Sunday, May 15, 2011

New speakers + Ignite + streaming locations

Startup Lessons Learned 2011 is just around the corner: May 23, 2011 in SF. You have just under a week to get general admission tickets before prices go up. A lot of people missed the early bird rates and wrote to me about it. Don't be late, buy your ticket now. We've also added a number of extremely discounted tickets for full-time students.

New Speakers

Our program keeps getting better and better. We're debuting many brand new case studies, and I could not be more excited. Check out the exact programspeaker bios, and how to register at our SLLCONF 2011 website.

Eric Ries, The Lean StartupBrad Smith, IntuitSteve BlankMitch Kapor, Kapor Capital
Suneel Gupta, GrouponDrew Houston, DropboxClara Shih, HearsayJanice Fraser, LUXr
Roy Bahat, IGN EntertainmentManuel Rosso, Food on the TableDavid Binetti, VotizenPascal-Louis Perez, Wealthfront
Tim McCoy, CooperJeff Gothelf, TheLadders.comJosh Seiden, LUXr NYCJames Birchler, IMVU
Tony Ford, IGN EntertainmentZach Larson, SideReel


Ignite: Lean Startup

If you're planning to come into town for the conference, you should really check out Ignite: Lean Startup on Saturday, May 21. This is a community-run event featuring a number of brand-new case studies and voices in the Lean Startup movement. Plus there will be drinking and a generally good time.

Streaming Locations

We've also greatly expanded the number of simulcast streaming locations. Thanks to Fred Wilson's endorsement, it looks like we'll now have well north of one hundred cities participating. We're processing new applications as fast as we can. Here's the latest list of locations; check the streaming section of the SLLCONF website to see new ones as we add them.

Streaming Sponsor

Africa
Asia
Europe
Middle East
North America
Oceania
South America
Don’t see your location listed and want to host a simulcast? Fill out the form here.

See you there!

Monday, April 25, 2011

Beyond the garage

It’s been just over a year since the inaugural Startup Lessons Learned conference, and it’s time to do it again. Steve Blank called last year’s conference “Woodstock for entrepreneurs” and my goal is do even better this year.

(If you somehow missed SLLCONF 2010, you can get caught up with a complete video recording here.)

The Lean Startup movement has made tremendous progress in the past year. If you recall, around this time last year we were still fighting various myths, such as “lean means cheap” or that we don’t support having a big, world-changing vision. SLLCONF featured incredible entrepreneurs on stage to put those ideas to rest (watch, for example: Aardvark, Grockit, Dropbox, PBworks). It may be hard to remember that there was a time when people in the agile software development community thought Lean Startup was incompatible with agile practices. Kent Beck himself helped us explain that “quality work” means something different when we’re facing the extreme uncertainty of a startup. And, of course, Steve Blank electrified the crowd with “Accountants don’t run startups.

All year long, these ideas have trickled further and further out into the world. Last year, we were just starting to explain the concept of “the pivot” (we even had Getting to Plan B author Randy Komisar onstage). This year, the word pivot has become over-hyped (even on TechCrunch). The number of Lean Startup meetup groups has crossed 100, spreading out from traditional startup hubs like San Francisco and New York to a wide variety of places. And, most importantly, the Lean Startup idea is starting to take root in industries and contexts very different from it’s Silicon Valley roots.

That’s why I’ve decided that the theme of this year’s conference will be to explore the impact of Lean Startup “beyond the garage” – from new hypergrowth companies, like Groupon, to Fortune 1000 companies who see entrepreneurship as key to their future, like Intuit. And this year, we’re going to talk not just about business and product development, but we’ll be exploring one of the Lean Starutp movements next big frontiers: the role of design. As usual, we’ll get deep in to the details: how to measure progress, how and when to pivot, and how to accelerate as we grow.

Like last year, we’ll have three huge keynote speakers. First up, Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus (and designer of its famous spreadsheet Lotus 1-2-3), the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the Level Playing Field Institute (and more). He’s one of the most successful entrepreneurs of the past few decades, and has continued to support the startup ecosystem as an investor and mentor. Mitch knows a thing or two about building a hypergrowth startup: Lotus sold $54 million of 1-2-3 in its very first year. Mitch brings a unique perspective to our entrepreneurial renaissance, and I’m honored to be interviewing him on stage.

Second, we’re presenting something unusual for an entrepreneurship conference: the CEO of a Fortune 1000 company. Brad Smith is the CEO of Intuit, one of the most successful software companies in Silicon Valley. Brad doesn’t meet your typical image of a scrappy entrepreneur. But along with Intuit founder Scott Cook, Brad is a leader that recognizes that entrepreneurship is critical to his company’s success. One of the most surprising outcomes of the Lean Startup movement so far has been the recognition that entrepreneurs of all kinds – VC-backed, bootstrappers, and intraprenreurs – have much in common. We all struggle with similar questions and can use similar techniques to enhance our chances of success. Intuit has been a pioneer in recognizing this fact and bringing support to its internal entrepreneurs. I know this sounds foreign to many of you, and that we’ll have a few skeptics in the audience. Bring your tough questions – Brad and I will be having a conversation on stage and you’re invited to join us.

And last but never least, our third keynote is Steve Blank. For readers of this blog, Steve needs no introduction. For those of you who were lucky to see his new talk at SXSW, you know that Steve’s talks have a unique blend of insight, humor, and straight talk. I’ve heard him dozens of times, and he never fails to teach me something new. If you’re still kicking yourself for missing him last year, do yourself a favor and don’t make the same mistake again.

And those are just our keynotes! We also have an awesome lineup of case studies. As always, our rule is by entrepreneurs, for entrepreneurs. No BS, no vanity metrics, no launches, no PR. Only real stories of startups that have tried to make Lean Startup work – and the true story of what happened.

My original intention was to have a completely new lineup this year, but the popular demand for a few of our top speakers was overwhelming. So I’m honored to have back not just Steve Blank, but also two of our case studies: Drew Houston, CEO of Dropbox and Manuel Rosso, CEO of Food on the Table. We’ll get to hear what they’ve learned this past year, as both companies have grown and scaled.

A few other highlights from this year’s lineup:


We’re just getting started. Many of last year’s speakers will be at the conference as mentors, available to help you and your team make sense of the day. Hope to see you there.

SLLCONF 2011 is happening on May 23 in San Francisco. Tickets, our full program, and much more info is available here: http://sllconf.com

Just like last year, we’ll be simulcasting the program into cities around the world. If you’d like to host a simulcast, you can apply here: http://sllconf.com/streaming (In a few days, you’ll be able to get tickets to nearby simulcast on that same page.)

PS. SLLCONF is on a Monday this year (May 23). There’s a number of cool events going on the weekend before, too. Perhaps you’d like to apply to Lean Startup Machine SF or to be a speaker at Ignite: Lean Startup. Both are going to be awesome.

Monday, April 11, 2011

The real entrepreneurs of New York City

The Lean Startup Machine looks a lot like reality television for startups. It's intense, the teams go head-to-head, the protagonists live and learn, and it's all very entertaining. But there is something serious at work, too. I have written previously about how powerful the these events are as a teaching tool for Lean Startup principles. While I was in New York, I had another opportunity to witness this firsthand, and I wanted to share the results with you.

Below you will find the final presentations of each of the Lean Startup Machine NYC teams, including SnappSchool, who was judged to be the winner. To give a little context, I asked two of the other judges - Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits (co-authors of the excellent Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development) - to add a bit of commentary. You'll find their comments below each presentation.

The thing to keep in mind as you peruse these teams is that they all had the exact same amount of time: 48 hours. All of the teams worked incredibly hard. But only a few made significant progress. Only a few really treated their work as experiments - and adjusted immediately, based on what they learned, to something that worked better. Take a look...




The Winner
Patrick: The winners showed discipline in demolishing their initially very strongly held assumptions about teachers and lesson plans -- tremendous learning and creative way to define a "currency" for MVP.

Brant: Two things elevated Snappschool: 1) MVP was a functioning product -- as long as you searched for the correct subject! 2) They put it all on the line: if teachers don't click submit, the product is dead. That's optimal learning.


Patrick: "This was a very strong and analytically-minded team which executed very well -- did a great job with their MVP ---- still up here: http://m.airportadventure.com"

Brant: "Love Your Layover" won the "Best MVP" award. They actually built and tested several MVPs, the last of which was a web-based prototype of their mobile app that used real airport data.

Patrick: "One of those ideas that is relatively easy to CustDev given the analogs present in the market -- this team should have actually consummated a party over the weekend."

Brant: Interesting idea that would only work in a limited number of cities. Email thread in presentation demonstrates potential market. Risk that hosts wouldn't let group of strangers into their apartment was never tested. Great use of airbnb for their source of customer development won them 'Best #CustDev Award."





Patrick: "Great job with MVP and Demo. Smart team that did very well. See their MVP here: http://app.unbrokered.com/view

Brant: It's not often we get to see a demo in the final presentation. Make that never. Until Unbrokered. That was pretty awesome.

Patrick: "Generally speaking, good execution -- however, move to Android app appeared a bit gratuitous. Could have gone even further with this one with a bit more effort."

Brant: Gotta wonder if the Vision was louder than the Market on this one. They had a great MVP using SMS the 1st night and a little traction, but then moved to Android App without market indication to do so. Seems like they could have crushed it with the SMS app. Co-winner of Best MVP.

Patrick: "Reviewing this preso, still chuckling to myself as I recall Nate Berkopec's frenetic and hilarious narration. Their "leap" into LardSpotting app is interesting as similar app appeared a few days later in App Store - http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/meal-snap-calorie-counting/id425203142?mt=8"

Brant: Best Presentation and unannounced winner of the Old Yeller Award. They were forced by the market to take their idea out back and put a cap in it. Leaped to a new idea and accomplished an incredible amount of market validation, as well as overcoming technical risk, in the last few hours of the competition.


Patrick: "IMO a genuine problem worth solving - this team went from having very little knowledge of how professional domainers operate to having a strong knowledge understanding of the economics of domaining."

Brant: This team won the "lean learning" award for the amazing amount of learning they did. There product lives in a huge, messy ecosystem facing genuine problems, but also populated with questionable characters. They successfully used lean startup processes to learn their way toward manageable problems. They still have a ways to go, but a clear(er) path forward.

 


Patrick: "Did a good job with, very literally, "getting out of the building" ---- however, showed that sometimes it is very difficult to obtain actionable data from CustDev interactions."

Brant: I think this team represents a great demonstration of the "pivot," where one foot is grounded in learning. In this case, the fulcrum is not product, but the pain point that people end up in the wrong jobs. "Best Pivot."






Patrick: "Thought the initial idea was big --- didn't quite understand the pivot to subscription e-commerce handbags."

Brant: Stylestalkr won the "Apply to TechStars Award" because several judges this idea actually might be the one with legs. Pun intended.





Patrick: "Liked this team a lot but unfortunately demonstrated a severe misunderstanding of what an "early adopter" is in the context of Lean Startups. "

Brant: Best MVP would have been to (manually) find pools of users for all the startups inside the same building and charge them for it. You don't need a landing page or an app or a platform to prove some markets.

Patrick: "They built an MVP but didn't show it to their customers -- had to ding them for that."

Brant: There actually might be something there, there. But I'm note sure how close they got to finding out.


Patrick: "I loved that this team had strong ideas and strong validation -- but then quickly uncovered the paramount challenges in terms of marketing their solution."

Brant: Interesting example of a particular #CustDev dilemma: pain with which customers quickly identify, yet for which, customers are generally unwilling to put up with, let alone pay for a solution. Why? Because no one watches the old videos anyway, and soon the footage will be their children's problem. ; )




Thanks to all of the teams - you're showing the world what entrepreneurship really looks like. And a special thanks to all of the Lean Startup Machine organizers, mentors, and judges.

The next Lean Startup Machine will be an extra special SLLCONF edition. It will take place the weekend before the Startup Lessons Learned conference on May 23 in San Francisco. Stay tuned for details.

Tuesday, March 22, 2011

New York Lean Startup Week

SXSW was amazing and exhausting. We'll have slides and video from our Lean Startup track posted soon. Don't forget to vote to help choose a Lean Startup SXSW Challenge winner. (You can follow the slide presentation on Slideshare here.) Next week, I travel to New York, where I'm especially excited to see the entrepreneurial renaissance that is in progress, first hand.

I am declaring next week to be officially Lean Startup Week in New York City. Here's why:

NYU, Tues. 3/29 6-9pm - Demo Competition & Interview with Eric Ries
NYU's Himelberg Speaker Series brought to you by the NYU Stern Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation with help from Tech@NYU
Columbia, Weds. 3/30 6-9pm - Discussion with Eric Ries, brought to you by the Columbia Venture Community
The Columbia Venture Community and the Columbia Journalism School are pleased to bring Eric Ries to campus on Wednesday, March 30th at 6pm for an evening of frank conversation.
 These events all have limited availability:
If you can't make it to one of those events, here are some upcoming opportunities on my speaking tour:
And you certainly will not want to miss the Startup Lessons Learned Conference 2011, which will take place on May 23 in San Francisco. That will be my last major public appearance for a while, as I'll need to take some time to recover before the book comes out. It will feature an amazing lineup, which we'll announce shortly.

Hope you can make it to one or more of these events. If so, be sure to come say hello.

(Special thanks to Trevor Owens for helping to organize my New York trip.)

Friday, March 11, 2011

SXSW updates

First of all, I want to start on a somber note. As everyone here at SXSW is waking up, an eight foot tsunami wave is about to hit my hometown of San Francisco. All signs point to a minor event, but our friends and colleagues in Japan have not been so fortunate. The earthquake and tsunami have caused untold devastation, destabilized nuclear power plants, and who knows what else. My prayers are with everyone who's been affected. I ask all of you who are reading to do what you can to help. Take it from George Takei:

The show must go on, so we're still working hard on an epic event on Saturday at the AT&T Center for SXSWi. I do need to clear one thing up, though. Apparently, my blog post yesterday caused some confusion. Unfortunately, buying the Appsumo Lean Startup SXSW Bundle will not get you into the SXSW event. Only SXSW badge holders will be able to get in. Believe me, we would love to have you there - but SXSW rules are very strict. We've had to negotiate to get our own event staff into the room. If you want to come, you will need a SXSWi badge.

If you are at SXSW, there is absolutely no excuse for missing out. Just ask Tim O'Reilly:

However, you do not need to be at SXSW to enter the Lean Startup SXSW tournament and win our crazy smorgasbord of equity investments and prizes. For example, wouldn't you like to attend this year's Startup Lessons Learned conference (sllconf 2011) as my personal guest and join our VIP speakers dinner the night before? So if you can't join us, don't feel bad. While all the talkers and drinkers are inside the building, you can get outside and make something incredible happen. We can't wait to see what you come up with.

At SXSW, I'll be on stage bright and early at 9:30AM. I hope to see you there. To help you fight off the  effects of your SXSW hangover, we'll have some bonuses waiting for you. The first 100 people to show up will get a 50% discount on the Appsumo Lean Startup SXSW bundle (and you thought we couldn't make the deal any better). Noah Kagan will also apparently be handing out tshirts, stickers, and other stuff while supplies last - he promises you'll like them, but he hasn't made me any such promise.

But what I'm most excited - and nervous - about is that my publisher is bringing an exclusive printed sneak peak of my new book, The Lean Startup. They'll be giving them away at the Lean Startup SXSW event as long as supplies last. Apart from a handful of test readers, this is the first time the manuscript will be available to the public. Did I mention my love/hate relationship with customer feedback? Come get your copy and send me your thoughts. I can't wait to hear what you think.

And if you happen to be at SXSW for any part of the event, do come say hello. It's always a thrill to meet people who read this blog. Thank you for your continuing and overwhelming support.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

The Lean Startup SXSW + bundle + tournament

Today's theme is "with a little help from my friends." You all know I am busy writing The Lean Startup Book. So none of what I am about to announce would have been possible without a tremendous amount of help.

A few months ago, I began planning an event at SXSW with my friends at 500 Startups (their glamorous frontman is Dave McClure but everyone knows Christen O'Brien does the real work). The original plan was to do our own standalone event. But when the organizers of SXSW got wind of it, they asked us to join forces with them and become an official part of the SXSW Interactive program. So we have put together a program that you do not want to miss. It will take place at the AT&T Center on March 12, 2011. If you have a SXSW badge, you'll get in for free, but please do RSVP on our plancast page (and help us become the most popular event in their awesome SXSW events guide).

Home

We have an amazing agenda full of case studies lined up with amazing speakers:


David Binetti
Steve Blank
Bill Boebel
David Cancel
Jason Cohen
Sean Ellis
Janice Fraser
Andres Glusman
Stacey Higginbotham
Laura Klein
Pascal Louis-Perez
Dan Martell
Ash Maurya
Dave McClure
Ian McFarland
Farb Nivi
Eric Ries
Manuel Rosso
Robert Scoble
Hiten Shah
Jeff Smith
Wendy Tan White
Parker Thompson
check the complete list...





But that's not all, not by a long shot. You see, my friends at Appsumo were not content to let 500 Startups have all the glory. So I asked them to put together the mother of all bundles, to make sure that everyone who comes to our event at SXSW - and everyone who wishes they could come, too - has the tools they need to take these ideas and put them into action. So they created The Lean Startup Bundle for SXSW, and it's unbelievable. I asked a few more of my friends to help out, and they came through in a big way: twillio ($50 of credit), Pivotal Tracker (a full year of service), KISSmetrics ($100), Ask Your Target Market (3 months of 30 surveys per month), Sauce Labs (1000 minutes of testing), and over two dozen other companies. And things just snowballed from there. Jason Cohen's awesome hardcore WordPress hosting at WPEngine, $200 credit with Chargify, $1000 off at uTest. You'll get books, too: a preorder of my book, my Startup Lessons Learned ebooks, Ash Maurya's excellent Running Lean, and the Venture Hacks bible. But that is not remotely all. You will get a ticket to any Startup Weekend event anywhere in the world. You will get more than $5000 worth of stuff for only $99. You will get so much stuff that I challenge you - nay, I dare you - to try and use it all.



Actually, I really do dare you. You see, when my friends at Pivotal Labs got involved, they wanted to do more. Sure, you can come to our amazing SXSW event and get inspired. You can buy the Lean Startup Bundle and get everything you could possibly need to get started. But then what? The Lean Startup movement is all about doing, and so we wanted to give a reason to get started now. Maybe you already have a new startup, but maybe you've been thinking about that side project. Maybe you need a little nudge to get out of the building and start talking to customers?

Forget the nudge. We have put together a sledgehammer-sized tournament to see who can create something amazing while everyone else is just getting drunk at SXSW. I told you we'd make it worth your while, though. Perhaps you'd like a $50,000 investment from 500 Startups and a spot in the amazing 500 Startups Incubator? Or maybe you'd rather get the full Pivotal Labs treatment, along with a $50,000 investment from Band of Angels? There are seven prize packages you can win. Naturally, one includes a Microsoft Xbox and a Kinect.

We'll choose ten finalists, who will get mentoring from our all-star cast: including me, Hiten Shah, Dave McClure, Brad Feld, Ramit Sethi, Dharmesh Shah, Andrew Chen, and more. I'm just getting started: go ahead and look at the complete list of prizes. You have until the very end of SXSW (March 20th) to impress the judges and your peers. The SXSW Lean Startup Bundle is your entry ticket; you don't have to be at SXSW to be eligible.



I think we've managed to pack a lot of value into that $99 ticket, but I don't want anyone to feel excluded. Every time I offer something for sale here, I get emails from bootstrappers, students, and others who can't afford it. So - as they say on TV - wait, there's more. The first 100 people who come to our SXSW program will get a heavily discounted bundle from Appsumo (they'll be passing out cards). And if you can't be there, and you really can't afford the $99, there's still a way. Maybe you have a few friends who are planning on buying The Lean Startup Book when it comes out. Maybe you can give them a little nudge to preorder. If you can get 10 to do so, I will buy your bundle for you. Just go create your own http://lean.st URL using Facebook or Twitter. Get your friends to use that URL to preorder. You'll see a count of how many books you've sold. When that count hits 10 or more, email me your lean.st URL and your bundle's on me.

Special thanks to Dave McClure, Christen O'Brien, Noah Kagan, Parker Thompson, Ian McFarland and all of our many, many sponsors. You are all amazing.