Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, December 8, 2008 Continuous integration step-by-step Lets start with the basics: Martin Fowlers original article lays out the mechanics of how to set up a CI server and the essential rules to follow while doing it. In this post I want to talk about the nuts and bolts of how to integrate continuous integration into your team, and how to use it to create two important feedback loops.

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Occam's Razor

DECEMBER 3, 2008

Michael, politely, says in an email: "I have done web analytics for five years, I have mastered Omniture, WebTrends and Google Analytics, I provide analysis and not just reporting. I feel like am an Analytics God. What would be your advice for me in terms of next steps for my career? My goal is to climb the ranks and increase my salary." Let me hasten to add two things.

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Eric Friedman

DECEMBER 25, 2008

I have looked at a number of web services both from their inception and early alpha, to beta programs and later stage developed businesses. I have been doing this for years and it was definitely a highlight in thinking about my current role. Services have ranged from simple features that make an every day task easier, to a full blown subscription based service that operates independently of any other system.

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Software By Rob

DECEMBER 10, 2008

Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Problems (For the Most Part) Resolved with WordPress and DreamHost MicroISVs, Software Products and Startups: Software by Rob’s Most Popular Posts of 2008 → 8 Ways to Recession-Proof Your Programming Career Becoming a Better Developer If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.

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Speaker: Nick Noreña, Innovation Coach and Advisor, Kromatic

Every startup and innovation project exists within an ecosystem that either helps or hurts that project. As innovation managers, we need to keep a pulse of that ecosystem and make sure we're helping those innovation projects we're managing every step of the way. In this webinar, Nick Noreña will walk through an Innovation Ecosystem Model that he and his team at Kromatic have developed to help investors, heads of product, teachers, and executives understand how they can best support innovation in

Startup

Professor VC

DECEMBER 18, 2008

ProfessorVC. The last blogger in Silicon Valley. Thursday, December 18, 2008. Why didnt I think of that?? Great ideas can come from many places. Some result from years of work and/or education while others are a result of trying to identify a unique solution to a consumer or business problem. Of course, there are those that are completely ridiculous ( think Pet Rock ).

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K9 Ventures

DECEMBER 14, 2008

In my previous post , I claimed that “Venture Capital is a people business in every sense of the word. It is therefore a boutique industry and it cannot scale.” Let me expand on that thought a little more to qualify what I’m saying. Unlike investing in public markets, investing in early stage companies happens before those companies have a real business, when it is just a concept and a team, and sometimes not even a whole team.

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Occam's Razor

DECEMBER 22, 2008

Admit it, you secretly live in the fear of your Senior Management finding out that your online greatness is less a result of your online campaigns and more a result of the tons and tons your company has invested in the real world. The real world. "Offline" to you and me. :). We tend to often overlook the pesky offline real world. Sooooo booorrring !

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Eric Friedman

DECEMBER 25, 2008

I recently added Facebook Connect functionality to the comments of this blog all powered by Disqus. This translates to allowing those people who have a Facebook account being able to easily comment on this blog. To see how to do this for your own site see the instructions straight from the source.

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Software By Rob

DECEMBER 23, 2008

Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← 8 Ways to Recession-Proof Your Programming Career Expenses You Don’t Think of When Starting a Business → MicroISVs, Software Products and Startups: Software by Rob’s Most Popular Posts of 2008 About this Blog , Micropreneurship , Software Development , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.

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Altgate

DECEMBER 31, 2008

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← How To Blog Like A Pro The World Without Altgate → Microsoft Buys 37signals For $300 Million Posted on December 31, 2008 by fnazeeri Not really. At least not yet. But that’s my prediction for 2009. Outrageous, huh? There are three elements of this prediction; let me address them in turn.

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K9 Ventures

DECEMBER 21, 2008

Holiday Greetings to all from K9 Ventures! I decided to post the greeting to our blog and website rather than sending it out via email to avoid the email-overload of holiday greetings that occurs every year. This way only those of you who come visit the K9 Ventures site (either on your own, or by seeing a link on the RSS fee d , Twitter , Facebook , LinkedIn , Plaxo etc.) will see our greeting and it won’t be force-fed through email!

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, December 6, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part three Those startups that manage to build a product people want have to deal with the consequences of that success. Having early customers means balancing the needs of your existing customers with the desire to find new ones. And still being a startup means continuing to innovate as well as keep the lights on.

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abovethecrowd.com

DECEMBER 1, 2008

“People see you having fun Just a-lying in the sun Tell them that you like it this way” – BTO, Takin’ Care of Business The seemingly chronic state of our economy, combined with the thundering sound of dire financial news has left many in a state of shock. This unprecedented moment in time [.].

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Eric Friedman

DECEMBER 26, 2008

Image via CrunchBase. I have been using Zemanta for the past few months on this blog to help bring interesting posts to the end of my own creations, pictures to give context, and links within writing to provide explanations. The main point of Zemanta is to provide seamless connections to content that would be relevant to your article, pictures for relevance, tags for organizing, and great links.

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Software By Rob

DECEMBER 3, 2008

Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← WordPress Headaches with Closing HTML Tag – Any Ideas? 8 Ways to Recession-Proof Your Programming Career → Problems (For the Most Part) Resolved with WordPress and DreamHost About this Blog If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.

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Caching RSS Software Review Hosting 27

Andrew Payne

DECEMBER 4, 2008

Jeff Bussgang wrote a great post about how VCs manage reserves. When a VC invests, they allocate (reserve) some additional amount for follow-on financing. For example, a company may raise $5m for Series A, but the fund will reserve $10m for Series B, C, etc. In the current climate, many reserve models are at risk of blowing up: VCs that assumed additional investors for later rounds may find themselves doing all the funding themselves (the “inside round”).

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K9 Ventures

DECEMBER 9, 2008

In my previous post , I talked about some of the reasons I felt that the venture industry was broken and needed reform. This has been something that I’ve been thinking about for a long time now (~1.5 years or more) and became the basis for me starting K9 Ventures. The logic there was that instead of just identifying a problem, do something to solve it.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 30, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, December 30, 2008 Assessing fit with the Wisdom of Crowds When I wrote earlier about how to conduct a good technical interview , I had only a few things to say about how to assess if the candidate fits in with the team, including this: This responsibility falls squarely to the hiring manager. You need to have a point of view about how to put together a coherent team, and how a potential candidate fits into that plan.

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abovethecrowd.com

DECEMBER 5, 2008

Over three years ago, I wrote a post titled, “Do VCs Help in Building a Technology Platform?“ The premise (as you can go see), was that VCs who once primarily invested in companies built on Microsoft’s platform, had almost universal switched to the open source LAMP stack as their technology platform of choice. This activity obviously helps [.

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Eric Friedman

DECEMBER 13, 2008

If a service fails in the cloud that no one is on, does it use any bandwidth? This is certainly old news but I just received the latest update on my XDrive account from AOL letting me know that the service will be shut down January 12, 2009 and all my files will be deleted. Please go to the Xdrive site at www.xdrive.com to download your files as soon as possible.

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Altgate

DECEMBER 27, 2008

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Washington Out Of Control Microsoft Buys 37signals For $300 Million → How To Blog Like A Pro Posted on December 28, 2008 by fnazeeri In the past year, I’ve harangued a number of friends relentlessly, telling them that they should start blogging.

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Andrew Payne

DECEMBER 4, 2008

Last Christmas, I got my daughter an Asus EEE PC netbook. We were one rev too early; the screen’s just slightly too small for Webkinz. But netbooks are great “first computers” for kids: small, light, and cheap enough it’s not a total disaster if it breaks. Plus, flash-drive models have no hard disk to fail, the leading cause of laptop destruction among kids.

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Pascal's View

DECEMBER 30, 2008

I've been a PADI certified scuba diver since 1991 and just recently obtained my advanced diver certification.  I've dived over 100 times, always in the ocean, and, of course, every diver is fascinated by, if not afraid of, shark encounters.  We've all read about the shark feeding programs that have developed at dive sites around the world, from Cape Town to Honduras– and there is plenty of controversy about whether sharks should be fed by humans– especially in

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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. Today, I was comparing notes with Ed Baker (one of the gurus of viral growth).

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Jason Ball

DECEMBER 10, 2008

It’s that time of year, and I’m heading off into turkey, present and (hopefully) gadget land for a few weeks. No real posts (unless total boredom sets in) until 2009. Happy Holidays everyone! (Picture credit: gun show ). Tags: Other.

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Seeing Both Sides

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Many pundits and economists observe that we are in the midst of the greatest financial crisis since the Great Depression. What they haven't fully yet processed is that we are in the midst of the greatest wave of government intervention in business since the New Deal. Across massive, diverse industries such as energy, health care and life sciences, financial services and automotive -- to name just a few -- we are embarking on arguably the most business-focused, activist US government in history

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Altgate

DECEMBER 7, 2008

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Startup Failures On The Rise UK Government To Launch VC Fund To Rescue Startups → Market Timing Is A Skill Not Luck Posted on December 7, 2008 by fnazeeri Selecting the ideal time to start a company is a skill, not just dumb luck.

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VC Adventure

DECEMBER 18, 2008

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Pascal's View

DECEMBER 20, 2008

One of my favorite tropical drinks is dark rum, tonic, and a generous lime wedge, served in a tall glass with lots of ice.  I sat down at Navutu's beach-side bar in the beautiful Yasawa islands yesterday evening, ordered my favorite, and the bartender made some conversation as he prepared the refreshing potion.  This is what followed: "Are you going to go to church tomorrow?

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aweissman.com

DECEMBER 31, 2008

skip to main | skip to sidebar. aweissman.com. Maximizing the serendipity around you. Dec 31, 2008. Things to Do. Kortina implored me to do resolutions, like him , instead I will just write down what I want to do more of next year: 1. Help spread the joy of Tipjoy. Of course I am hopelessly biased and financially motivated, but I think that what Abby and Ivan have created has the potential to be the right solution to alot of problems, in an open, distributed way, at the right time.

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Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 7, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, December 7, 2008 Getting started with split-testing One of the startup founders I work with asked me a smart question recently, and I thought Id share it. Unlike most of the people whove endured my one-line split-testing talk, this team has taken it to heart. Theyre getting started creating their first A/B tests, and asked "Should we split-test EVERYTHING?

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Seeing Both Sides

DECEMBER 18, 2008

My firm, Flybridge Capital Partners , launched a new program last week that was inspired by Scott Kirsner's blog post earlier this year on the tragedy of Massachusetts students not remaining in the state after they graduate. Scott called to task some of the industry associations who, in theory, should be welcoming to students but, in practice, create barriers by charging them for attending the critical industry events that would help weave them into the business community.

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Altgate

DECEMBER 17, 2008

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Geek Quotes The 3X Liquidation Preference Is Back! → Holiday Cards Posted on December 17, 2008 by fnazeeri For some reason, the best holiday cards seem to come out of venture capital firms instead of startups. Who knows why…maybe the companies have better stuff to work on.

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VC Adventure

DECEMBER 16, 2008

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Altgate

DECEMBER 18, 2008

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← Holiday Cards Year End Management Changes → The 3X Liquidation Preference Is Back! Posted on December 18, 2008 by fnazeeri A while ago I wrote about how a liquidation preference works and I’ve noticed that this has quickly become one of the most popular posts on Altgate and a top-10 result in the Google search for that term.

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Altgate

DECEMBER 15, 2008

@altgate Startups, Venture Capital & Everything In Between Skip to content Home Furqan Nazeeri (fn@altgate.com) ← A Squeeze On Boston Venture Valuations Geek Quotes → How Much Is A Free Customer Worth? Posted on December 15, 2008 by fnazeeri A while ago I wrote about a great HBR article titled, “ Strategies for a Two-Sided Market &# by Tom Eisenmann et al.

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