O'Reilly Master Class: Eric Ries on The Lean Startup

What Will I Learn?

• How to scorecard the health of your startup
• How to radically improve cycle time -- from ideas to implementation to assessment -- and focus on the cycle times that  matter.
• How to build actionable metrics (and how to ignore vanity  metrics).
• Techniques to mitigate the biggest risk for startups: that  no customers will buy its products.
• Continuously discover what  customers want to buy before building or making follow-on investments in new features.
• Ship products as fast as multiple times a day while improving quality and lowering costs.
• Build a company-wide culture of decision-making based on real facts, not opinions.
• How to avoid “core incompetencies” that derail most new product  initiatives.
• How to  find and retain profitable customers.

About this Class

This full-day Master Class focuses on how to build a startup from the ground up to focus on customers, markets, and speed of iteration. Using examples drawn from his own experiences in the startup hub of Silicon Valley, Eric Ries unravels the myths and misconceptions that guide most startups, and paints a picture of a new way forward for the industry. Unlike other incubator-led programs, this workshop is open to anyone who wants to learn, and it does not require companies take investment or give out equity.

Through case studies, exercises, and discussions, Eric Ries will guide entrepreneurs of all stripes through the key areas that determine success for startups: product, engineering, QA, marketing, and business strategy. This workshop presents a new methodology that will allow you to bring new products -- and companies -- to life.

At the end of the workshop, you will have new insight into how to evaluate the strengths and shortcomings of your company, as well as a clear plan of action to bring lean-startup thinking back home. Rather than abstract principles, you'll learn to directly problem-solve.

Who Should Attend?

Although the workshop examines technical topics like continuous deployment and split-testing, it's designed to be comprehensible to hackers and MBAs alike. Students benefit from the content itself as well as interactions with like-minded entrepreneurs.

What's Included

The Lean Startup Workbook

Instructor

Eric Ries became a Venture Advisor at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, after co-founding and serving as Chief Technology Officer of IMVU. He is the co-author of several books including The Black Art of Java Game Programming (Waite Group Press, 1996). While an undergraduate at Yale Unviersity, he co-founded Catalyst Recruiting. Although Catalyst folded with the dot-com crash, Ries continued his entrepreneurial career as a Senior Software Engineer at There.com, leading efforts in agile software development and user-generated content. In 2007, BusinessWeek named Ries one of the Best Young Entrepreneurs of Tech. He serves as an adviser to a number of technology startups including pbWiki, Bunchball, Grockit, Smule and 750 Industries.