Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 14, 2017

Guest Post by Misti Yang, Writer for Lean Startup Co. Editor’s Note: We wrapped up the 2017 Lean Startup Week in San Francisco just a few weeks ago, and we’re excited to share with you some of the best lessons learned in entrepreneurship and corporate innovation. Because these Lean Startup people, they do crazy stuff,” Alex joked. “So

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Startup Professionals Musings

SEPTEMBER 16, 2022

We are in the age of outsourcing, by any of many popular names, including subcontracting, freelancing, and virtual assistants. He is regarded by many as the number-one authority on virtual staffing and personal outsourcing, and is himself a successful entrepreneur based in the Philippines. Maybe it’s time for some smart outsourcing.

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Both Sides of the Table

SEPTEMBER 22, 2012

“Lean” is great in the early days but if you discover an attractive market opportunity you need to get “fat” really quickly or somebody else will. And so do entrepreneurs who are quick to pivot to new businesses or to sell in an acquihire. Some entrepreneurs can make a dent in a smaller world.

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Silicon Valley Venture Capital Startup Technical Review 390

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

In my 21 years as an entrepreneur, I would come up for air once a month to religiously read the Harvard Business Review. The techniques invented in what has become the Lean Startup movement are now more than ever applicable to reinventing the modern corporation. Today, we’ve come full circle as Lean goes mainstream. Go read it.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 9, 2012

TLDR: Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits , authors of The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development are back with a new book called The Lean Entrepreneur. Since then, Brant and Patrick have been tireless advocates for the whole Lean Startup movement. Illustrations by FAKEGRIMLOCK. You can pre-order it starting today.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 19, 2012

Guest post by Sarah Milstein, co-host of The Lean Startup Conference. At a party in NYC recently, I was challenged by a VC to name the biggest company currently using Lean Startup practices. I think he expected me to describe a medium-sized startup or maybe some small, old-school media organization.

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YoungUpstarts

OCTOBER 19, 2017

The lean start-up movement has been based on a single insight – which the purpose of a start-up is to discover a business model that works. Instead of the “entrepreneur that knows what the market wants”, we move to the “entrepreneur that knows how to discover what the market wants”. The Lean Start-Up Environment.

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Steve Blank

JULY 7, 2015

My guests on Bay Area Ventures on Wharton Business Radio on Sirius XM Channel 111 were: Eric Ries , entrepreneur and author of the New York Times bestseller, The Lean Startup. Eric was the very first practitioner of my Customer Development methodology which became the core of the the Lean methodology. Taking My Class.

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Steve Blank

APRIL 20, 2009

And throughout my career as an entrepreneur I kept asking questions of my VC investors and friends; Where did entrepreneurship come from? They were all fun reads about plucky entrepreneurs who start from nothing and against all odds, build a successful company. Was it because entrepreneurs keep moving forward and rarely look back?

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Silicon Valley RSS San Francisco Technical Review 302

Steve Blank

DECEMBER 7, 2009

As we were out looking for our Series B round, our company had gotten the attention of “name of big VC firm here” who wanted a play in enterprise software. Never Get Even, Get Ahead With a set of orders from brand name customers, we had growing confidence that we had achieved product/market fit. Are These Your Slides?

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 31, 2009

The first hint lies in its name; this is a product development model, not a marketing model, not a sales hiring model, not a customer acquisition model, not even a financing model (and we’ll also find that in most cases it’s even a poor model to use to develop a product.) So what’s wrong the product development model?

Customer Development 245

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 245

Steve Blank

APRIL 16, 2013

In my 21 years as an entrepreneur, I would come up for air once a month to religiously read the Harvard Business Review. The techniques invented in what has become the Lean Startup movement are now more than ever applicable to reinventing the modern corporation. Today, we’ve come full circle as Lean goes mainstream. Go read it.

Technical Review 223

Technical Review Lean Venture Capital Customer Development 223

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

AUGUST 29, 2011

The following week she sent me this email (my emphasis): Ever since accidentally stumbling upon lean startup 1+ years ago, I’ve struggled to implement the principles correctly. For example, I talked to an entrepreneur with years of experience selling a standard medical device to doctors. What did they do before you came along?

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Hearpreneur

JULY 3, 2020

Some entrepreneurs will say the future is definitely bright but to others, some of these changes are meant to work against their expansion and business operations. We asked entrepreneurs their thoughts on the future of entrepreneurship and here’s what they had to say; #1- Rise in the speed of tech innovations.

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Technical Review Entrepreneur Software Review Artificial Inteligence 147

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JUNE 13, 2011

Modern Lean Startup theory blares out from the red-tiled rooftops of Stanford: Seek the Data and Ye Shall Find! But as much as I respect and follow Lean Startup theory, objective measurements aren’t the only things that matter. she also authors a terrific blog aimed at the solo entrepreneur.). But hold on.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JANUARY 22, 2018

We are in the age of outsourcing, by any of many popular names, including subcontracting, freelancing, and virtual assistants. He is regarded by many as the number-one authority on virtual staffing and personal outsourcing, and is himself a successful entrepreneur based in the Philippines. Maybe it’s time for some smart outsourcing.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 8, 2012

This post was co-written by Eric Ries and Sarah Milstein , co-hosts of The Lean Startup Conference this fall. Last week , we announced the date and venue for The Lean Startup Conference: Dec 3 - 4, 2012 at the InterContintenal in SF. When we're evaluating your application, we won't know your name, ethnicity, gender or age.

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Hearpreneur

MARCH 4, 2022

Being in love with your business, when you’re an entrepreneur, is even better. Although there are days when tossing in your hat seems like a viable option, remembering how much you love your “job” can quickly snap an entrepreneur out of that mentality. When you're an entrepreneur, you have to make a lot of compromises.

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Entrepreneur Technical Review Restful Colorado 133

crowdSPRING Blog

APRIL 30, 2019

But, there’s plenty that you can do… if you embrace lean marketing principles. Lean marketing is a philosophy that emphasizes executing campaigns quickly, getting feedback from your audience, analyzing the results, and optimizing the campaign – all in rapid succession. National television campaigns are definitely out.

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Both Sides of the Table

MARCH 11, 2011

He was a life-long entrepreneur and the first business he created out of college (actually, he founded it while he was at Caltech) was a company that manufactured high quality audio speakers. Some IdeaLab successes / brand names aside from Overture & CitySearch? Too many entrepreneurs focus on dilution. Shopping.com.

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SoCal CTO

JULY 13, 2010

How-to learn about angel/vc term sheets - Gabriel Weinberg , June 28, 2010 I think every startup entrepreneur (and angel investor) should have a good understanding of financing term sheets. You’re Not a Real Entrepreneur - Steve Blank , June 10, 2010 Who is an entrepreneur really? Yes, even bootstrappers. liquidation preference.

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Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is misunderstanding the role of venture capital investors. There’s lots of lore, emotion, and misconceptions of what VC’s do or don’t do for entrepreneurs. What this meant for entrepreneurs and VC’s was simple– the gold rush to liquidity was on. What Do VC’s Do?

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Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

The Startup Magazine

APRIL 14, 2022

The life of an entrepreneur can be exciting and filled with ups and downs. Any entrepreneur who has faced failure or encountered challenges along the way knows how important it is to have a good support network. A good support network can give entrepreneurs the encouragement they need to continue with their business. Conclusion.

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ReadWriteStart

OCTOBER 6, 2020

Startups and entrepreneurs have a unique challenge they need to face to effectively promote their solutions in a digital environment. The days of creating amazing content, paying for advertisement, and then leaning back on your chair to get great results are essentially over. Email address. Phone number. Address and zip code.

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Marketing Entrepreneur Social Media Startup 156

Both Sides of the Table

MAY 7, 2018

As an investor I can tell you that when I meet an entrepreneur who knows very little about our fund or me as an individual it’s a huge turn off. Know the firm but also know the partnership So by now you have 50 names on a spreadsheet with 8–10 A’s, 8–10 B’s, 10–20 C’s and 10 D’s. That is the firm qualification.

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The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 22, 2013

We should have slowed down just a tad to plan a few steps further out when naming things. Stay lean for as long as possible. Be creative, and stay lean. Staying lean early on will help you when you need to scale.”. There are some amazing sources of knowledge for the newbie entrepreneur. Scale rapidly.

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View from Seed

MARCH 19, 2015

He’s dubbed the approach “ pretotyping ,” and it shares many of the same principles as both its similar-sounding (if later-stage) cousin, prototyping, as well as the more well-known lean startup movement. NVV: Lots of entrepreneurs reading this will think about the lean startup movement when they hear about pretotyping.

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Startup Professionals Musings

JULY 25, 2015

We are in the age of outsourcing, by any of many popular names, including subcontracting, freelancing, and virtual assistants. He is regarded by many as the number-one authority on virtual staffing and personal outsourcing, and is himself a successful entrepreneur based in the Philippines. Maybe it’s time for some smart outsourcing.

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Both Sides of the Table

APRIL 19, 2011

Consumers responded to name and concept well, solves real problem, o Took 4 months to build initial prototype. Lean startup: o It’s situational so some businesses are operationally/people intensive, high LTV (lifetime value) means you can spend more upfront. On Entrepreneurship: What makes a great entrepreneur?

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A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

JULY 24, 2012

Transcript Automated transcription services provided by: Dan Bowen: My name is Dan Bowen, and I’m up in the wine country in Healdsburg, California north of San Francisco, and the company name is SyncBloc, S-Y-N-C-B-L-O-C. And that’s what your name is. Jason: SyncBloc. Well I know what Sync is, but Bloc.

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Silicon Valley Software Review Internet Technical Review 204

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

MAY 15, 2012

Nick: The name of the company is PinfoB.com. Jason: Well, it’s certainly a very complicated company because the name is difficult to even spell. Lucky for you, domain names are not case-sensitive or you’d be sunk already, right? Sign up for AppSumo 's daily deals specifically for web geeks & entrepreneurs.

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Up and Running

AUGUST 20, 2018

Most of us need just a Lean Business Plan, for internal use, with just bullet point lists and important projections. Good businesses always keep their Lean Plan up to date. The lean business plan is great news because it makes the planning process much less daunting. More on that in the section on the Lean Plan.

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crowdSPRING Blog

JUNE 4, 2013

Ev pointed out that what works for one entrepreneur/company doesn’t necessarily work for others: Companies are not built in a lab. I mentor other entrepreneurs informally and also through TechStars (Chicago) and Founder Institute. We are unable to run Monte Carlo simulations. Does the advice include actionable steps?

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Hearpreneur

DECEMBER 25, 2019

We asked some entrepreneurs and business owners, why they started their businesses: #1- Two reasons. The desire for me to create something meaningful and the choking environment of the corporate culture made me quit my full-time job and become an entrepreneur. Each story is different though the reasons may be the same. Thanks to Ric A.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2019

He’ll be speaking at this year’s Lean Startup Conference , and also has a new book (for which I very happily wrote a short foreword) coming out next month: Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It. You've seen how venture capital works from both sides--as an entrepreneur and a venture capitalist.

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Steve Blank

JULY 20, 2009

Zilog Zilog was my first Silicon Valley company where you could utter the customer’s name in public. This post, which is divided in two parts, is the story of the first time it happened to me. Zilog produced one of the first 8-bit microprocessors , the Z-80 (competing at the time with Intel’s 8080 , Motorola 6800, and MOS Technology 6502.)

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Steve Blank

AUGUST 5, 2013

It’s been fun watching a 20th Century entrepreneur learn new tricks as he builds his next startup, FindTheBest using Lean Methodology. We’re both serial entrepreneurs. Steve and I have long held similar beliefs about how to run start-ups, even if we’ve used different names to describe the key principles. Validation.

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