Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, October 5, 2008 The product managers lament Life is not easy when youre working in an old-fashioned waterfall development process, no matter what role you play. The product manager was clearly struggling to get results from the rest of the team. Lets start with what the product manager does.

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Both Sides of the Table

NOVEMBER 3, 2009

Do you really want to spent $100k building a product to discover through Customer Development that the market is too small? Let’s start with how much value you think you’ll create for your customer if they use your product in terms of hours saved, costs avoided, extra sales, better conversion rates or whatever.

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Steve Blank

MARCH 31, 2011

Over the last decade we assumed that once we found repeatable methodologies (Agile and Customer Development , Business Model Design) to build early stage ventures, entrepreneurship would become a “science,” and anyone could do it. It is a very different skill than science, engineering, or management. Where Did We Go Wrong?

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Agile Customer Development Early Stage Business Model 334

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 2, 2009

For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of Customer Development , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. The Customer Development process (and the Lean Startup) is one way to do that.

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 19, 2009

While the last post was titled “ You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When They Offer You a Job “, this post should probably be titled, “You Know You’re Getting Close to Your Customers When You Offer Them a Job.&# These hires were definitely not your standard marketing types.

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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. This engineering manager is a smart guy, and very experienced.

Software Review 164

Software Review Engineer Management Technical Review 164

Steve Blank

JANUARY 25, 2011

He hired an operating exec as the CEO a few years ago. With a few more questions I learned that the code base, which had now grown large, still had vestiges of the original exploratory code written back in the early days when the company was in the discovery phase of Customer Development.

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Part-Time VPE Agile Engineer Startup 325

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

In the last decade Torch managed to break free of China’s state central planning bureaucracies. They provide consulting, promotion, product testing, hiring, training and incubation services to startups. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. Technology Business Incubators (TBIs).

Programming 287

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 287

Steve Blank

JUNE 29, 2009

You’re Hired, You’re Fired. My first job in Silicon Valley: I was hired as a lab technician at ESL to support the training department. I was met by a very apologetic manager who said, “We’ve been trying to get a hold of you for the last week. Could I work here if he wanted to hire me?&#

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 10, 2011

50% the fault of a Nokia management that didn’t see it coming, while 50% was due to brilliant Apple execution.) They’ve stopped hiring the best talent, and startups are not looking so risky compared to large companies. Filed under: Business Model versus Business Plan , Customer Development , Teaching , Venture Capital.

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Finland Naming Russia Government 332

Steve Blank

APRIL 5, 2017

Potential customers such as gamers who like to play specific types of games? Or people inside companies with a specific title, like product or program managers, CIOs, etc? Founders ask me all the time whether they should hire a PR agency. influencers”) and how they manage them (e.g. Everyone in San Francisco?

Marketing 318

Marketing Audience Technical Review PR 318

Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

Berkeley Haas Business School was courageous enough to give me a forum teach the Customer Development Methodology. In ten years, from the early 1950′s to the early 1960′s, the valley went through a hiring frenzy as jobs in microwave companies went from 700 to 7,000. Who would have known? Armstrong was a god!

Silicon Valley 302

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Steve Blank

MARCH 2, 2011

The Energy Storage division is acting like a startup, and Prescott Logan its General Manager, has lived up to the charter. Working with him, I’ve been impressed to watch his small team embrace Customer Development (and Business Model Generation ) and search the world for the right product/market fit. You couldn’t be more wrong.

Silicon Valley 239

Silicon Valley Agile Customer Development Early Stage 239

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 19, 2009

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?

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Lean Hiring San Francisco Continuous Deployment 140

Startup Professionals Musings

APRIL 28, 2014

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Unless your business is a religion, I don’t recommend it for a startup these days. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales).

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Steve Blank

OCTOBER 15, 2019

What had previously been a strength – their great management processes – now holds back their ability to respond to new challenges. Once upon a time every great organization was a scrappy startup willing to take risks – new ideas, new methods, new customers, targets, and mission. However, their biggest obstacle is internal.

Government 322

Government Technical Review Acquisition Metrics 322

Steve Blank

JULY 16, 2009

Successful pinball companies didn’t hire Hollywood talent. Meanwhile our company was pouring an enormous amount of dollars into building tools and video compression technology, while also hiring a lot of high-priced Hollywood talent like art directors, and script and story editors. I know what’s great and what’s not.

Silicon Valley 223

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Startup Professionals Musings

FEBRUARY 22, 2013

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Unless your business is a religion, I don’t recommend it for a startup these days. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales).

CTO Hire 244

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 244

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

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. But I’m not convinced those labels are right at all. Thank you.

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San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 5, 2018

He just hired Meg Whitman. Given the stock market was buying “the story and vision” of anything internet, inflated expectations were more important than traditional metrics like customers, growth, revenue, or heaven forbid, profits. the ex-CEO of HP and eBay, as CEO of NewTV.

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Lean Burn Rate Startup IPO 335

Steve Blank

JUNE 25, 2009

Twenty eight years ago I was the bright, young, eager product marketing manager called out to the field to support sales by explaining the technical details of Convergent Technologies products to potential customers. They couldn’t keep up with the fast product development times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors.

Technology 145

Technology Silicon Valley Fractional VPE Part-Time VPE 145

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 1, 2010

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Unless your business is a religion, I don’t recommend it for a startup these days. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales).

CTO Hire 227

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Startup Angel Investor 227

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

When I asked our trade show manager she looked at me like I was the house idiot and said, “Steve, don’t you know that my job is to set up our trade show booth?” But my favorite was when the public relations manager said, “we’re here to write press releases and answer the phone in case the press calls.” This is a big idea.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

Steve Blank

APRIL 14, 2013

The large players like Alibaba, Baidu and Tencent historically would be more likely to simply copy a startup’s features than to hire their talent. Management 101. But the differences are worth noting – it’s a young ecosystem, so startup management tools are nearly non-existent. Perhaps it’s the weather.

China 328

China Silicon Valley Non-Compete Intellectual Property 328

Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. I was hired as a training instructor to teach microprocessor system design for the existing Z-80 family and to write a new course for Zilog’s soon to be launched 16-bit processor, the Z-8000. You created it and own it.

Silicon Valley 206

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 1, 2014

Ben Horowitz ’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things is driving the conversation around startup management this year. Bob Sutton is a Stanford professor and the author of several best-selling books on standout management, including Scaling Up Excellence , an investigation of high-growth companies. Eric Ries will interview him.

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Lean Fractional CTO Part-Time VPE Fractional VPE 165

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 29, 2008 The ABCDEFs of conducting a technical interview I am incredibly proud of the people I have hired over the course of my career. This second objective plays no small part in allowing you to hire the best. Hiring decisions are among the most difficult, and the most critical.

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San Francisco Lean Agile Java 146

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 7, 2010

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, January 7, 2010 Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? My explicit goal in working with HBR is to foster a dialog between entrepreneurs and more traditional general managers. Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? - Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? Without further ado.

San Francisco 119

San Francisco Management Continuous Deployment Lean 119

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 17, 2010

Well, at least without the usual definition of "sales" — a collection of processes, personalities, and management single-mindedly focussed on hauling in revenue on a quarterly schedule. Apparently tech support is a better "social media outreach" program than hiring interns to spray comments on random blogs. Are you surprised?

Technical Review 245

Technical Review Sales Turkey Software Review 245

Steve Blank

APRIL 11, 2013

In the last decade Torch managed to break free of China’s state central planning bureaucracies. They provide consulting, promotion, product testing, hiring, training and incubation services to startups. Filed under: China , Customer Development , Technology , Venture Capital. Technology Business Incubators (TBIs).

Programming 179

Programming Technical Review SBIR China 179

Both Sides of the Table

FEBRUARY 7, 2010

My first company launched in 1999 and we were offering a SaaS document management in the cloud (we were called ASPs back then). I didn’t have first-hand experience in document management systems other than as a user and nobody had SaaS experience – the market was too new. I’ll always point out when I am.).

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San Diego Entrepreneur Philadelphia Cloud 267

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2017

— I just watched a very smart company try to manage innovation by hiring a global consulting firm to offload engineering from “distractions.” So, in response the company had hired a global consulting firm to help solve the problem. A shorter version of this post first appeared on the HBR blog. There’s a much better way.

Incubator 319

Incubator Curation Engineer Government 319

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development. 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.

Lean 168

Lean San Francisco Startup Continuous Deployment 168

Gust

APRIL 20, 2014

What you really need is a VP of Marketing and Customer Development, who can help with lead generation and honing the message, rather than an executive to manage a sales team and existing customers. Unless your business is a religion, I don’t recommend it for a startup these days. Chief Sales Officer (VP Sales).

CTO Hire 171

CTO Hire Fractional CTO Angel Investor Public Relations 171

Steve Blank

MAY 15, 2009

We hired an interior designer and a great facilities person to manage the process. If the management team is thinking they’ve made it, the new building is just symptomatic of a company heading for a crash. We need our own cafeteria so employees don’t have to leave the building. A VERY nice office.

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SoCal CTO

DECEMBER 1, 2010

So let’s be very specific: let’s assume your dream job is product manager at Google, working on the Analytics product. The Ultimate Combination of Startup Business Development Methods - ArcticStartup , November 16, 2010 I've been a huge fan of Steven Blank's Customer Development methodology for a long time. Where is it?

Technical Review 175

Technical Review Technology Product CTO Hire 175

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

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.

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San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167