Lean Startup

It’s one thing to decide that you’ll rigorously test product ideas, and it’s entirely another matter to actually kill something that isn’t clearly a dud. AppFolio faced this dilemma when deciding whether to launch a new product last year. Product Manager Ursula Shekefundeh takes us through the surprising–and hard–decisions her team made at the persevere/pivot/kill crossroads.

The US federal government is the country’s largest employer and does not have a reputation for moving quickly. But Todd Park, who served from 2012 to 2014 as United States Chief Technology Officer and Assistant to the President and is now a technology advisor to the administration in Silicon Valley, is bringing an entrepreneurial approach to government and continues to make real change. He and key U.S. technology leaders describe their most challenging projects and share advice for experimenting in large organizations.

Telefonica, a Spanish broadband and telecommunications provider with operations in Europe, North America and South America, is one of the largest mobile network providers in the world. What happened when the employees wanted to experiment with a new handset idea? Susana Jurado and Mario Olano, Innovation Managers at the company, have a detailed and instructive story to tell.

When you interview customers, you don’t know what you don’t know–and you don’t know what questions you should be asking but aren’t. Zac Cohn, founder at Wonful, runs an exercise to teach you how to ask the right questions and uncover exactly what you need.

A lot of distributed companies use Lean Startup techniques for product development. But it’s challenging to successfully run customer development and cross-functional experiments with remote colleagues. William Donnell, lead design and UX specialist at Sodium Halogen, teaches creative techniques for very effective Lean Startup approaches on a virtual team.

Create A Culture Of Experimentation | Manuel Rosso by Lean Startup

What Should You Really Measure? Featuring: Alistair Croll, Danielle Morrill, and Eric Ries Who It's For: Standalone startups; corporate innovators; non-profit, government and education leaders When you're developing a new product, or if you work in a mission-driven organization, measuring profit isn't usually an appropriate way to gauge success. Instead, you need innovation accounting or learning milestones to figure out whether your product is gaining traction. But what should you actually measure? In this advanced discussion, we'll debate the idea that there's just one metric that matters for any given kind of product. You'll come away with fresh ways to approach measurement.

Lean Startup 101 Featuring: Janice Fraser and Sarah Milstein Who It's For: Standalone startups; corporate innovators; non-profit, government and education leaders We'll explain the important concepts of Lean Startup, demystify the jargon and supply examples to help you understand what Lean Startup is good for and when you can use it. You'll come away with an understanding of the method and what frequently-used terms like MVP, pivot and innovation accounting are really about.

Lean Startup ideas are increasingly being applied by mission-driven and non-profit organizations. Leaders of these initiatives often find themselves at odds with funders, who use a traditional framework for assessing a project’s merits. Christie will look at funding innovations in the sector–some of which are likely to have implications for the for-profit world, too.

Matt is the founder of Automattic, the company behind WordPress, which powers approximately 20% of the web’s biggest sites. His team experiments constantly, yet they nearly all work from home. How do they do it? Sarah Milstein will interview Matt.

Robin will tell not only the story of how the Zipcar began with Lean Startup techniques, she’ll also reveal the economic framework that will help you build the next Zipcar.

Wyatt is VP of Product at Shutterstock, a stock photo site that’s become one of the world’s biggest tow-sided markets. We first heard about Shutterstock’s approach to A/B testing from another advanced startup that was blown away by their techniques. When we talked to Wyatt to learn more, we understood the excitement and knew we had to bring the ideas to you.

Steven Hodas | When Lean Startup Arrives in a Trojan Horse--Innovation in Extreme Bureaucracy | The Lean Startup Conference 2013 Steven runs an procurement-innovation program in one of the world’s most notorious bureaucracies: the New York City Department of Education. In a fear-driven atmosphere, with lots of incentive to not be embarrassed, he’ll talk about the challenges he’s faced and progress he’s made testing new ideas.

It’s often tempting to test technical risk before you test market risk. After all, what if your product doesn’t actually work? Then again, what if you build it and nobody wants to buy it? Daina will talk about the stages she took her product through and how she learned a great deal about her market before writing a line of code.

Tool Talk: Trello | Anuj Adhiya by Lean Startup

Risk, Information, Time and Money Dan Milstein @danmil HUT 8 LABS Working in a startup environment, you’re constantly facing subtle, tricky choices: of all the things you could work on, which ones are worth your time? Which ones will actually move the business forward? How should you spend your next hour? Your next day? You and your team will make a thousand such decisions–the ultimate success or failure of your venture is largely determined by the sum total of those choices. Starting from these questions, Dan will explore the principles underlying the Lean Startup, helping you determine the best way to spend your time.

Making Remote Workers Feel like They’re in the Same Room Paul Hepworth USERTESTING When you have a central office, remote workers can wind up feeling uninformed, disempowered and disconnected. But they absolutely don’t have to have those experiences. Paul Hepworth, VP of Engineering at UserTesting, an 87-person company with more than a dozen remote workers, will talk about the very practical things you can do to ensure that remote team members can “see” into the office and are as connected and informed as co-located workers. In addition to interpersonal processes, he’ll also talk about cheap hardware setups that make a big difference.

The Three Modes of Collaboration–and What They Mean for Distributed Teams Teryn Rikert STEELCASE People on distributed teams often say, “Working remotely is great for heads-down tasks, but collaborating remotely–especially on creative work–is really hard.” You’ve probably said that yourself. So how can we improve distributed collaboration in virtual meetings? Teryn Rikert, a workplace strategist with Steelcase, will break down the different modes of collaboration, helping us understand the key behaviors, interactions and tools we can use to support them over distance.

A Conversation with Bob Sutton and Eric Ries Bob Sutton @work_matters STANFORD UNIVERSITY Eric Ries @ericries THE LEAN STARTUP Bob Sutton’s new book, Scaling Up Excellence, explores the challenge of building a growing organization. In this conversation with Eric Ries, we’ll look at the particular issues of scaling up on distributed teams and a range of principles that leaders can adapt for successful growth.

Build Culture, Establish Trust Cheryl Contee FISSION STRATEGY Cheryl Contee runs an established consulting firm and a new startup, both of which are fully distributed. She’ll touch on what’s different between the two and dive into processes her teams have refined over time to build culture and establish trust.