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Why vanity metrics are dangerous

Startup Lessons Learned

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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8 Strategies To Capitalize On Untapped Global Markets

Startup Professionals Musings

With a singular focus on building unicorns, very rapid growth has been a key metric. Silicon Valley’s conventional model is to integrate local experienced engineering, product development, and marketing people for the big push. Build for sustainability and resilience, as well as growth.

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8 Keys To Real Innovation Outside of Silicon Valley

Startup Professionals Musings

With a singular focus on building unicorns, very rapid growth has been a key metric. Silicon Valley’s conventional model is to integrate local experienced engineering, product development, and marketing people for the big push. Build for sustainability and resilience, as well as growth.

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8 Tips For Getting Your Startup Right The First Time

Startup Professionals Musings

Building your public image and presence should start even before product development, through your website, logo, and blogging. You don’t have to be a heavily funded later stage startup to get access to “big data,” customer analytics, and metrics dashboards. Establishing your brand with interactive social media.

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Lessons Learned: Product development leverage

Startup Lessons Learned

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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Maybe not so much with the "optimization"

A Smart Bear: Startups and Marketing for Geeks

In the quest for optimization, A/B tests, metrics, and funnels, we're in danger of losing the fun and value of creative work. When we demand overwhelming customer outcry before committing to the slightest product change, we're in danger of losing the value of creating a cool feature that takes too much effort but people just love.

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Massacre at IBM

Steve Blank

We did a quick overview of the product. That earned us the right to ask questions of fact about their department’s mission, goals, operations, volumes, tools, methods, and success metrics. We followed that with an hour-long design review, including disclosure of product limitations. Twelve of 17 competitors were gone.

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