Brief notes on Eric Ries’ keynote at Startup Lessons Learned Conference.  If I can keep up I will live blog the conference.  Eric says: “I do not want your undivided attention.”  So here goes.  Twitter hashtag is #sllconf and the event is being live streamed.

Whenever you accomplish something, you don’t get a gold star, or a raise or congratulations, you get to survive to the next stage. As with all visionary customers, we ask not why aren’t there more of you, but what is wrong with you?

Entrepreneurship is awesome. The magic thing we call software is disruptive, but it creates opportunity.  However, entrepreneurship is not the best way to make money. Instead the goal of entrepreneurship is to:

1. Change the world
2. Build an organization of lasting value
3. Make customers lives better

“A startup is a human institution designed to deliver a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty.” Eric takes direct inspiration from lean manufacturing movement.  It about “validated learning about customers”  The unit of progress in a startup is learning.  The goal is to minimize this loop:

build -> measure -> learn ->

Fail fast doesn’t mean the company should fail fast. We want the bad ideas to fail fast.

Some questions that Eric is interesting in answering today…

• What does progress look like in a startup?
• How do you know when it is time to pivot?
• What is the minimum viable product?
• Do Lean Startup methods scale?
• What is the role of design?
• How do we reconcile vision and customer data?