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2013
The 2013 Lean Startup Conference helped entrepreneurs learn from each other. Brimming with founder stories you’ve never heard, fresh case studies and in-depth expert advice you can
use the day you get home, the conference delivered advanced lessons in entrepreneurship. 2013’s event had key sessions for
corporate entrepreneurs, non-profit leaders, educators, gov-ernment staff and growing startups—and it included a slew of
ways to meet other relevant attendees.
Follow @leanstartup for updates
Eric Ries
“If you want to build a company that will matter,
you’ll build a company that’s built to learn.”
@EricRies
Eric Ries
@EricRies
Click to watch interview
Steven Hodas
“Conventional procurement is HOSTILE to iteration”
@StevenHodas
Brian FrezzaWhy do things get more bureaucratic over time?
o Observations are seen by somebody three management levels away from the researcher actually doing the work. What discoveries or
observations get lost?o Penicillin was discovered quite by accident.
Would this happen today with that bureaucracy?o Common workarounds by asking for favors
from colleagues (to circumvent b-cracy?)
Kimberly Bryant
“Learning while building -- on a fast moving train and putting the
wheels on at the same time”
@6gems
Robin Chase
If you have too much money, you add too many resources and add features that you have to undo -
start minimum minimum minimum.
@RMChase
Matt Mullenweg You can’t manage your way
out of a bad team• You have to create a place where people want to work
• We hire people on a trial at a standard $25/hr rate (regardless of the job) and do project work to test things out
• There’s nothing like being in the trenches with somebody• Matt still reviews all incoming resumes first
• Sometimes it’s not a good fit and that’s learned during the trial• We hire about 40% of the people we do a trial with
• Time consuming, but leads to very low turnover
@photomatt
Kevin DeWaltWhat works in silicon valley doesn’t work everywhere
o Lean Startup and CustDev - theory is the same, execution is different
o In Silicon Valley, we talk openly about problems, view ourselves as agents of
change
@kevindewalt
Catherine Bracy
o Open is always better than closed
o Experimentation is almost always a good thing
@cbracy
Matt Kresse Our MVP - looking at a
“head unit” navigation system”o Took an Android tablet wired into a car as an MVP
o Didn’t have the typical car features like AM/FM radio etc.o Wanted to learn more about providing mobile technol-
ogy in a caro “We have never directly interacted with customers”
o Put out a Craigslist ad to get people to come in (300 of them, wanted to complain about their experiences)
o Found 30 people and interviewed themo Chose 5 people to put MVP into car and trial was live• You can use it for a month - then keep using it or we’ll
pay you $100 to take it back • 60% retention, 40% wanted to refer it to someone else
o How to connect this to the mainstream product develop-ment process?
o Build MVP - establish customer base - Toyota tells every-one to do lean startup? That didn’t happen
@mattkresse
Vinuth RaiLooked at “innovation accounting”
- Will we stay on track? Are we learning?o Often went back to bad habits and built what felt good to us
o Worst - we stopped learningo Used google docs to track the experiments and it worked well, it’s
boring but it has to be doneo This process has forced us to be more creative - be creative in vali-dation other than customers riding around with the tech in their cars
• Cheaper ways to learn? Ideas from TLS community• Goal - most learning in shortest amount of time
@vinuth_rai
Kent Beck • Once you publish a book (Extreme Programming),
you can’t control what people do with it (such as shim-ming up a table)
• We have limited time on this earth (3 billion sec-onds), I hate wasting it (more so as getting older)
• A complete and utter failure doesn’t think they know things that are untrue - pattern matching and biases• Waste comes in when people think they have THE
way to program and they’re telling others how to do it.• Dogma comes from success, but it doesn’t maximize
learning
@KentBeck
Dan Milstein Opportunity cost - what $$ are we NOT making by giving up certain work?
o People are choosing to work on stuff that’s not THAT valu-able and it’s costing your company a lot
o The choices of what we work on - critical lever• Working hard and good luck is not enough?
o You should be really terrified of working on the wrong thingo You shouldn’t worry about LOOKING like you’re working
hardo Only work on stuff if you’re SURE it’s the most important
thing• His main points summarized in a slide:
o https://twitter.com/MarkGraban/status/410147781375168512
@danmil
Reid Hoffman“If you wait until you’re not embar-
rassed by your first product, you waited to long to release.
o Be generous in building alliances... can help you for your second startup if the first one fails.
• You have to be presuming that THIS one will work, but also looking to the future.
@ReidHoffman
Stephen Liguori
“The huge effort [on spreading the lean startup in GE] is worth it be-
cause it works.”
@stephenliguori
Michael Mahan What are the key few things that
have to change to make this work?o Disagrees that “skunk works” approach is the
right way... cannot keep intrapreneurship stuff un-der the rader. You need to get buy in and support
o Biggest factor in early success was one busi-ness CEO who was the biggest supporter
o Needed to show progress quickly• Accounting - asked people to STOP doing cer-tain reports and see if anybody noticed (started with one country as a test and then moved on to
other countries)
@michaelbmahan
Kathryn Minshew
5 zero-cost strategies for gaining customers
1) Design the first-user experience• What are they thinking in the first 2 seconds, the very
first impression? 2) Ask for word of mouth, but make it insanely easy• Do short and concise email to friends - 2-3 lines
• 3 sample things you can use to share on social media, copy and paste
3) Seek out like-minded groups• Small collections of people who have already self-or-
ganized around what you’re working on. Might get more interesting feedback than individuals
4) Know how and when to approach bloggers & reporters 5) Become your own PR machine
• She started writing for blogs then progressed to write for Forbes/HBR/WSJ (higher-profile publications)
• You might get ignored by the bigger publications for a while, but be persistent and polite and learn what they are
looking for as a publication
@KMin
Alexis Ringwald The secret is to build empathy:1) Listening tour
• spent 6 months in unemployment lines, researching WHY people couldn’t get jobs. Immersed herself in this.
What people were feeling... field research2) Talk to experts
• People who were writing and working on this - what are the biggest issues
3) Test in the field with an early version -- no code yet, just PPT and PDF
• How would people interact with this type of technology?• What would their interactions be?
4) “Contact us” is not enough. Need ongoing dialogue with users.
5) Team field trips to go immerse in the challenge• Visited town with 37% (39%?) unemplyment rate
• Test assumptions
@AlexisRingwald
Daina Burnes Linton
“Create opportunities to learn from your customers on DAY ONE”
@dainalinton
Christie George
• What if non-profits would tell the truth when things don’t go well?
• Experimentation is worth the ex-pense... no penalty for failures
• Create incentives for Truth rather than penalties for failures
@ChristieGeorge
Ari Gesher It’s all about the team... getting to hyper growth is all about hiring,
“get your hiring machine in order”• Hiring managers should spend 50% of
their time on hiring - their guideline• Design your systems for growth
@alephbass
Steve Blank “Business plans - “creative writing” - should be taught in English de-partments where they belong.”
“Lean Startup is like IKEA - looks good in the store, but you still have to assemble the pieces
when you get home.”
@sgblank
Nikhil Arora
“Definition of viable: capable of working successfully; feasible.”
@NikhilArora
Alejandro Velez
“New brooms always sweep clean” - don’t get caught up in your own
hype, basics are really critical
@bttrventures
Keya Dannenbaum “When it comes to entrepreneurship, don’t follow your passion
- entrepreneurs should seek practice, which would then harvest passion.”
@keyajay
John Goulah Why continuous deployment works
(lean concept = smaller batches)o Minimizes risk - decreases time between code being
written and being pushed to productiono Easier to debug
o Makes integration soonero Immediate feedback cycle --> developer happiness
o Continuous improvement and learning opportunities for the organization
@JohnGoulah
John Shook
Toyota had radically better results and did things radically different; their method was described as
“lean” by MIT researchers
@leandotorg
Patrick Vlaskovits Not enough to have an innovative product, you need to have an in-
novative medium. Innovative prod-ucts don’t fit into existing channels.
Need to create the medium and the message at the same time -
symbiotic
@PV
Brad Smith
“If you’ve stolen an idea from us, you’ve stolen twice, because we
stole it from somebody else.”
@IntuitBrad
Hugh Molotsi
“The single biggest thing you can as a leader do is paint a grand vision and a grand challenge.”
@IntuitInc
Laura Fennell • Leader is not synonymous with people management
• Everyone can be a leader, we expect you to hold yourself to a
higher standard• Job is not to put greatness into people, but recognize the great-
ness that already exists and create an environment for greatness to
happen
@IntuitInc
Drew McManus Think of product team
as a triumverateo Do they understand their goals as a team?
o Some overlap is good - eliminating overlaps can hurt collaboration
o Grey (overlap) areas are where the magic hap-pens
o Dev pairing with design part of the dayo Product Manager huddling with devs
o All three interface with the client as a teamo Requires maturity on tool... communication
leads to trusto When toes are stepped on, you don’t need
more rules, but more communicationo How do you model this behavior for your team?
@DrewMcManus
Zach Nies
Build - Measure - Learn loop (allows you to explore through the
feedback loop)
Visit http://rallydev.com/frame for forms to to learn how to Frame your Problem and Experiments
@ZachNies
Wyatt Jenkins “When testing, assume testing team is good people who want what is best for company and send them on their
way.”
Iteration & Big Swingo If you only test small changes you will never get a “big swing”
o Make a conscious effort to take a big swing to try different changes. Don’t get caught on only making small changes
o Big swings will rarely win but when they do… you win big.o You can take your learnings from the small iterative changes
when you make your big swing.
@wyatt_earp_
Marc Andreessen
“Being a nerd in high school and taking your beatings is good train-
ing for being a founder.”
@pmarca
Chris Dixon
“You can’t help someone if they have no tech vision or ability”
@cdixon
Massive thanks to Debbie Pfeifer (@DebbieP) for organizing
& to Mark Graban for the notes(@MarkGraban )
Slidedeck by @ChaseJennings of @33voices
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