This site uses cookies to improve your experience. To help us insure we adhere to various privacy regulations, please select your country/region of residence. If you do not select a country, we will assume you are from the United States. Select your Cookie Settings or view our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Used for the proper function of the website
Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Cookie Settings
Cookies and similar technologies are used on this website for proper function of the website, for tracking performance analytics and for marketing purposes. We and some of our third-party providers may use cookie data for various purposes. Please review the cookie settings below and choose your preference.
Strictly Necessary: Used for the proper function of the website
Performance/Analytics: Used for monitoring website traffic and interactions
Unfortunately in early stage startups the drive for financing hijacks the corporate DNA and becomes the raison d’etre of the company. Chasing funding versus chasing customers and a repeatable and scalable business model, is one reason startups fail. The goal of their startup in this stage becomes “getting funded.”
Finally, I’ll write about how Eric Ries and the Lean Startup concept provided the equivalent model for productdevelopment activities inside the building and neatly integrates customer and agile development.
The Japanese edition of The Startup Owner’s Manual hit the bookstores in Japan this week. I asked Tsutsumi-san to write a guest post for my blog to describe his experience with CustomerDevelopment in Japan. The result: great success of my third startup, a load balancing technology for web servers back in the late 1990’s.
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, July 13, 2009 The Principles of ProductDevelopment Flow If youve ever wondered why agile or lean development techniques work, The Principles of ProductDevelopment Flow: Second Generation Lean ProductDevelopment by Donald G. Reinertsen is the book for you.
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customerdevelopment? When we build products, we use a methodology. But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." a roadmap for how to get to Product/Market Fit."
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, September 7, 2008 CustomerDevelopment Engineering Yesterday, I had the opportunity to guest lecture again in Steve Blank s entrepreneurship class at the Berkeley-Columbia executive MBA program. Can this methodology be used for startups that are not exclusively about software?
For those of you who have been following the discussion, a Lean Startup is Eric Ries ’s description of the intersection of CustomerDevelopment , Agile Development and if available, open platforms and open source. Over its lifetime a Lean Startup may spend less money than a traditional startup. Lets see why.
I believe it is the best introduction to CustomerDevelopment you can buy. As all of you know, Steve Blank is the progenitor of CustomerDevelopment and author of The Four Steps to the Epiphany. Four Steps primarily centers its stories and case studies on B2B hardware and software startups.
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, March 16, 2009 Combining agile development with customerdevelopment Today I read an excellent blog post that I just had to share. Jim Murphy is a long-time agile practitioner in startups. But startups sometimes have trouble applying agile successfully. Enter Jims post.
Reading the NY Times article “ Jeffrey Katzenberg Raises $1 Billion for Short-Form Video Venture, ” I realized it was time for a new startup heuristic: the amount of customer discovery and product-market fit you need to find is inversely proportional to the amount and availability of risk capital. ” Fire, Ready, Aim.
Most startups fail. Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. The most common mistake startups make is assuming they can operate the same way big companies do, and expect success with little to no feedback from potential customers. image source.
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.
Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or CustomerDevelopment there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. Frank Robinson of SyncDev has been helping companies figure out their minimum viable product and pivots since 1984, long before I even knew what it meant.
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, September 30, 2008 What does a startup CTO actually do? When Ive asked mentors of mine who have worked in big companies about the role of the CTO, they usually talk about the importance of being the external face of the companys technology platform; an evangelist to developers, customers, and employees.
Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. As Lean Startup methods have been used now for a number of years, we’ve become increasingly interested in how companies use them to sustain growth. The hand-offs between teams are (mostly) eliminated, and close-working autonomy creates a good startup vibe as well.
Creators of new products in environments of extreme uncertainty, startups face enormous risks. As a startup owner, what can you do to improve your chances? Through rapid experimentation, short productdevelopment cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want.
This is part of my ongoing posts on Startup Advice. As organizations we have become more open and I believe this is great for businesses and their customers. Where we designed what we perceived to be a simple product they turned the customerdevelopment process it into a science. Turn Your Organization Inside Out.
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Productdevelopment leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in productdevelopment. Its a key lean startup concept.
I continue to collect great content that is the intersection of startups, products, online and technology. Equity-Only CTO and Equity-Only Developers - SoCal CTO , November 1, 2010 I had a recent email dialog with the founder of a company looking for a CTO for their startup. Was it a Startup Founder Developer Gap ?
Customer Validation. E.piphany was an 11-month-old startup with 31 people and on fire. We had closed four $100,000 deals for our customer relationship management software. He had just demo’d our product to his friend, the CFO of Autodesk. It was one thing for a startup to lose to a large company like Oracle or IBM.
Once upon a time every great organization was a scrappy startup willing to take risks – new ideas, new methods, new customers, targets, and mission. If they were a commercial company, they figured out product/market fit; or if a government organization, it focused on solution/mission fit. Companies Run on Process.
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?
It’s why all of you operated so well in the unpredictable environment that all startups face.” What makes an individual a great startup founder (versus an employee) has been something I had been thinking about since I retired. Next, you have to deal with the daily crisis of productdevelopment and acquiring early customers.
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.
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. In my opinion, every startup needs to "pick a major" among these three drivers of growth. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.
This tendency is a two edged sword: by iterating strategy a startup can dramatically improve the size and trajectory of the company, but at times this process can be the bane of venture investors (and why they have prematurely grey hair.)
It’s Not a Conversion Problem, It’s a CustomerDevelopment Problem. Most startups fail. Not because they have a conversion problem but because they never really nail the product or how to market it. Same goes for e-commerce, SaaS or any startup really. This is a customerdevelopment problem.
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.
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, November 4, 2008 Principles of Lean Startups, presentation for Maples Investments Image via Wikipedia Steve Blank and I had the opportunity to create a presentation about lean startups for Maples Investments. Agile software development. Customerdevelopment. you get the idea.
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.
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, January 12, 2010 Amazing lean startup resources A year ago, there was no lean startup movement. I continue to believe that the explosion of interest in the lean startup has very little to do with me. If you are attempting to apply lean startup ideas in your own business - you are not alone.
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.
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. Labels: productdevelopment 8comments: Vincent van Wylick said. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.
Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their productdevelopment leverage. In a startup, we should take full advantage of our options, even if they feel dirty or riddled with technical debt. Leverage productdevelopment with open source and third parties.
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 productdevelopment process. After all, our startup is on a fixed budget.
One day, we became convinced that a killer app for IMVU would be to sell a presidential debate bundle, where our customers could put on a Bush or Kerry avatar, and then engage in mock debates with each other. It was one of those brilliant startup brainstorms that comes to the team in a flash, with a giant thunderclap. Expo SF (May.
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.
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: customerdevelopment and agile development respectively.
They couldn’t keep up with the fast productdevelopment times that were enabled by using standard microprocessors. So their management teams were insisting that they OEM (buy from someone else) these products. The answer depends on your answer to two questions: which step in the CustomerDevelopment process are you on?
One of the most common questions I get about the lean startup methodology is, "but what about Steve Jobs ?" When I try to unpack what people mean by the question, heres my best take on what they are asking: "Look, Steve Jobs doesnt go out and ask customers what they want. He tells customers what they want, and he gets it right.
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, April 14, 2009 Validated learning about customers Would you rather have $30,000 or $1 million in revenues for your startup? In an early-stage startup especially, revenue is not an important goal in and of itself. Don’t startups exist for the same reason?
One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in productdevelopment is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. Yet startups rely on collective learning in order to find their way.
Luckily, I now have the benefit of a forthcoming book, The Principles of ProductDevelopment Flow. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , productdevelopment 11comments: Peter Severin said. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to CustomerDevelopment ► June (3) What is a startup? Interesting post.
It’s time to update Build, Measure, Learn to what we now know is the best way to build Lean startups. Build a product, get it into the real world, measure customers’ reactions and behaviors, learn from this, and use what you’ve learned to build something better. Waterfall Development. Here’s how.
We organize all of the trending information in your field so you don't have to. Join 5,000+ users and stay up to date on the latest articles your peers are reading.
You know about us, now we want to get to know you!
Let's personalize your content
Let's get even more personalized
We recognize your account from another site in our network, please click 'Send Email' below to continue with verifying your account and setting a password.
Let's personalize your content