VC Cafe

MARCH 31, 2025

Prioritize growth as the primary metric for fundraising: For Silicon Valley investors, growth is the most important factor, even more so than the team or past experience. Manage operations leanly: The most common problem for startups is spending too much money. Having growth makes fundraising significantly easier.

Cofounder 88

Cofounder Silicon Valley Technical Review PR 88

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

APRIL 5, 2010

In the quest for optimization, A/B tests, metrics, and funnels, we're in danger of losing the fun and value of creative work. We're "lean" but we're not stirring hearts. Now by all of the usual arguments for Lean, Agile, and minimimalism, I should have used boogers too: Boogers were already semi-standardized.

Software Review 226

Software Review Metrics Lean Agile 226

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. For my first time, it was scalability problems and our operations team. why didnt operations get paged? How do you get started with five whys?

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

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. My path to lean startups began with Kent Beck and extreme programming.

Lean 102

Lean San Francisco Agile Continuous Deployment 102

Steve Blank

JUNE 26, 2015

—– Lean Innovation Management. In the last five years “ Lean Startup ” methodologies have enabled entrepreneurs to efficiently build a startup by searching for product/market fit rather than blindly trying to execute. The result will be: a new, Lean version of the Three Horizons of Innovation. Here’s how.

Lean 120

Lean Management Business Model Incubator 120

Steve Blank

AUGUST 3, 2012

Long before there was the Lean Startup, Business Model Canvas or Customer Development there was a guy in Santa Barbara California who had already figured it out. That earned us the right to ask questions of fact about their department’s mission, goals, operations, volumes, tools, methods, and success metrics.

San Jose 261

San Jose Technical Review Customer Development Software Review 261

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

I owe it originally to lean manufacturing books like Lean Thinking and Toyota Production System. Similar results apply in product management, design, testing, and even operations. When operating with continuous deployment, its almost impossible to have integration conflicts. Small batches reduce overhead. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Software Review Continuous Deployment Development Team Review 161

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

February 17, 2010 1:09 AM Post a Comment Newer Post Older Post Home Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom) Subscribe via email Blog Archive ► 2010 (48) ► October (3) Case Study: Rapid iteration with hardware The Lean Startup Bundle Stop lying on stage ► September (4) Good enough never is (or is it?) Expo SF (May.

Demand 167

Demand San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

Indeed the first thing I thought when I read the first paragraphs that the product manager was operating in a white tower and that the developers felt disenfranchised. Great to read posts about introducing lean approaches into more teams. Im currently introducing lean to my new team. This post has been removed by the author.

San Francisco 158

San Francisco Management Software Review Product 158

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 2009

Of all the tactics I have advocated as part of the lean startup , none has provoked as many extreme reactions as continuous deployment , a process that allows companies to release software in minutes instead of days, weeks, or months. So we need to find solutions that operate at the systems level to break teams out of this pincer action.

Continuous Deployment 167

Continuous Deployment Software Review San Francisco Lean 167

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.

Lean 91

Lean Small Business Software Review Marketing 91

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 8, 2008

This theory has become so influential that I have called it one of the three pillars of the lean startup - every bit as important as the changes in technology or the advent of agile development. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science?

Customer Development 168

Customer Development Developer San Francisco Customer 168

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

I’ve seen many times what happens when a single department get’s holed-up in its own space, like the terrifying “ operations cave.&# I already advocate cross-functional teams as part of the lean startup methodology. I already advocate cross-functional teams as part of the lean startup methodology.

San Francisco 167

San Francisco Lean Sweden Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

I hope to show why lean and agile techniques actually reduce the negative impacts of technical debt and increase our ability to take advantage of its positive effects. Lean vs. debt In the world of physical goods, the leaner a supply chain is, the less debt is required to operate it. pay 'interest').

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

The Next Web

SEPTEMBER 22, 2013

Levi Cooperman , Co-founder and VP of Operations of Freshbooks. Levi Cooperman , Co-founder and VP of Operations of Freshbooks. I think we erred in letting our traffic and operational concerns outstrip our business model, where simply maintaining what we had was preventing us from advancing our product.”. Scale rapidly.

Cofounder 164

Cofounder Founder Startup Bootstrapping 164

Steve Blank

NOVEMBER 30, 2009

That pretty much kills binary compatibility, however, which probably didn’t matter back then, because there were really no operating system ABIs. Reply My take on Customer Development and the Lean Startup | Recess Mobile Blog , on January 9, 2010 at 5:29 am Said: [.] And in the end the hardware difference is pretty minor.

Customer Development 287

Customer Development Developer Customer Silicon Valley 287

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 11, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for The Lean Startup Conference. How can established companies benefit from implementing Lean Startup? Of course, you can also continue the conversation by attending The Lean Startup Conference. What can Lean Startup do about this? They’ll jump in to answer in the coming days. (Of

Lean 167

Lean Silicon Valley Agile Cofounder 167

YoungUpstarts

AUGUST 24, 2017

More importantly, a subscription business model enables you to manage the cash flow, upgrade your business planning and optimize metrics such as churn rates, the lifetime value of a customer, expansion, and more. Through customer acquisition, you’ll work to grow the revenue and then, use that revenue to cover operational costs.

Churn Rate 149

Churn Rate eCommerce Business Model Bootstrapping 149

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 8, 2008

Maybe operations has changed the OS configuration in production in a way that is incompatible with some developers change. For those of you with some background in lean manufacturing, you may notice that integration risk sounds a lot like work-in-progress inventory. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0.

Software Review 136

Software Review San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 136

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 14, 2009

Every board meeting, the metrics of success change. Compared to the million-dollar startup, they are operating at micro-scale. Time-to-complete-a-sale is not a bad metric for validated learning at this stage. Thank you for your simple, insightful explanation of why that is the wrong metric to use. How does that stack up?

Customer 167

Customer San Francisco Lean Hockey Stick 167

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 7, 2009

The idea was that these two people would operate as a unit, with the mentors job performance during this period evaluated by the performance of the new person. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Amazing lean startup resources Is Entrepreneurship a Management Science? link] May 11, 2009 9:04 PM Ian Wilson said.

San Francisco 131

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Software Review Lean 131

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 14, 2013

Guest post by Lisa Regan, writer for T he Lean Startup Conference. We’ve posted the full program for The Lean Startup Conference , and it includes more than three days of events for Gold pass holders and six days of events for VIP pass holders. On the evening of December 8, Ignite Lean Startup kicks off the conference.

Continuous Deployment 162

Continuous Deployment Norway Lean Analytics 162

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.

Business Plan 119

Business Plan Technical Review Lean Forecast 119

Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 9, 2010

In management jobs related to operations – that is, the people tasked with actually making and distributing physical products – this kind of thinking is now considered ludicrous, thanks to a century of progress. If you’re part of the Lean Startup movement, then you’re actually making it happen. Expo SF (May.

San Francisco 161

San Francisco Management Founder Lean 161

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 9, 2009

Thats the essence of so many of the lean startup techniques Ive evangelized: customer development , the Ideas/Code/Data feedback loop , and the adaptation of agile development to the startup experience. The lean startup focuses on situations where we have both an unknown problem and an unknown solution. This is my take on that idea.

San Francisco 132

San Francisco Continuous Deployment Lean Agile 132

Up and Running

MAY 12, 2020

Your plan doesn’t need to be a lengthy document either, especially if you follow a Lean Planning methodology. Now if you’re looking for an active plan that you can edit and adjust over time, you may want to consider creating a lean plan. Establish milestones and metrics for your business plan. Make your business official.

Software Review 153

Software Review Exit Strategy Technical Review Business Plan 153

Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2009

these devices all need human instruction to enable correct and desired operation. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Expo SF (May.

Programming 143

Programming San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment 143

Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 31, 2015

The following is a guest post by Kirsten Cluthe and Ritika Puri from The Lean Startup Conference team Wondering what’s new in the Lean Startup community? She wants to disrupt Hollywood with the Lean Startup method. It's Lean Startup storytelling for the Snapchat generation. Read about Prerna’s journey here.

Lean 60

Lean United States Fractional CTO Startup 60

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 18, 2010

Many people still find this idea challenging, even for companies that operate solely on the web. Recently, he was bitten by the lean startup bug and has started writing about his experiences attempting to apply lean startup and customer development principles. This case presents a further complication: desktop software.

Continuous Deployment 151

Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Wiki 151

View from Seed

OCTOBER 24, 2019

But the best founders I know almost always operate as though they have much less money in the bank, and won’t scale burn until they are super confident in their product/market fit. The reason is that b2b fundraising is largely driven by data and metrics, and pre-seed dollars usually don’t get you to many meaningful data points.

Dilution 149

Dilution B2B Burn Rate Early Stage 149

Startup Lessons Learned

JANUARY 10, 2011

I have seen founders replaced because their style seemed too chaotic, even though what’s really happening is that they are operating at startup speed. Vanity metrics and success theater are in a moral grey area; they are masking the fact that some of our industry’s most “successful” ventures are actually value destroying.

Silicon Valley 167

Silicon Valley San Francisco Lean Investment Bankers 167

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 17, 2008

Growth - when you have existing customers, the pressure is on to grow your key metrics day-in day-out. The Lean Startup Intensive is tomorrow at Web 2.0. 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 88

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 88

Steve Blank

APRIL 9, 2009

But what I wanted was an agile marketing team capable of operating independently without day-to-day direction. And the results weren’t the traditional PR metrics of number of articles or inches of ink. We were constantly creating metrics to see the effects of different PR messages, channels and audiences on end-user purchases.

Silicon Valley 271

Silicon Valley Technical Review RSS PR 271

Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 8, 2009

That’s because many of our reports feed us vanity metrics: numbers that make us look good but don’t really help make decisions. Yet even among those who have access to good actionable metrics, I’ve noticed a phenomenon that prevents taking maximum advantage of data. Too much of this data is non- actionable.

San Francisco 84

San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment DC 84

The Startup Magazine

SEPTEMBER 14, 2021

With more than 20 years of experience, including director of quality and director of operations, Rozo-Angulo has made a significant impact in the manufacturing industry. Utilizing these experiences and the principles of a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt, she started MAS Connections in 2011.

Founder 145

Founder Cofounder Social Media Software Review 145

Steve Blank

SEPTEMBER 14, 2009

My own metric is that you need experience >= 1.5 They built airplanes out of palm trees thinking if they did manna would come in airplanes again. We could for example, find warning signs in popular literature about e.g. finance suggesting rapid maturation in bond trading. Warning sign? Say 40 years = 20 years real direct experience.

Silicon Valley 237

Silicon Valley IPO Technical Review Venture Capital 237

YoungUpstarts

JUNE 1, 2019

Books such as Steve Blank’s The Startup Owner’s Manual and Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup do a great job of exploring the challenges of the go-to – product phase, and identifying the importance of reaching product/market fit with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). There are no seminal books and few insightful blogs for them to turn to.

Cleveland 150

Cleveland Framework Marketing Early Stage 150