Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 10, 2008

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 product development team. He wrote it in 2000, and as far as I know has never updated it.

Software Review 144

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 144

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

For example, I often cite a real example of a problem that has as its root cause a new employee who was not properly trained. I pick that example on purpose, for two reasons: 1) most of the companies I work with deal with this problem and yet 2) almost none of them have any kind of training program in place for new employees.

San Francisco 164

San Francisco Lean Technical Review Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

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. Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said.

CTO 168

CTO Fractional CTO CTO Hire Technical Review 168

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Their product definition fluctuates wildly – one month, it’s a dessert topping, the next it’s a floor wax. And what of the product development team? And yet, their investors are frustrated. Go on an agile diet quickly.

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Up and Running

FEBRUARY 20, 2015

If you don’t understand your key financial metrics, you have no way of monitoring your business’s health—and you risk mingling assets, incurring penalties for filing taxes late, overlooking expenses, and running into difficulties paying bills and employees, just to mention a few! Information on why it’s important to know this metric.

Metrics 60

Metrics Burn Rate .Net Churn Rate 60

ConversionXL

AUGUST 30, 2018

It slows product development. The key is to connect user research to an improved user experience and, in turn, an increase in customer retention, leads, or any other metric for which C-suite members are accountable. Are there employees in other departments whose individual goals align with getting better user feedback?

Design 111

Design Framework Product Development Technical Review 111

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 16, 2009

Ever since that time, I have struggled to explain how the feedback loop in customer development should interface with the feedback loop in product development. In a project like that there are lots of big questions that need to be answered in order to build a working product. Thats pretty clear.

Agile 111

Agile Customer Development Developer San Francisco 111

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Hes a new employee, and he was not properly trained in TDD So far, this isnt much different from the kind of analysis any competent operations team would conduct for a site outage. Instead, five whys kept leading to problems caused by an improperly trained new employee, and wed make a small adjustment. why did that code get written?

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

Customer development is a parallel process to product development, which means that you dont have to give up on your dream. Our goal in product development is to find the minimum feature set required to get early customers. This is a common mistake. That doesnt work (you can stop laughing now).

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

ReadWriteStart

NOVEMBER 10, 2010

Today, brands are hiring social media specialists for customer support, crowdsourced product development, promotions and even leads generation. Internal resistance, non-standardized metrics, multiple (and confusing) platforms and lack of resources prove great obstacles to planning.

Social Media 134

Social Media Media Programming Viral 134

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 16, 2013

But we couldn''t have identified this without having clear metrics (that high bug count) to assess our development process. We have a long history and so new employees have to spend a long time getting up to speed on the why, what, and how of everything that we do. Over a thousand people work here now.

Lean 167

Lean Startup Software Engineering Agile 167

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 29, 2013

Last year, the co -founders of B ack to the Roots talked about their innovation accounting and how they were ignoring sales metrics in order to grow. You can give advice about applying Lean Startup ideas to business areas other than product development. George Bilbrey gave insight on using the methods on a sales team.

Lean 165

Lean Technical Review Startup Software Review 165

Startup Professionals Musings

MAY 4, 2016

Building your public image and presence should start even before product development, through your website, logo, and blogging. Rounding out the team with employees and freelancers. Successful startup teams today have a mix of remote employees, freelancers, and contractors. The cost of social media done well is low.

Intellectual Property 120

Intellectual Property Startup Angel Groups Social Media 120

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Every startup has a chance to change the world, by bringing not just a new product, but an entirely new institution into existence. That institution will touch many people in its life: customers, investors, employees, and everyone they touch as well. Eventually, I came to summarize these themes with the phrase " the lean startup."

San Francisco 155

San Francisco Technical Cofounder Fractional CTO CTO 155

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 6, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 6, 2008 When NOT to listen to your users; when NOT to rely on split-tests There are three legs to the lean startup concept: agile product development , low-cost (fast to market) platforms , and rapid-iteration customer development. I think Drucker said it best.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Professionals Musings

NOVEMBER 21, 2015

Successful entrepreneurs start with a customer problem, and develop a solution, rather than the other way around. They build a startup culture of working for customers rather than pushing a product. Develop market insights and a growth vision far beyond today. Manage by metrics rather than by crisis and emotion.

Technical Review 120

Technical Review Metrics Hosting Leadership 120

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

We eventually discovered (via five whys ) that we also had to get each new employee acculturated to a fearless way of thinking. Because this was such a big cultural change for most new employees, we didnt leave them to sink or swim on their own. For one, it required us to keep our developer sandbox setup procedure simple and automated.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

With 21 employees today, kaChing is devoted to recruiting professional managers and finding product/market fit , first for money managers, then for consumers. With 21 employees today, kaChing is devoted to recruiting professional managers and finding product/market fit , first for money managers, then for consumers.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

YoungUpstarts

MARCH 4, 2015

The concept is fairly simple: identify an objective — what you want to accomplish — and outline the expected key results — how you will accomplish that objective with clear, measurable and time-related metrics. Use OKRs to establish how company success is measured, establish a metrics-driven culture and track performance progress.

Agile 100

Agile Startup Cofounder Metrics 100

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 5, 2010

I used to give copies of Four Steps out to my employees, in the hopes that it would instantly indoctrinate them into the methodology of Customer Development. I used to give copies of Four Steps out to my employees, in the hopes that it would instantly indoctrinate them into the methodology of Customer Development.

Customer Development 166

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 166

Hearpreneur

JULY 19, 2021

Not all employees get to make the decision about turning the wrong sort of work away. As a CEO and founder, I work with employees, contract individuals, and other business owners who are genuinely stellar, and I love being part of the small business dream. Thanks to Jake Jorgovan, Lead Cookie ! #8- 27- The diversity it brings.

Entrepreneur 139

Entrepreneur Jordan Non-Compete Community 139

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 27, 2009

Customer Development : a disciplined approach to finding out if there is a market for your product before its too late. Customer Development Engineering : techniques for accelerating your product development. Combining agile development with customer developm. Work in small batches.

San Francisco 117

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 117

Startup Professionals Musings

DECEMBER 7, 2022

There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Ask every employee to focus on sales. Openly reward employees who make the extra effort, champion cost-cutting issues, and enhance the sales process. Shorten the close cycle to grow faster. Marty Zwilling.

Startup 335

Startup Social Media Metrics Viral 335

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 28, 2008

We pitch to potential partners, vendors, publishers, conferences, employees, and even lawyers. Its different from selling a product, because it is not part of our regular business practice, is not something that relates to our core competence, and tends not to happen in a repeatable and scalable way.

San Francisco 128

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 128

Startup Professionals Musings

MARCH 9, 2020

There is no magic lever for growth, so several initiatives are required, with metrics to assess value returned. Ask every employee to focus on sales. Openly reward employees who make the extra effort, champion cost-cutting issues, and enhance the sales process. Shorten the close cycle to grow faster. Marty Zwilling.

Social Media 329

Social Media Metrics Viral Channel 329

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

Not to be outdone, the technologists on the team had also brought their big guns, and the meeting was packed with employees of every level – from VP’s all the way down to me. As the meeting progressed, the temperature kept rising. At first, I couldn’t even follow the recriminations back-and-forth.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Professionals Musings

AUGUST 21, 2021

Many entrepreneurs never get past their first-stage focus on their innovative product, to scaling the business globally, organizing a structure to handle thousands of employees, and concentrating their focus “on the business” rather than working “in the business.” Switch your focus from product development to sales.

Merger 379

Merger Due Diligence SEC IPO 379

Up and Running

SEPTEMBER 6, 2016

To create this first year in business checklist, I turned to our in-house experts here at Palo Alto Software: Sabrina Parsons, CEO; Noah Parsons, COO; Josh Cochrane, Vice President of Product Development; and Josh Fegles, Academic and Government Channel Sales Director, and founder of gluten-free cookie company Jude’s Foods.

Forecast 60

Forecast Software Review Lean Finance 60

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 17, 2009

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Combining agile development with customer developm. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Lean 76

Lean San Francisco Web Continuous Deployment 76

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 94

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Part-Time VPE 94

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 74

Software Review Software Delaware Forecast 74

Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 25, 2009

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Combining agile development with customer developm. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23. Case Study: Continuous deployment makes releases n.

Agile 60

Agile Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 3, 2009

The same has been true of an unfortunate number of startups, they manage to generate a lot of hype, raise a lot of money, and sometimes make some of their investors, employees, or founders rich. The power of A/B testing is so under-exploited in product development, that Im trying new ways to explain its benefits.

Lean 60

Lean San Francisco Continuous Deployment Cofounder 60

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 11, 2009

Thats all helpful for recruiting, retaining, and ramping-up a new employee. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. You dont have to guess who their mentor will be.

Software Review 68

Software Review Software Hiring San Francisco 68

ConversionXL

SEPTEMBER 5, 2019

Because they used the magic term ‘personas,‘ development teams were discouraged from developing their own, not realising that a market segment might contain multiple personas. Development teams couldn’t use marketing personas to make design decisions, so they decided personas weren’t that useful. (It

Software Review 115

Software Review Design Agile Analytics 115

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

It has to balance competing goals of establishing clear ownership, while avoiding talented employees getting stuck. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev.

San Francisco 79

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 79

betashop.com

OCTOBER 8, 2012

I firmly believe that in this age where the product development life-cycle is so short and user feedback comes so quickly, you will know within a year whether you are focusing on a worthwhile one thing. If we don’t enjoy working with someone - an employee, a partner, whomever - we’re just not going to do it. It’s that important.

Technical Review 108

Technical Review Technology Software Review Valuation 108