Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 23, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Wednesday, December 23, 2009 Why vanity metrics are dangerous In a previous post, I defined two kinds of metrics: vanity metrics and actionable metrics. In this post, Id like to talk about the perils of vanity metrics. My personal favorite vanity metrics is "hits."

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 27, 2010

One of the sayings I hear from talented managers in product development is, “good enough never is.&# And, most importantly, it helps team members develop the courage to stand up for these values in stressful situations. No vanity metrics should be looked at. No vanity metrics should be looked at.

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Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 7, 2010

At least, not in the traditional sense of trying to squeeze every tenth of a point out of a conversion metric or landing page. In fact, the curse of product development is that sometimes small things make a huge difference and sometimes huge things make no difference. For example, I’m a big believer in split-testing.

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San Francisco Lean Metrics Design 154

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 20, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, October 20, 2008 The engineering managers lament I was inspired to write The product managers lament while meeting with a startup struggling to figure out what had gone wrong with their product development process. Good luck, engineering manager. It was painful for a lot of people.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

Focus on the output metrics of that part of the product, and you make the problem a lot more clear. I had the opportunity to pioneer this approach to funnel analysis at IMVU, where it became a core part of our customer development process. Whatever its purpose, try measuring it only at the level that you care about.

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San Francisco Lean Technical Review Continuous Deployment 166

Startup Lessons Learned

APRIL 26, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Sunday, April 26, 2009 Product development leverage Leverage has once again become a dirty word in the world of finance, and rightly so. But I want to talk about a different kind of leverage, the kind that you can get in product development. Its a key lean startup concept. Great post!

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 29, 2009

Startups especially can benefit by using technical debt to experiment, invest in process, and increase their product development leverage. The biggest source of waste in new product development is building something that nobody wants. Leverage product development with open source and third parties.

Technical Review 168

Technical Review Software Review San Francisco Lean 168

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Master of 500 Hats: Startup Metrics for Pirates (SeedCamp 2008, London) This presentation should be required reading for anyone creating a startup with an online service component. He also has a discussion of how your choice of business model determines which of these metric areas you want to focus on. Choose one.

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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? Time-to-complete-a-sale is not a bad metric for validated learning at this stage.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 30, 2008

Own the development methodology - in a traditional product development setup, the VP Engineering or some other full-time manager would be responsible for making sure the engineers wrote adequate specs, interfaced well with QA, and also run the scheduling "trains" for releases. Labels: product development 15comments: mukund said.

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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.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 3, 2009

We have to manage to learn something from our first product iteration. In a lot of cases, this requires a lot of energy invested in talking to customers or metrics and analytics. Refreshing to finally see lean and agile thinking emerge in product/business-floors and not only in technology. Great Post - could not agree more.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 13, 2008

Because five whys kept turning up a few key metrics that were hard to set static thresholds for, we even had a dynamic prediction algorithm that would make forecasts based on past data, and fire alerts if the metric ever went out of its normal bounds. You can even read a cool paper one of our engineers wrote on this approach).

Software Review 167

Software Review Technical Review San Francisco Continuous Deployment 167

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 15, 2008

In recent years, weve also got great new options all up and down the stack, in particular things like Amazon EC2 and RightScale (none of which would be possible without the free software movement). The application of agile development methodologies which dramatically reduce waste and unlock creativity in product development.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 24, 2009

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Tuesday, March 24, 2009 The metrics and levers of engagement, presentation on Engagement Loops for Facebook Developer Garage SF Ill be presenting a talk at the Facebook Developer Garage SF Wednesday evening. What good are these metrics if they dont help guide product or business decisions?

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 1, 2009

Also SJ's obsession with better taste (positively) contributes to the overall product development process. There are some good anecdotes about Chief Engineers in the Toyota Product Development Book. I really enjoyed this article, my first time reading any of your stuff. Will start to pay attention. Great post Eric.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 20, 2009

Luckily, I now have the benefit of a forthcoming book, The Principles of Product Development Flow. Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 11comments: Peter Severin said. Towards a new entrepreneurship ▼ 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 2, 2009

Labels: five whys root cause analysis , product development 15comments: Anonymoussaid. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Leave your thoughts in a comment. I’ll do my best to help.)

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Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 5, 2008

But first I think we need to save the product manager from that special form of torture only a waterfall product development team can create. Labels: product development 8comments: Vincent van Wylick said. This post has been removed by the author. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

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Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 29, 2008

The technical interview is at the heart of these challenges when building a product development team, and so I thought it deserved an entire post on its own. Still, a startup product development team is a service organization. Labels: hiring , product development 5comments: TedHoward said.

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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. Startup Lessons Learned - the Conference (April 23.

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Startup Lessons Learned

AUGUST 24, 2009

Or follow all of the New York Times columnists equally? This is good news for everyone except those who have huge legacy investments in large-batch distribution. Despite all the energy invested in talking to authors about the size of their platform, very few gatekeepers have a rigorous set of metrics for measuring it.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 3, 2009

In order to give people the data they need to apply the strategy, we were very open with our company metrics, making all reports generally available and easy to run. When you think a certain feature will give a 50% boost to a given metric, and it only eeks out a 5% boost, you cant spin that as failure. March 9, 2009 8:35 AM Eric said.

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Employee San Francisco Lean Software Review 146

Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Lessons Learned by Eric Ries Monday, September 22, 2008 Thoughts on scientific product development I enjoyed reading a post today from Laserlike (Mike Speiser), on Scientific product development. I agree with the less is more product development approach, but for a different reason. Now that is fun.

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Product Development Developer San Francisco Product 68

Startup Lessons Learned

NOVEMBER 7, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

Demand 167

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 22, 2009

Leading up to a pivot, each cycle, despite our best efforts, the metrics werent good enough. Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. It was painful.

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Startup Lessons Learned

SEPTEMBER 7, 2008

In a startup, both the problem and solution are unknown, and the key to success is building an integrated team that includes product development in the feedback loop with customers. 2008 09 06 Eric Ries Haas Columbia Customer Development Engineering View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 15, 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. Towards a new entrepreneurship ▼ 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

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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. Eric Ries Lean Startup Schematic View Of Agile Development And Customer Development View more presentations from Eric Ries.

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Startup Lessons Learned

JULY 28, 2010

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment SEC 158

Startup Lessons Learned

OCTOBER 4, 2008

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

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Startup Lessons Learned

MARCH 13, 2009

When we finally did launch the company, even though our product had grown and changed significantly, Wired didnt cover it. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, the works. Know what the success metrics are for the launch. We really did it well, with a great PR firm and great coverage.

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Startup Lessons Learned

FEBRUARY 22, 2010

Startup Visa update ▼ February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

San Francisco 167

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Startup Lessons Learned

JUNE 17, 2010

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

Technical Review 164

Technical Review San Francisco Lean Software Review 164

Startup Lessons Learned

DECEMBER 28, 2009

Thats a perfectly reasonable reaction, given that most releases of most products are bad news. Its likely that the new release will contain new bugs. Even worse, the sad state of product development generally means that the new "features" are as likely to be ones that make the product worse, not better.

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Continuous Deployment San Francisco Lean Metrics 122

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.

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San Francisco Lean Continuous Deployment Agile 128

Startup Lessons Learned

MAY 31, 2010

Startup Visa update ► February (5) Kiwi lean startup + Australia next Why diversity matters (the meritocracy business) Beware of Vanity Metrics (for Harvard Business Rev. Towards a new entrepreneurship ► 2009 (88) ► December (4) Continuous deployment for mission-critical applica.

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