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Venture Hacks

Advice for entrepreneurs.

Five whys: The startup immune system, Part 2November 17

“For every dollar spent in failure, learn a dollar’s worth of lesson.”

– Jesse Robbins, Amazon’s former Master of Disaster

Summary: Get started with five whys by applying it to a specific team with a specific problem. Select a five whys master to conduct a post mortem with everyone who was involved in the problem. Email the results of the analysis to the whole company. Repeatedly applying five whys at IMVU created a startup immune system that let their developers go faster by reducing mistakes.

This is a guest post by Eric Ries, a founder of IMVU and an advisor to Kleiner Perkins. Eric also has a great blog called Startup Lessons Learned.

In Part 1, I described how to use five whys to discover the root cause of problems, make corrections, and build an immune system for your startup. So…

How do you get started with five whys?

I recommend that you start with a specific team and a specific class of problems. For my first time, it was scalability problems and our operations team. But you can start almost anywhere—I’ve run this process for many different teams.

Start by having a single person be the five whys master. Thi

Five whys: The startup immune system, Part 1November 14

“When confronted with a problem, have you ever stopped and asked why five times?”

– Taiichi Ohno

Summary: Whenever you find a defect, ask why five times to discover the root cause of the problem. Then make corrections at every level of the analysis. By applying five whys whenever you find a defect, you will (1) uncover the human problems beneath technical problems and (2) build an immune system for your startup.

This is a guest post by Eric Ries, a founder of IMVU and an advisor to Kleiner Perkins. Eric also has a great blog called Startup Lessons Learned.

Taiichi Ohno was one of the inventors of the Toyota Production System. His book, Toyota Produc

Pivotal Tracker: The iPod of project management softwareNovember 12

“We are using Pivotal Tracker to manage all of our new web apps under development, this thing rocks.”

– Ezra Zygmuntowicz, Founder, Engine Yard

“It’s a relief to open Tracker at the start of the day and focus on the next most important task.”

– Aaron Peckham, Founder, Urban Dictionary

No matter what you’re using for project management, take a close look at Pivotal Tracker. I’ve tried Bugzilla, Trac, Basecamp, FogBugz, Microsoft Project, and Lighthouse—and Tracker is the best for my needs. I’ve shown Tracker to many startups and many have made the switch.

10 reasons I like Tracker.

1. It’s free.
2. It’s hosted.
3. It’s a joy to use. It’s the iPod of project management soft

Updated: A quick and dirty guide to starting upNovember 10

We’ve updated the presentation in A quick and dirty guide to starting up. The new presentation includes the notes that accompany each slide.

I’ve also included the new presentation below. Watch it in full screen mode for maximum pleasure. The full screen button is at the bottom right of the embed and it looks like this: .

(Slides: A Quick And Dirty Guide To Starting Up (pdf))

Here are some of my favorite quotes from the presentation:

“We are faced with insurmountable opportunities.” – Pogo

The most important thing: idea intelligence connections experience determination.

Ideas, and therefore NDAs, are worthless.

“… as in all matters of the heart, don’t settle.” – Steve Jobs, on picking co-founders

Co-founders are the biggest failure mode for startups.

“If you are facing in the right direction, keep walking.” – Buddha, on focusing your time in a startup

Markets

How to develop your customers like you develop your productNovember 5

About a year and a half ago, Marc Andreessen described The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank as the “best book for tech entrepreneurs this year.” Marc wrote:

“Steve Blank is a super-experienced Silicon Valley technology entrepreneur… a dude with serious street cred.

“In a nutshell, Steve proposes that companies need a Customer Development process that complements their Product Development Process. And he lays out exactly what he thinks that Customer Development process should be. This goes directly to the theory of Product/Market Fit tha