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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."
by Adam Root, founder and CTO of Hiplogiq. Most of us would want to hire the most experienced, cutthroat lawyer specializing in multimillion-dollar mergers. Do you want the product, or does your target market want the product? Professionalisms Adam Root Hiplogiq productdevelopment startup' A DUI lawyer?
Paid - if your product monetizes customers better than your competitors, you have the opportunity to use your lifetime value advantage to drive growth. 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.
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.
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. Ive founded and self-funded a (lean) startup on my own.
The founder may not have been as experienced as they are today, but they have some unique insights about a problem and unique connection to the opportunity that propelled them as a first-time founder. The second time around, it’s much harder to recapture this authenticity. 2: Fleeing from the familiar.
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.
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, September 13, 2008 SEM on five dollars a day How do you build a new product with constant customer feedback while simultaneously staying under the radar? Trying to answer that question at IMVU led me to discover Google AdWords and the world of search engine marketing. SEM is a simple idea.
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.
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. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?
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.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
This gets me into trouble, because it conjures up for some the idea that productdevelopment is simply a rote mechanical exercise of linear optimization. You just constantly test little micro-changes and follow a hill-climbing algorithm to build your product.
“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.&#
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.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
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. Ironically, although its the solution team that is the early-warning system ("canary in the coal mine") for pivots, its actually hard for the solution team to make the decision to pivot.
Not many customers ever browse the app directory or search for specific apps - they dont have to, they find out about apps by being invited by a friend. If your site is consistently ranked #1 for a given search term, you can make it very hard for someone else to compete for new customers. I havent found any yet.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
So one of the first things we did was to hire an Oracle expert and get to work. Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? I was building a new startup in 1999, and wanted to do it right. I had heard that all great companies built their applications on Oracle.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
This is one of my favorite startup presentations of all time by Mike Cassidy on going fast. Demonstrate that you can pull the trigger on things quickly — whether it be getting customers, hiring / firing employees, or productdevelopment. And convey this in your pitch. But you need to address the landscape.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
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. Only talking to real-life people will help you figure out whether you’ve got a good product, or just a solution in search of a problem, or a product in search of a market.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
Thoughts on scientific productdevelopment Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you? Q&A with an actual reader The lean startup comes to Stanford You don't need as many tools as you think The three drivers of growth for your business mode.
What happened was that we all loved the idea of what this product could do. We ended up with a product that was searching for a market instead of first spending the time to figure out who our ideal customer was and building a product specifically for them. Instead, we built a product first (that’s expensive!)
But six months in, you’re gonna cry when you see someone else put out that same product you’re pitching me right now. Like I said, forget everything else and just get your product out the door. Inevitably, the excuses begin: I need to hire people to build the product. I don’t know any developers. No phone system.
Quora Home About Login Sign Up Add Question Before adding a question, search for it above. Smart teams understand quickly that all three skills are essential - if you can't recognize the need, you won't be able to hire for it or value it. Add Comment • Dec 7, 2010 View All 2 Comments Cannot add comment at this time.
Quora Home About Login Sign Up Add Question Before adding a question, search for it above. Developer, engineer, CTO, or technical co-founder? If you have an idea and either customers waiting for the product to be built, or a startup success under your belt already, skip to step 2. This is not to say you should give up.
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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