, Ive always tried to choose the right tool for the right job.
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