3 Rules for Building Features in a Lean Startup

3 Rules for Building Features in a Lean Startup

April 14, 2010

Validated learning about customers is the measure of progress in a Lean Startup – not lines of working code or achieving product development milestones.

So lets take a look at where in the product development process do we do this type of learning:

Where we learn about customers

While some learning happens during the requirements stage (driven by customer development activities), most of the learning happens only after we ship a release, with very little learning during development and QA.

Yet another excellent post by Ash Maurya. This one covers how to approach the development cycle within a lean startup.

14 Twitter Feeds Startups Founders Should Follow – Grasshopper Virtual PBX | Company Blog

14 Twitter Feeds Startups/Founders Should Follow

by Gary Gon March 25, 201011 comments

We’ll admit it – the typical Twitter page is more likely to hinder startup success than it is to help. A Google search for “Twitter distraction” generates over 1.8 million results, including in-depth blog posts on how to prevent Twitter from breaking your focus. So we’ll understand if Twitter isn’t currently a big part of your work day. However, it would be unwise for startup founders to unplug completely from Twitter.

In fact, the Twitter accounts of other startups and founders are often treasure troves of relevant, applicable insight. After all, these are folks who have overcome the obstacles you are facing and achieved the goals you are striving for. Who better to learn from? The key to using Twitter productively, of course, is avoiding idle banter and following only those offering concrete, actionable advice. To that end, Grasshopper scoured Twitter for fourteen accounts that any startup founder would be well-served to follow.

Startup Digest

startupdigest

Startup Digest is an awesome service for getting plugged in with your local startup community. They also have a great Twitter list setup for you to follow to filter out some of the noise in your Twitter stream once in awhile and focus on valuable insights from leading tech blogs and entrepreneurs.

This is a good list of Twitter feeds that are recommended for startups. For me most of them are new, so I’m wondering if they have anything even more new and different than the ones that I watch, or if it is going to be the same.

Users Know: Your Users Are Doing Something Surprising

Your Users Are Doing Something Surprising

 

This post is for all of you lucky enough to have a product with real users. Way back before you had users, or even a product, you probably went through a process to figure out what you should build. During that process you may have written user stories and work flows that described, in various levels of detail, how your users would perform each expected task. But you know who didn’t read your user stories? That’s right: your users.

 

How to learn better from your users.