Top all-time · #1342
Eric Ries
Personal blog · startuplessonslearned.blogspot.comstartupsbusiness
Eric Ries writes Lessons Learned, a personal blog at startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com about startups and business. Since 2008, 55 different Hacker News readers have linked it 126 times, most often “Lessons Learned - The three drivers of growth for your business model. Choose one.”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-05-17, and you can follow it by feed.
by Eric Ries
Most-linked posts?
- Lessons Learned - The three drivers of growth for your business model. Choose one.6 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2008-09-22
- Validated learning about customers (for startups)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-04-14
- Don't launch3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2009-03-13
- Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online service, step-by-step3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-11-08
- SEM on five dollars a day2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2008-09-14
- Built to learn2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-04-10
- The ABCDEF's of conducting a technical interview2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-12-02
- Lean Startup webcast post-game2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2009-05-04
- The Lean Startup2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-09-09
- Lessons Learned: What is customer development?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-11-09
What Hacker News says?
The hiring process in general is outdated, if not broken. It is exactly the same (Resume to Interview) regardless of the type of job in question (Banker vs Developer vs Babysitter). Where is the customization? As more and more work becomes digitally distributable thought-work, why aren’t we judging people based on relevant examples of their work? Why is an entry level hedgefund analyst judged by a 30 minute "tell me…
Comment linking /2008/11/abcdefs-of-conducting-technical.html
on “After Credentials”Submitted Don't launch as a story · 123 points
HN discussionI've written in light detail about this in a few places; I'd be glad to share more. Here's an assortment off the top of my head. Feel free to ask anything else you'd like to know. http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/02/continuous... http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/five-whys.... http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/09/new-versio... http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/…
Comment linking /2008/12/continuous-integration-step-by-step.html
on “Continuous Deployment at IMVU: Doing the impossible fifty times a day.”Submitted 10 years of entrepreneurship as a story · 105 points
HN discussionHe links to SEM on $5/day ( http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/09/sem-on-fiv... ) In that post, he mentions bidding directly against searches for competitor products. If the competitor has trademarked the terms, is it legal to use them as keywords? I've heard of companies receiving "cease and desist" orders for such behavior.
Comment linking /2008/09/sem-on-five-dollars-day.html
on “Don't launch”Submitted Why PHP won as a story · 100 points
HN discussionA point to add to the discussion from the metrics perspective: the net promoter score. Net promoter score is an easy tool you can use to determine trends in your users' experience. It can be used as a leading indicator of the 'N' part of your viral coefficient. eries goes in to detail in "Net Promoter Score: an operational tool to measure customer satisfaction" ( http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/net…
Comment linking /2008/11/net-promoter-score-operational-tool-to.html
on “How to make your application viral - A guide to getting users”Submitted Using AdWords to assess demand for your new online service, step-by-step as a story · 70 points
HN discussionGood read, thanks. Here's similar : http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/using-adwo... http://blog.stevebarsh.com/barsh_bits/2009/01/5-surprising-w... http://blog.stevebarsh.com/barsh_bits/2009/01/5-surprising-w... http://paraschopra.com/blog/entrepreneurship/how-to-do-resea...
Comment linking /2008/11/using-adwords-to-assess-demand-for-your.html
on “Ask HN: Methods for finding niche business opportunities”Submitted Embrace technical debt as a story · 68 points
HN discussionI'm an incredibly big Joel fan, and I think this essay is really well written. But I find something patronizing about this approach, and I have seen in my work with startups that it can lead to disaster, even though I have seen it work in big companies. Startups are inherently chaotic; we often don't even know what problem we're trying to solve. By shielding developers from this chaos, we can make them more "product…
Comment linking /2009/04/built-to-learn.html
on “The Development Abstraction Layer”Submitted The Principles of Product Development Flow as a story · 68 points
HN discussionFor an alternate POV, see: http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/08/steve-jobs... In particular, Jobs is quoted as saying "It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to w…
Comment linking /2009/08/steve-jobs-method.html
on “Is your product an Ice Cream Glove or a Snuggie?”Submitted What does a startup CTO actually do? as a story · 59 points
HN discussionI think the principles apply, but the specific practice may have to change a bit. If you look at the five-part "cluster immune system" I normally use, only one part is dependent on a large user base, and that is incremental deploy. You can still use all the automated testing, sandbox, continuous integration and real-time alerting practices just as well. I would suggest using something like Five Whys to figure out ho…
Comment linking /2008/11/five-whys.html
on “Why Continuous Deployment?”Submitted Why Continuous Deployment? as a story · 57 points
HN discussionThanks for the really thoughtful comment. Let me try and unpack your question into a few parts, and answer each one separately. First of all, the fundamental feedback loop doesn't require A/B tests. What matters is that you act in a disciplined way to transform ideas into products, measure what happens, and learn for the next set of ideas. Over time, you should get faster at executing this feedback loop, not slower.…
Comment linking /search/label/customer%20development
on “How to Build a Lean Startup, step-by-step”Submitted How to conduct a Five Whys root cause analysis as a story · 45 points
HN discussionI think this relates to a recent discussion here about Customer Development as something that should be done from the very early stages, closely tied to the product development effort. ( http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/what-is-cu... ) As a tech guy, if I were starting a company I'd like to have a biz person with me from day one, talking to potential customers, bringing in feedback and helping make…
Comment linking /2008/11/what-is-customer-development.html
on “Startup founder evolution (or, the biz guy *is* valuable, just not at first)”Submitted Cash is not king as a story · 44 points
HN discussionTo add to Tony's: http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/11/using-adwo...
Comment linking /2008/11/using-adwords-to-assess-demand-for-your.html
on “Ask HN: Does the SaaS model really work? Really?”Submitted Employees should be masters of their own time as a story · 44 points
HN discussionThis is based on Steve Blank's experience as a serial entrepreneur: he graduated from the school of hard knocks and is not given to academic gobbledygook. This presentation is condensed from his book "Four Steps to the Epiphany" which is well worth reading. Eric Ries has written a good post that marries this methodology with agile at http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2008/09/customer-d...
Comment linking /2008/09/customer-development-engineering.html
on “More startups fail from a lack of customers than from a failure of product development”Submitted Fear is the mind-killer as a story · 42 points
HN discussionYes but will techcrunch and the other blogger really cover your startup again just for the new windows version? I wonder if they shouldn't have had a soft launch on HN first and then a bit later once the webplayer is available launch on techcrunch... On this subject I found http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/03/dont-launc... very interesting... It's from this article that I decided that maybe a soft laun…
Comment linking /2009/03/dont-launch.html
on “Echodio (YC W09) Lets You Sync Your iTunes To The Cloud (300 Invites)”Submitted How Steve Jobs validates the Customer Development model. as a story · 41 points
HN discussionI really like Eric Ries definition of a startup: A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty. http://startuplessonslearned.blogspot.com/2009/05/lean-start... If I was to add anything to it, it would be something about 'ability to scale'.
Comment linking /2009/05/lean-startup-webcast-post-game.html
on “The $12 Startup”Submitted Lessons Learned: Three freemium strategies as a story · 34 points
HN discussionWe can pickup the mic after the fat lady has sung. Yeah, that's the problem here -- you may need to be very patient. For six months the iPhone platform looked like a gold mine for indie developers. Then the gold mine tapped out. Now we still don't know what the long-term prospects for indie developers are, because the data we have to date was tainted by the presence of the gold rush. The platform was too successful…
Comment linking /2009/04/validated-learning-about-customers.html
on “Kissing the App Store Goodbye”Submitted Pivot, don't jump to a new vision as a story · 33 points
HN discussion
