Startup Lessons Learned
NOVEMBER 13, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 13, 2008 Five Whys Taiichi Ohno was one of the inventors of the Toyota Production System. His book Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production is a fascinating read, even though its decidedly non-practical. After reading it, you might not even realize that there are cars involved in Toyotas business.
Occam's Razor
NOVEMBER 17, 2008
"Experiment or die, there is no try." That was my call to action, Yoda inspired, last week to a group of international C-level executives. And I meant every word of it. There is a tendency to think experimentation and testing is optional. Ouch! I fundamentally believe that is wrong. For a few simple reasons: # 1 It's Not Expensive! You can start for free with a superb tool: Google's Website Optimizer.
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Cracking the Code
NOVEMBER 13, 2008
Cracking The Code. Thoughts from a Venture Capitalist on Software, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Cloud Computing, Internet and more. Thursday, November 13, 2008. Getting through the downturn: a few thoughts for SaaS companies planning their 2009 budget. A few days ago, Bessemer West Coast SaaS Practice - David Cowan , Byron Deeter and myself, hosted a CFO Dinner for our SaaS portfolio at John Bentleys in Redwood City.
Software By Rob
NOVEMBER 18, 2008
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← I’m in a Book! Blog Blazers: 40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets Startup Success Podcast, Open Source For-Profit Startups, One Laptop Per Child 2008, and $19 Usability Testing → The Software Product Myth Micropreneurship , Startups If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.
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
SoCal CTO
NOVEMBER 21, 2008
Google now shows me an option to push things in my search results to the top. It's an interesting choice. Doesn't it seem like it's inviting problems. Basically the only people who will spend time on this is people trying to improve their search rankings. The rest of us signal with lots of other things like links, bookmarking, etc. Not sure I buy this approach from Google.
Professor VC
NOVEMBER 13, 2008
ProfessorVC. The last blogger in Silicon Valley. Thursday, November 13, 2008. Man Camp. Just returned from a golf trip to Bandon Dunes , Oregon. We played a Ryder Cup style tournament with 16 guys (the motley crew to your left) over 3 days and 72 holes, with a few drinks mixed in. Waking up Monday morning with a golf hangover, I remembered I hadnt had time to prepare for my class that afternoon.
Start Up Roar brings together the best content for start up professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
Pascal's View
NOVEMBER 1, 2008
We have some engaging and topical new content on our VC-InsideOut podcast program– Episode 7 in our Governance Series, "Best Practices for the High-Performance Board" This is a first for VC InsideOut as we recorded a live, 92 minute program at the Pillsbury Winthrop law firm this past Thursday morning. Allison Leopold Tilley, Danial Faizullabhoy, Chris Rust, Pascal Levensohn The panel consisted of Chris Rust, General Partner of US Venture Partners , who sits on the b
BeyondVC
NOVEMBER 17, 2008
Cloud this, Cloud that – the word cloud is clearly an overhyped word and reminds me of the beginning of the hype around hosted models and ASPs (application service providers) in the late 90s and the term SAAS today. Anyway, as I look at announcement after announcement released about cloud computing platforms, one thing is pretty clear to me from an investment perspective. First, I am not going to invest in the next hot cloud computing infrastructure service that will compete
Software By Rob
NOVEMBER 27, 2008
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Landing Clients Nearly 100% of the Time, Car Insurance by the Mile, and 91 Ways to Become a Better Developer Problems (For the Most Part) Resolved with WordPress and DreamHost → WordPress Headaches with Closing HTML Tag – Any Ideas?
Eric Friedman
NOVEMBER 12, 2008
Links roundup for the middle of the week on 11/12/2008 – Enjoy! Blackberry vs. iphone vs. treo failure rate. Social Media is like the Matrix – Because you have to USE social media to understand it. No more windows 3.x - the end of an era. Ways to fail and come out on top. Are holographic reporters going to become the norm? I hope not… Things you wish you knew when you were younger.
Tim Keane
NOVEMBER 11, 2008
'Startups and angels: Along the way to success. By Tim Keane, Angel Investor, Golden Angels Investors, LLC. Home. Archives. Profile. Subscribe. « Paying attention to the business model: Whos in charge here? | Main. | Two Rules: No Ask, No Get. and. If Not Now, When? » November 11, 2008. What Entrepreneurs and Angels Want To Know. Madison, WI -- Here' are two downloads to my presentation from last week's Early Stage Symposium, "What Entrepreneurs and Angels Want To Know A
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. Finding great engineers is hard; figuring out whos good is even harder. The most important step in evaluating a candidate is conducting a good technical interview. If done right, a programming interview serves two purposes simultaneously.
K9 Ventures
NOVEMBER 30, 2008
The business of venture capital is relatively young. The birth of modern-day venture capital (not considering the European monarchs financing explorations and projects as venture capital) can be traced back to American Research and Development, which was started by Georges Doriot. Spencer Ante ‘s book Creative Capital provides and in-depth history of the life of Georges Doriot.
Andrew Payne
NOVEMBER 20, 2008
I read about the 40% drop in property values in Dubai , and it reminded me of a model I use to think about bubbles: The slope of the rise is (negative) the slope of the fall. The crazyness in the world (Dubai, hedge funds, etc.) is going to come down pretty fast & hard.
Software By Rob
NOVEMBER 25, 2008
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Startup Success Podcast, Open Source For-Profit Startups, One Laptop Per Child 2008, and $19 Usability Testing WordPress Headaches with Closing HTML Tag – Any Ideas? → Landing Clients Nearly 100% of the Time, Car Insurance by the Mile, and 91 Ways to Become a Better Developer Cool News, Links & Reviews If youre trying grow your startup you
Eric Friedman
NOVEMBER 10, 2008
I recently interviewed Motoko Hunt of AJPR for Search Engine Strategies Chicago where she will be speaking in the Search Around the World: Europe, Asia/Pacific & Latin America panel. Motoko Hunt. 1. What is your background and what do you do for www.ajpr.com ? On my first “real” job, I was a corporate interpreter/translator. Then I got into marketing, and worked as Senior Marketing and Procurement Manager at Japanese trading firm in California.
Jason Ball
NOVEMBER 21, 2008
I couldn’t believe my eyes this morning when I ran a search on Google. If you are signed in, you can now promote results as well as leave comments. I had asked a Googler last year when they were going to meld Bookmark Sync (social ranking) to Google’s PageRank. This is equally good/better. Google’s been wikified. This appears to be a staged roll out, so here’s a screen shot showing where you can promote, remove or comment on a result: There’s also a video on YouTube
Startup Lessons Learned
NOVEMBER 8, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Saturday, November 8, 2008 What is customer development? When we build products, we use a methodology. For software, we have many - you can enjoy a nice long list on Wikipedia. But too often when its time to think about customers, marketing, positioning, or PR, we delegate it to "marketroids" or "suits." Many of us are not accustomed to thinking about markets or customers in a disciplined way.
Pascal's View
NOVEMBER 7, 2008
Vivek Wadhwa, currently a Wertheim Fellow at the Harvard Law School and a successful tech entrepreneur, wrote a constructive article in Business Week , " Startups: The Upside of a Downturn" , providing advice and encouraging entrepreneurs not to wait to start a business during a recession– on the contrary, he identifies a recessionary environment as supportive of well-crafted new business opportunities. For a link to the full article, click here. I've exce
Andrew Payne
NOVEMBER 13, 2008
I can never be a politician; I’m way too good at verbal gaffes. In an attempt to be funny or witty, I frequently manage to blurt out something wildly inappropriate, embarrassing myself and everyone around me. But there’s no a tape or video recorder to memorialize the moment. The Internet is a different story: every blog post you write, picture you post, Facebook wall you write on — it’s all there “forever” As time goes on, we’re all sharing more, bu
Software By Rob
NOVEMBER 21, 2008
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← The Software Product Myth Landing Clients Nearly 100% of the Time, Car Insurance by the Mile, and 91 Ways to Become a Better Developer → Startup Success Podcast, Open Source For-Profit Startups, One Laptop Per Child 2008, and $19 Usability Testing Becoming a Better Developer , Cool News, Links & Reviews If youre trying grow your startup youve co
Eric Friedman
NOVEMBER 6, 2008
I wanted to link to a great article I read today detailing how difficult it can be to tell someone something. Sometimes no matter how much you explain something the final result is much easier to understand. I know first hand that a phone conversation about an idea can torpedo the real information because there is nothing in front of everyone to reference.
Startup Lessons Learned
NOVEMBER 17, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, November 17, 2008 The four kinds of work, and how to get them done: part one Ive written before about some of the advantages startups have when they are very small, like the benefits of having a pathetically small number of customers. Another advantage of the early stages is that most dont have to juggle too many competing priorities.
Pascal's View
NOVEMBER 5, 2008
VentureBeat has published a guest column that I wrote on this topic "Recession: A Good Time to Trade Money for Power?" based on new research analyzed by Professor Noam Wasserman of Harvard Business School (HBS). On October 23, 2008, I moderated a panel on. normal"> Effective Board Leadership for Long-Term Success at the Forum for. Women Entrepreneurs & Executives at the offices of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR) in Palo.
Andrew Payne
NOVEMBER 9, 2008
There is some big news buried under Obama’s election win: the FCC has adopted rules allowing for unlicensed use of some TV spectrum. This is HUGE news. Spectrum is a finite resource, and it’s availability (or lack of) is a limiting factor in satisfying growing demand for new services. Most spectrum use requires a license, and incumbent license holders are quite adept at forming barriers against new competitors (good luck trying to start a new cellphone provider, for example).
Software By Rob
NOVEMBER 14, 2008
Software by Rob Passionate about Startups and MicroISVs Lessons Learned by a Serial Entrepreneur home about press micropreneurs archives ← Book Review: Finding a New Career that Values Your IT Knowledge The Software Product Myth → I’m in a Book! Blog Blazers: 40 Top Bloggers Share Their Secrets About this Blog If youre trying grow your startup youve come to the right place.
Eric Friedman
NOVEMBER 5, 2008
Image by jmtimages via Flickr. Here is a link to the transcript of the Obama speech from 11/04/08. Links roundup: Related articles by Zemanta. President-Elect Barack Obama: Race Has Been Haunting This Election. Barack Obama Elected President! Watch Acceptance Speech President Elect Barack Obama Video. Election Factoid: Total Voters, Now and Then. Obama Saves Print for One Day.
Startup Lessons Learned
NOVEMBER 4, 2008
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. Maples Investments is the only venture investor I know who has oriented their entire strategy to lean startups.
Pascal's View
NOVEMBER 4, 2008
I feel particularly optimistic tonight, and I see sunlight in America's future. Gathering with my family in front of the TV, and listening to Senator McCain's gracious concession speech, my greatest hope is that a sense of bipartisanship, motivated by the desire to act in the best long term interests of America, will drive our country forward to a truly better place through the difficult times that remain ahead. It is easy to be cynical about politics and elections, but the demogr
Andrew Payne
NOVEMBER 4, 2008
Schools need to teach “how to find answers to questions on the Internet”, starting at a fairly early age (like middle-school). We’ve shifted from “knowing it” as the key skill, to “being able to find it” And I’m shocked at the range of ability (even with adults) on translating a given query to a Google search, refining the query, using Wikipedia where possible, and sifting through results to get a consensus answer.
Seeing Both Sides
NOVEMBER 30, 2008
Everyone in the VC business is looking hard at their fund reserves right now. Very hard. That's because the two key assumptions regarding how much money a portfolio company would require from start to finish (the exit) have changed: (1) the length of time before exit; and (2) the number of portfolio companies that would attract outside capital to lead follow-on financing rounds.
Eric Friedman
NOVEMBER 3, 2008
Image via Wikipedia. MTV soft launched their MTV videos site making it an easy place to view and embed your favorite music videos. I have been waiting for a site like this to highlight music videos from yesteryear and also find a better way to embed the videos without the possibility of them being taken down. The player is easy to use but the embed codes are a little hidden on the lower left of every video.
Startup Lessons Learned
NOVEMBER 6, 2008
Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Thursday, November 6, 2008 Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile I thought Id share an interesting post from someone with a decidedly anti-agile point of view. Steveys Blog Rants: Good Agile, Bad Agile : "Google is an exceptionally disciplined company, from a software-engineering perspective. They take things like unit testing, design documents and code reviews more seriously than any other company Ive even heard about.
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