startup dna: speed wins
TRANSCRIPT
Startup DNA: Speed Wins
Yevgeniy Brikmanybrikman.com | @brikis98 | brikis98.blogspot.com
Worked at a couple successful startups: LinkedIn, TripAdvisor
Built a lot of stuff: Enterprise products, hiring tools, scalable infrastructure, company culture, engineering branding, travel apps, VoIP software, innovation programs.
About me
Wrote a book about what I learned
www.hello-startup.net
These are my personal observations on a few traits that make startups successful.
Outline
1. Make excellent mistakes
2. Boyd's law
3. Speed Wins
Outline
1. Make excellent mistakes
2. Boyd's law
3. Speed Wins
"Make excellent mistakes"
Dan Pink
The road to startup success is paved with failure
Failed projects
● Answers● Events● Tweets● Github● Countless other experiments that never
made it past a "dark launch"
● Beacon● Places● Deals● Credits● Questions● Lite● Email
● Wave● Buzz● Labs● Health● Knol● Catalog● Video● Answers
The Pivot
● Started as a way to share images in Game Neverending, a massively multiplayer online game.
● Rewritten to focus on photo sharing
● Acquired by Yahoo for $35m in 2005
● Started out as burbn, an HTML5 mobile app for location-based social networking with photo sharing as one of many features
● Completely rewritten as a photo sharing focused native app
● Sold to facebook for $1bn in 2012
● Started out as odeo, a site to create and share podcasts
● Struggling to stay alive, they held a hackathon. Jack Dorsey proposed the microblogging concept (originally, text message only).
● 500m users and $10b valuation in 2012
"Timing, perseverance, and ten years of trying will eventually make you look like an overnight
success."Biz Stone
The Failure
Richard Branson
● Virgin Clothes failed● Virgin Cola failed● Virgin Vision failed● Virgin Vodka failed● Virgin Wine failed● Virgin Jeans failed● Virgin Cars failed● ... and many others failed● ... but several hundred others succeeded
"I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways that won’t work."
Thomas Edison
Reid Hoffman
● His first startup was Socialnet.com: a social network for dating.
● Never heard of it? Exactly.
● Went on to become COO of Paypal, co-founder of LinkedIn, and one of the most successful angel investors of the last decade.
"If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative."
Woody Allen
Note: these are not failures, but experiments. The goal of an experiment is learning.
Outline
1. Make excellent mistakes
2. Boyd's law
3. Speed Wins
"Speed of iteration beats quality of iteration."
Boyd’s Law
Time
Maturity
Mature, stable
Proof of concept
Idea
Product development (assumption)
Time
Maturity
Mature, stable
Proof of concept
Product development (reality)
Idea
Time
Maturity
Mature, stable
Proof of concept
Product development (reality)
Idea
A very large portion of development time is trial and error
In a trial and error world, getting to errors faster is the key to success.
Time
Maturity
Mature, stable
Proof of concept
Product development (technology comparison)
Dynamic/interpreted languages
Static languages
Idea
Time
Maturity
Mature, stable
Proof of concept
Product development (technology comparison)
Idea
Dynamic/interpreted languages
Static languages
Find error Find error
Time
Maturity
Mature, stable
Proof of concept
Product development (technology comparison)
Idea
Boyd’s Law
Time
Maturity
Mature, stable
Proof of concept
Product development (technology comparison)
Idea
Dynamic/interpreted languages
Static languages
Innovation Advantage
Time
Maturity
Mature, stable
Proof of concept
Product development (framework comparison)
Idea
RoR, Play Spring MVC, Servlets
Innovation Advantage
Time
Maturity
Mature, stable
Proof of concept
Product development (methodology comparison)
Idea
Agile, Lean Waterfall
Innovation Advantage
"If you're not embarrassed by your first release, you've launched too late."
Reid Hoffman
Outline
1. Make excellent mistakes
2. Boyd's law
3. Speed Wins
"Speed wins"
Stephen Kaufer
Fundamental idea behind Agile and Lean: some of your assumptions wrong.
The problem is, you don’t know which ones.
Winners recognize their startup “vision” as a series of untested hypotheses in need of
“customer proof.”Steve Blank
Time
Maturity
Mature, stable
Proof of concept
Product development (reality)
Idea
“customer proof”
“The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.”
Eric Ries
Time
Maturity
Mature, stable
Proof of concept
Product development (technology comparison)
Idea
Faster learning
Speed wins strategy: design experiments that offer maximal learning at a minimal cost
(e.g. MVP, customer development, A/B testing)
“The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat small anymore. It will be the fast beating the slow.”
Rupert Murdoch
Recap
1. Make excellent mistakes
2. Boyd's law
3. Speed Wins
For more info, check out my book
www.hello-startup.net