Customer Development, Product Development and Viral

[Review] The Lean Startup

YoungUpstarts

APRIL 21, 2013

Through rapid experimentation, short product development cycles, and rigorous measurements of the right metrics, they can ascertain what customers really want. Such direct experiences allows one to test critical “leap-of-faith” assumptions about what customers like and dislike.

Lean

Lean Technical Review North America Startup

Lessons Learned: The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

That green button was part of a customer flow, a series of actions you want customers to complete for some business reason. If its part of a viral loop, its probably trying to get them to invite more friends (on average). You just constantly test little micro-changes and follow a hill-climbing algorithm to build your product.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment

Business ecology and the four customer currencies

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2009

Each of these four currencies represents a way for a customer to “pay&# for services from a company. A great product enables customers, developers, partners, and even competitors to exchange their unique currencies in combinations that lead to financial success for the company that organizes them.

Customer

Customer San Francisco Viral Lean

Lessons Learned: Using AdWords to assess demand for your new.

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

If you cant find any , maybe that means you havent figured out who your customer is yet. And if you dont know who your customer is, perhaps some customer development is in order? Labels: customer development , search engine marketing 13comments: Jim Lindstrom said. What is customer development?

Demand

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. Their product development team is hard at work on a next-generation product platform, which is designed to offer a new suite of products – but this effort is months behind schedule.

Customer

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick

Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem)

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

There are often counter-intuitive changes in customer behavior that depend on little details. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. When we’re optimizing, product development teams encounter similar situations.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Metrics Design

Andrew Chen: Growing renewable audiences

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 12, 2008

vs. sustainable: Compare this to the renewable strategies, like viral marketing, SEO, widgets, and ads, which can scale into 10s of millions of users but are primarily centered around tough, non-user centric work. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

Audience

Audience San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean

How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 18, 2008

On Facebook, viral distribution has proved decisive. Those companies who have learned to build apps that optimize the viral loop dominate in every category where they compete. 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.

Distribution

Distribution San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: Continuous integration step-by-step

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

Software Review

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Engagement loops: beyond viral

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 16, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Engagement loops: beyond viral Theres a great and growing corpus of writing about viral loops, the step-by-step optimizations you can use to encourage maximum growth of online products by having customers invite each other to join.

Viral

Viral San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: The metrics and levers of engagement.

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

This is a common problem that results from viral-loop optimization. By copying the exact same registration flow as every other successful viral app, many viral apps completely lose their positioning. Customers cant even remember what apps theyve signed up for, and become entirely dependent on notifications to bring them back.

Metrics

Metrics San Francisco Lean Viral

Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Sometimes, a great hacker has the potential to grow into the CTO of a company, and in those cases all you need is an outside mentor who can work with them to develop those skills. At the end of the day, the product development team of a startup (large or small) is a service organization. Does this sound familiar?

Software Review

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Part-Time VPE

Reframing the problems with “Freemium” by charging the marketing department

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 16, 2013

Freemium is not customer development Just imagine how much you’ll learn once you have 1,000 real, active users of the system: Everything from behavioral statistics (which features are actually used?) to democratic product development (voting on which features customers would like to see next?).

Marketing

Marketing Viral Campaign Business Model

Lessons Learned: Q&A with an actual reader

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 29, 2008

Either way, you would have been better off focusing your split-test on high level metrics that measure how much customers like your product as a whole. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? Thoughts on scientific product development Lo, my 5 subscribers, who are you?

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part three

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

San Francisco

San Francisco SCRUM Lean Continuous Deployment

Assessing fit with the Wisdom of Crowds

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

Common Growth Hacking Myths (and How Growth Actually Works)

ConversionXL

FEBRUARY 9, 2016

” April, 2012 – Andrew Chen writes Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing , which goes viral (2.4K Now, people begin defining growth hacking as a process, a systematic approach, a “viral loop”, etc. Conducted Customer Development. Established a strong value proposition based on Customer Development.

Retention

Retention Metrics Acquisition Conversion

Lean Analytics: The Best Numbers for Non-Tech Companies

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 23, 2013

In the Udemy course, Alistair and Ben expand these basics into a description of how to create empathy, stickiness, virality, revenue, and scale. Stickiness, Ben and Alistair say, is where people move on too quickly--they don’t make sure they really have a product that has the right features and functionality to meet their customers’ needs.

Analytics

Analytics Lean Widget Metrics

Fail Fast, Fail Cheap? A contrarian point of view

VC Cafe

SEPTEMBER 10, 2010

Others would go even further and say it is better to launch half a product than a half-assed product. The Four Steps to the Epiphany (highly recommended book by Steve Blank) preaches for customer development before product development, advocating a quick launch with a minimal feature set rather than a full fledged product offering.

Lean

Lean Customer Development Audience Viral

The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Software Company

Up and Running

MAY 23, 2016

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. It’s a particularly popular strategy in the world of product development and is used to quickly and quantitatively test a product or a product feature.

Software Review

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast

[Excerpt] Earlyvangelists: The Most Important Customers of All

ReadWriteStart

JUNE 20, 2012

But even as nonpaying users, these earlyvangelists are willing or eager accelerators of your viral growth. We now know this results in wasted engineering effort, time and cash, as customers don’t use, want or need most of the features developed without their input. They understand they have a problem.

Customer

Customer Advisory Board Cofounder Engineer

Lessons Learned: Three freemium strategies

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 27, 2009

At a high level, anything that drives virality should be free. To take your specific example about virality - why do we want to have more users sign up? Is it that they act as free advertising for our premium product? The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

The Superbowl ad test

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 13, 2010

Is the company growing because of an amazing viral loop paired with a strong engagement loop? Most of the article is about the features – new and old – of the product. Is the company growing because of an amazing viral loop paired with a strong engagement loop? It’s possible, but the article doesn’t say.

San Francisco

San Francisco Metrics Lean PR

Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

I break the answer to that question down into three engines: Viral - this is the business model identified in the presentation as "Get Users." Here, the key metrics are Acquisition and Referral, combined into the now-famous viral coefficient. If the coefficient is > 1.0 , you generally have a viral hit on your hands.

San Francisco

San Francisco CPA SEM CTO Hire

Lessons Learned: CPI > CPC

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 11, 2009

If you ask an expert in Facebook apps to come help build yours, youll usually hear the same advice: build your app for virality. Thats sensible advice; most people who have made a business on Facebook rely on the viral driver of growth. The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup?

San Francisco

San Francisco Social Network Lean Continuous Deployment

Lessons Learned: The App Store after the gold rush

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 7, 2008

Acqusition competition is how new apps get new customers. On the web, we have many of these channels: SEM, SEO, world of mouth, PR and viral. If your app has strong word-of-mouth or viral components, your retention drives new acquisition, and its not so important to have good placement in the store.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Retention SEM

Lessons Learned: Don't launch

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

Do some Customer Development instead. If the product needs to be tweaked just a little bit in order to convert users into customers, you want to figure that out before the launch. If the viral coefficient is 0.9, And if your product doesnt retain customers, whats the point of driving a bunch of them to use it?

San Francisco

San Francisco PR Lean Early Stage

Innovation inside the box

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2009

(This is similar to the problem that viral loop companies have with the engagement loop : by making it too easy to join, they actually give away the positioning that allows for longer-term engagement.) Why was a team this smart, this disciplined, and this committed to waste-free product development creating so much waste?

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Metrics Continuous Deployment

Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life?

www.quora.com

JANUARY 16, 2011

" => I have not bothered to put up a landing page, survey to test customer demand, or done any customer development whatsoever. "Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life?" "I am a creative guy with a startup idea." However, I do spend a lot of time daydreaming.

Developer

Developer Technical Review Cofounder Technical Cofounder

Lessons Learned: Getting started with split-testing

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development ► June (3) What is a startup? ► August (2) SXSW Case Study: SlideShare goes freemium ► July (4) Case Study: kaChing, Anatomy of a Pivot Some IPO speculation Founder personalities and the “first-class man&# th.

San Francisco

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC

StartUpRoar

[Review] The Lean Startup

Lessons Learned: The one line split-test, or how to A/B all the time

Trending Sources

Business ecology and the four customer currencies

Lessons Learned: Using AdWords to assess demand for your new.

Lessons Learned: Validated learning about customers

Learning is better than optimization (the local maximum problem)

Andrew Chen: Growing renewable audiences

How to get distribution advantage on the iPhone

Lessons Learned: Continuous integration step-by-step

Engagement loops: beyond viral

Lessons Learned: The metrics and levers of engagement.

Lessons Learned: The hacker's lament

Reframing the problems with “Freemium” by charging the marketing department

Lessons Learned: Q&A with an actual reader

The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part three

Assessing fit with the Wisdom of Crowds

Common Growth Hacking Myths (and How Growth Actually Works)

Lean Analytics: The Best Numbers for Non-Tech Companies

Fail Fast, Fail Cheap? A contrarian point of view

The Ultimate Guide to Starting a Software Company

[Excerpt] Earlyvangelists: The Most Important Customers of All

Lessons Learned: Three freemium strategies

The Superbowl ad test

Lessons Learned: The three drivers of growth for your business.

Lessons Learned: CPI > CPC

Lessons Learned: The App Store after the gold rush

Lessons Learned: Don't launch

Innovation inside the box

Where is the best place to find a rockstar developer to bring it to life?

Lessons Learned: Getting started with split-testing

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