I covered the Customer Discovery flow for my web startup in Part 1. Here I’ll be covering the next step: Customer Validation.
At the end of Customer Discovery you should have identified a customer problem worth solving and started building your solution (MVP). During Customer Validation, you’ll test your finished MVP by selling it to [...]
Last year, Steve Blank threw out a challenge to Lean Startup Circle members to update his customer development checklist (Appendix B in his book) for their specific business. His checklist is built for Enterprise Software which doesn’t readily translate to other types of startups including web startups (especially when you get to Customer Validation).
After [...]
Pricing is simultaneously one of the most complicated and most important things to get right. It is harder to iterate with price and advice on when/how to start charging is all over the map. I wrote a guest post on Venture Hacks where I discuss how I tested and implemented pricing for my MVP.
Read the [...]
We had a great turnout for the first Austin Lean Startup Meetup. Eric Ries called in to kickoff the event and there was a lot of entrepreneurial energy and ideas for how we can take Lean Startup theory to practice.
I presented a high-level overview on building a lean startup using CloudFire as a case [...]
Of all the Lean Startup techniques, Continuous Deployment is by far the most controversial. Continuous Deployment is a process by which software is released continuously throughout the day – in minutes versus days, weeks, or months. While the biggest waste in manufacturing is created from having to transport products from one place to another, the [...]
I’ve been an entrepreneur for 7+ years now – self-funded the first 2 years and bootstrapped the last 5. Yes I subscribe to the true definition of bootstrapping as being customer-funded versus self-funded. To some people, that is quite an accomplishment. However, I feel like the last 7 years have just been an education and [...]
Eliminating waste is the fundamental principle of lean thinking.
As defined by Womak/Jones in their book “Lean Thinking” (a must-read):
Waste is any human activity which absorbs resources but creates no value.
Of all resources, there is no resource more valuable than time. Time is more valuable than money. While money can fluctuate up or down, [...]
Last time I shared my conversion dashboard and promised some numbers. I don’t have all the numbers yet. But enough to start identifying some actionable next steps.
First some tools discussion is in order
I had been using Mixpanel and evaluating KISSmetrics for my metrics data. While I still see lots of possibilities using Mixpanel for application [...]
I can summarize my last post with a strong call to action:
Focus on Product/Market Fit First.
Here I’ll be laying the groundwork for how I plan to measure and optimize the process of achieving product/market fit. Metrics are, of course, the answer. But I have spent enough cycles getting lost in Google Analytics’ numbers, that [...]
After my last post on landing page (UVP) optimization, Nivi, from VentureHacks, pointed me at Sean Ellis’s blog and suggested that I might be better served achieving product/market fit before spending time on landing page optimization and positioning. While I completely agree that achieving product/market fit is the necessary prerequisite to kicking into growth mode, [...]
A lot (okay a ton) has been written already on landing page design. A great starting point is Chance Barnett’s Landing Pages That Convert. One of the most important elements of a landing page is the unique value proposition (UVP). It’s a headline, image, or tagline that needs to engage the visitor in the first [...]
The Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a key lean startup concept popularized by Eric Ries. The basic idea is to maximize validated learning for the least amount of effort. After all, why waste effort building out a product without first testing if it’s worth it.
So for a new product idea or concept, what is [...]
Chapter 1: An Engineer’s Itch
I’d love to claim that I’ve subconsciously used Customer Development practices all along but that just isn’t true. My first product, 6Degrees, was a p2p address book that was created to basically test out the 6 degrees of separation concept – a sort of “trusted Napster” for contacts. I didn’t talk [...]
Founder, 
