A Conversation With Ben Horowitz | Eric Ries & Ben Horowitz

Bringing Lean Startup To Big Companies | Eric Ries & Scott Butler

This podcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference, December 9 - 11 in San Francisco. Visit http://leanstartup.co for more information. The 2013 Lean Startup Conference helps 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 delivers advanced lessons in entrepreneurship. This year’s event has key sessions for corporate entrepreneurs, non-profit leaders, educators, government staff and growing startups—and it includes a slew of ways to meet other attendees relevant to you. The speakers in this podcast are Eric Ries of The Lean Startup and Scott Butler of Blackbaud.

Actionable Metrics For Lean Startup | Eric Ries & Elena Sereiviene

This podcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference, December 9 - 11 in San Francisco. Visit leanstartup.co for more information. The 2013 Lean Startup Conference helps 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 delivers advanced lessons in entrepreneurship. This year’s event has key sessions for corporate entrepreneurs, non-profit leaders, educators, government staff and growing startups—and it includes a slew of ways to meet other attendees relevant to you. The speakers in this podcast are Eric Ries of The Lean Startup and Elena Sereiviene of Esplori.

Implementing Lean Startup In Mission-Driven Organizations | Christie George & Akash Trivedi

This podcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference, December 9 - 11, 2013 in San Francisco. Visit leanstartup.co for more information. Speakers: Christie George, Akash Trivedi Lean Startup ideas are being applied more and more often in non-profits, B-corps and other mission-driven organizations. As the ideas have spread in this world, they’ve come to be known as Lean Impact, and best practices are emerging. In this webcast, Christie George of New Media Ventures and Akash Trivedi of Kiva.org will discuss key Lean Impact approaches. Their conversation will be followed by live Q&A with the webcast attendees, so come with your questions in mind.

Applying Lean Startup Around The Globe | Kevin Dewalt, Justin Wilcox, & Takashi Tsutsumi

This podcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference, December 9 - 11, 2013 in San Francisco. Visit leanstartup.co for more information. Speakers: Kevin Dewalt, Justin Wilcox, and Takashi Tsutsumi Entrepreneurs outside Silicon Valley – including those in other countries – face unique challenges in successfully applying Lean Startup techniques to their businesses. To help you address those challenges, international Lean Startup experts Kevin Dewalt, Takashi Tsutsumi and Justin Wilcox will come together for a candid conversation. Their discussion will be followed by live Q&A with the webcast attendees, so come with your questions in mind.

Bringing Lean To Established Companies | Eric Ries, Brant Cooper, & Patrick Vlaskovits

This podcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference, December 9 - 11, 2013 in San Francisco. Visit leanstartup.co for more information. Speakers: Eric Ries, Brant Cooper, and Patrick Vlaskovits Lean Startup techniques aren’t just for young companies. In fact, they’ve been profitably applied in established companies like Intuit, GE, and Toyota. But there are particular challenges in bringing Lean Startup to enterprise corporations, and they aren’t always obvious. In this webcast, Eric Ries, Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits – all of whom have worked closely with Fortune 500 companies – will discuss some of the most common mistakes and paths to success that established firms can take in implementing Lean Startup methods. Their conversation will be followed by live Q&A with the webcast attendees, so come with your questions in mind.

How Product Teams Can Work Better | Kent Beck & Eric Ries

This podcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference, December 9 - 11 in San Francisco. Visit leanstartup.co for more information. Speakers: Eric Ries and Kent Beck (@KentBeck) Few people have as much insight as Kent Beck–a creator of Agile software development–into how product teams work, and how they can work better. In this webcast conversation, Kent and Eric Ries will talk about change: how to make your work more valuable as a product team leader or team member, and what succeeds and fails in getting people to adopt new ideas. This session is most directly relevant for engineering teams but will also have useful ideas for any product group. Kent and Eric’s conversation will be followed by live Q&A with the webcast attendees, so come with your questions in mind. This webcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference, December 9 - 11 in San Francisco.

Putting The “Lean” In Lean Startup | Eric Ries & John Shook

This podcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference, December 9 - 11, 2013 in San Francisco. Visit leanstartup.co for more information. Speakers: Eric Ries and John Shook Although people sometimes think the “lean” part of Lean Startup refers to bootstrapping a company, it actually refers to the lean production systems pioneered decades ago by Toyota. John Shook, CEO of the Lean Enterprise Institute–the MIT spinoff that resulted from the research that coined the term “lean”–will join Eric for a conversation on the origins of the idea, how it relates to Lean Startup practices today and how understanding the connection can make your company’s approach much more profitable. More than just a theoretical discussion, this webcast will include deep insights for advanced entrepreneurs. John and Eric’s conversation will be followed by live Q&A with the webcast attendees, so come with your questions in mind.

Testing Lean Startup In Education | Diane Tavenner, Steven Hodas, & Sarah Milstein

This podcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference, December 9 - 11, 2013 in San Francisco. Visit leanstartup.co for more information. Speakers: Diane Tavenner (@summitps), Steven Hodas (@stevenhodas) and Sarah Milstein (@SarahM) Slow product cycles, massive bureaucracy, customers with conflicting interests–those are just a few of the challenges facing leaders in the education sector. And none of those conditions would seem to support Lean Startup principles. But sectors with the most entrenched systems often need innovation the most, and we’re impressed with the work Steven Hodas and Diane Tavenner have done to apply Lean Startup methods in New York and California schools, respectively. Join us for a webcast conversation about what’s worked and what hasn’t. Their conversation will be followed by live Q&A with the webcast attendees, so come with your questions in mind.

Getting Engineers Into The Lean Startup Cycle | Eric Ries & Dan Milstein

This podcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference, December 9 - 11, 2013 in San Francisco. Visit leanstartup.co for more information. Speakers: Eric Ries and Dan Milstein Brought to you by The Lean Startup Conference, this live webcast goes back to our roots with deep information for developers. Featuring a conversation about Lean Startup engineering with Eric Ries and Dan Milstein, one of our most popular speakers last year, the session also includes ample time for live Q&A with attendees.

Lean Analytics For Non-Tech Companies | Alistair Croll & Ben Yoskovitz

This podcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference, December 9 - 11, 2013 in San Francisco. Visit leanstartup.co for more information. Speakers: Alistair Croll, Ben Yoskovitz A key concept in Lean Startup is the Build-Measure-Learn loop. But what if you don’t know what to measure? All companies face challenges in determining useful metrics, but non-tech companies often have fewer benchmarks than their tech counterparts. In this free webcast, analytics experts Alistair Croll and Ben Yoskovitz will discuss practical approaches to the this problem. Their conversation will be followed by live Q&A with the webcast attendees, so come with your questions in mind. This webcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference, December 9 - 11 in San Francisco. Visit http://leanstartup.co/ for more information.

Applying Lean Startup To Enterprise Product Dev Practices, Sponsored By Modus Create | Pat Sheridan

Applying Lean Startup to Enterprise Product Development Practices, sponsored by Modus Create Join Eric Ries and Pat Sheridan for a conversation about how Lean Startup methodologies combine with Agile principles to get innovation off the whiteboard and into your product portfolio. This podcast addresses management issues, identities best practices for team structure and collaboration, and goes through real-world lessons. This podcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference and sponsored by Modus Create.

Where Cloud Infrastructure Meets Lean Startup, Sponsored By Rackspace | Eric Ries & Wayne Walls

Where Cloud Infrastructure Meets Lean Startup, sponsored by Rackspace Join Eric Ries and Wayne Walls for a conversation about using cloud infrastructure to support Lean Startup practices. This discussion will help developers and executives learn how to turn cloud technologies into tangible returns with rapid experiments and other proven Lean Startup methods. This podcast is produced by The Lean Startup Conference and sponsored by Rackspace.

Build Culture, Establish Trust | Cheryl Contee

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.

Scaling Up On Distributed Teams | Eric Ries & Bob Sutton

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.

The Three Modes Of Collaboration And What They Mean For Distributed Teams | Teryn Rikert

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.

Making Remote Workers Feel Like They’re In The Same Room | Paul Hepworth

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.

Risk, Information, Time, And Money | Dan Milstein

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.

Tool Talk: Trello | Anuj Adhiya

Tool Talk: Trello | Anuj Adhiya by Lean Startup

Work With Customers Before You Write Any Code | Daina Burnes Linton

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.

When Lean Startup Arrives In A Trojan Horse: Innovation In Extreme Bureaucracy | Steven Hodas

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.

Seriously Advanced A/B Testing | Wyatt Jenkins

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.

How You Can Start the Next Zipcar | Robin Chase

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.

An Interview With Matt Mullenweg, Founder Of Automattic | Matt Mullenweg & Sarah Milstein

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.

Funding For Lean Impact | Christie George

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.

Learn Lean Startup 101 | Janice Fraser & Sarah Milstein

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.

What Should You Really Measure? | Alistair Croll, Danielle Morril, & Eric Ries

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.

Create A Culture Of Experimentation | Manuel Rosso

Create A Culture Of Experimentation | Manuel Rosso by Lean Startup

The Questions You Should Be Asking Customers But Aren't | Zachary Cohn

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.

Use Lean Startup Techniques On A Remote Team | William Donnell

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.

When Failure Is A Success | Ursula Shekufendeh

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.

Lessons From Experimentation At The Biggest Organization In The US | Todd Park

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.

Case Study: Lean Product Development In A Very Big Organization | Susana Jurado & María Olano

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.

Will They Buy It? | Steli Efti

After doing customer development, you’ve learned that your target market absolutely loves your new product idea. But will they buy it? Steli Efti, founder at Close.io, explains how to get an answer without turning off your interviewees

Mobile Experiments: Easier Than You Think | Sheena Allen

Mobile development presents particular challenges for experimentation. With competing operating systems and app stores to contend with, how can you move rapidly? Sheena Allen of Sheena Allen Apps walks us through the framework she used for launching–and learning from–six mobile apps on various platforms.

Build a Culture that Outsmarts Perfectionism | Seppo Helava

The build-measure-learn loop is often accompanied by the frustration-confusion-failure cycle. In other words, implementing Lean Startup methods is hard–particularly when your experiments invalidate a lot of your ideas. In this talk, Seppo Helava, founder at Nonsense Industry, teaches us how he’s led his team to overcome perfectionism and become more comfortable with grey areas and failure.

Turn Lawyers Into Allies | Sean Butler

As an entrepreneur, you’ve probably found lawyers to be more a barrier to innovation than a boon. But by actively reframing their role, you can transform the legal function into an asset rather than a liability. Sean Butler, Senior Corporate Counsel at Cisco, explains how.

Opening Remarks: The Lean Startup Conference | Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries

Opening Remarks: The Lean Startup Conference | Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries by Lean Startup

Key Staff HD | Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries

Key Staff HD | Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries by Lean Startup

The State Of The Lean Startup | Eric Ries

The State Of The Lean Startup | Eric Ries by Lean Startup

Building A Profitable Company That Solves Real World Problems | Mitch Kapor & Christie George

What can any startup learn from mission-driven companies? From focus, to metrics, to impact, to team, the lessons are deeper than most of us expect. In this conversation, Mitch Kapor, of Kapor Capital, talks with Christie George, Executive Director of New Media Ventures, about building a profitable company that solves real-world problems.

Getting Closer To Your Customers In Startupland | Mikkel Svane

When you’re moving fast to build and grow a new company or project, you’re bound to make mistakes as well as unexpected discoveries. Mikkel Svane, CEO & founder of Zendesk and author of Startupland, shares real stories from the front lines of starting Zendesk that explore how you stay in touch with the human side of customers and your business as you scale.

How Vox.com Moves Quickly And Experiments | Melissa Bell & Sarah Milstein

Vox.com has been one of the most closely watched media launches of the year–and it took the team just nine weeks to develop the high-profile site. As its Senior Product Manager and Executive Editor, Melissa Bell has been responsible for leading a lot of Vox.com’s success. Sarah Milstein interviews Melissa to learn how the company has moved unusually quickly and how it continues to experiment on a scrutinzed site.

Getting Very Big By Being Very User Driven | Max Ventilla

When you’re tackling a hard problem, the solution rarely comes from what you do initially. Rather, it emerges from what you do continuously–provided you set up systems to learn as you go. Max Ventilla, founder at AltSchool, explains how his organization is staying very close to its customers as its key mechanism for scaling up a large network of independent schools.

How We Funded 1,000 Experiments | Mark Randall

What would happen if your organization funded every single new product idea from any employee, no questions asked? This past year, Adobe did exactly that. Mark Randall, Chief Strategist, VP of Creativity, shares surprising lessons and tangible results from Adobe’s new Kickbox process–including details about how experimentation has transformed good staff into great innovators.

Overcome Your Own Expertise | Margo Wright

When you’re building a new product, your own domain expertise can–surprisingly–prevent you from recognizing your potential customers’ needs. Margo Wright, founder of Yenko, shares the customer-development approach she’s used to overcome the blinders of her expertise.

Create A Culture Of Experimentation | Manuel Rosso

What happens when your team uses Lean Startup methods, but other people in your organization don’t? Manuel Rosso, VP of Commerce at Scripps Networks Interactive, explains how his team taught coworkers to value experimentation over expertise.

Get Comfortable Shipping Imperfect Products | Lauren Gilchrist

Top product managers must have great customer empathy–but too much of it can slow you down. On the one hand, you need empathy to understand your customers, so that you can build products that solve their problems. On the other hand, too much empathy can prevent you from releasing a product that doesn’t solve all of your customers’ needs at once. Lauren Gilchrist, Product Manager at Pivotal Labs, gives five tips for shipping less-than-perfect MVPs so that you can all learn from end users, fast.

Identify And Validate Your Riskiest Assumptions | Laura Klein

MVPs are great–unless you’re building them to test assumptions that aren’t really mission-critical. In this hands-on session, Laura Klein, author of UX for Lean Startups and head of product development for Hint Health, breaks down the kinds of assumptions you should look for and a process for developing hypotheses that reveal your true barriers to growth.

How A 30-Year-Old Hardware Company Is Bringing Products To Market 3x Faster | Kevin Ellsworth

Hardware companies face particular challenges testing and iterating on their product ideas. It’s often cost-prohibitive to get an MVP in the hands of customers, and it can be seemingly impossible to ramp up production cycles. But you can push the boundaries of convention. Kevin Ellsworth, Product Manager at Cirris, explains how his team has built systems for consistent learning that have helped them release new products over a matter of months rather than years.

How HP Shipped Faster--Much Faster | Kathryn Kuhn

It’s no secret that product leaders in big companies who need to test new ideas quickly are often stuck with slow release cycles and rigid team processes. How can you overcome the legacy approach? Kathryn Kuhn discusses the calculated tradeoffs her Hewlett-Packard innovation team made in order to speed up its product development cycle, bringing a complex product to market in a matter of months.

Constraints That Help You Build Valuable Software | Jocelyn Goldfein

More than you know, your software’s business model and technology stack shape your appetite for risk, creativity and pace. Jocelyn Goldfein, former Engineering Director at Facebook, explains the constraints you face with various kinds of product DNA–and how you can embrace those constraints to build valuable software.

Balance Compliance and Experimentation | Joanne Molesky

In heavily regulated industries, compliance is non-negotiable, and for many product teams, governance can be a deterrent for launching experiments. Is it possible to balance innovation with compliance? Joanne Molesky, principal consultant at ThoughtWorks, answers this question with key lessons learned from her experience in the IT industry.

Become A Better Listener, Build More Profitable Products | Jana Eggers

Leaders often focus on becoming better communicators and speakers. But becoming better listeners may be more important in running profitable companies. In this talk, Jana Eggers–consultant, former CEO at Spreadshirt, and former General Manager of Intuit Quickbase–teaches actionable tips for becoming a better listener and and thus ensuring that your customer development thus has a much deeper impact.

Giving Voice To Good Ideas | Hugh Molotsi

Every business leader knows that, in theory, good ideas can–and should–come from anywhere in your organization. But in reality, the voices of introverts and people far-removed from decision makers often go unheard. Hugh Molotsi, Vice President of the Intuit Labs Incubator and self-proclaimed introvert, talks about how Lean Startup methods at Intuit have helped surface game-changing ideas from quiet employees, front-line staff and unexpected corners of the organization.

Use Remote Tools For Customer Development | Holly DeWolf

You understand the importance of engaging directly with your customers as you develop products for them. But what happens when your user base is very far away? User experience consultant Holly DeWolf shares practical, cost-effective techniques for overcoming distance challenges and engaging with lots of customers remotely.

Learn from Every A/B Test | Hiten Shah

Experimentation can generate important insights, but it can also bury you under an avalanche of irrelevant data. Hiten Shah, founder at KISSmetrics, shares key tips and plenty of real-world examples for structuring A/B tests to ensure that you derive useful data every single time you run them.

Integrate Customer Feedback Into Your Product | Greg Nelson

Your team is committed to customer development and conducting user research, but how do you integrate the information you collect into your product development? Hudl Product Manager Greg Nelson explains how his company ensures that the entire, cross-functional product team understands and can act on customers’ needs.

Tactics For Truly Effective Experiment Design | Grace Ng

It’s deceptively easy to test the wrong aspect of your business, wasting time and money while you head down the wrong path. Rather than test the wrong hypotheses or an inappropriate risk for your stage of product development, learn from Grace Ng, co-founder at QuickMVP, as she lays out road-tested tactics for truly effective experiment design.

Build A Technical Infrastructure That Supports Innovation | Florian Motlik

When you’re building a new product, you have to experiment quickly and change constantly. If your product is digital, and you have a technical infrastructure that isn’t built to deal with these conditions, it can stonewall any kind of innovation. In this talk for technical team members, Codeship co-founder Florian Motlik introduces different ways to build your infrastructure and processes for constant change, experimentation and innovation.

Look Past Biases To Measure The Right Metrics | Ellynita Hazlina Lamin

In 2012, social-impact consultant Ellynita Lamin launched a recovery program in a war-torn, economically depressed area of Indonesia. Early in the project, she realized that her own biases were preventing her from measuring progress accurately. She explains the steps she took to truly understand the community’s needs and focus on the right metrics.

Find Product/Market Fit Through Customer Conversations | Des Traynor

You know that gathering customer feedback is critical to building a successful product or service. But how do you find potential customers to interview? And how do you ensure that your limited time with them will lead to meaningful insights that help you reach product/market fit? Intercom founder Des Traynor explains how to find the right customers, ask the right questions, and avoid common mistakes.

Leadership, Uncertainty, And Self-Deception | Dan Milstein

What’s the biggest challenge in getting a team of people to adopt Lean Startup methods? Dan Milstein, founder at Hut 8 Labs, suggests a somewhat surprising answer: it’s the tendency of leaders to fall prey to the deep, built-in human propensity for self-deception. We’re wired to lie to ourselves in certain situations–and, in startups, those situations crop up all the time. Tying together psychology research and his own (painful) experiences on both sides of the leader/team member divide, Dan looks at the dangers of self-deception and what you can do to overcome it.

Data-Driven Done Right | Dan McKinley

We all hear that we should make “data-driven” decisions in deciding what to test and how to measure results. But few of us have much experience actually doing that. With real and accessible examples, Dan McKinley walks us through the process–and the simple math–he developed to test, or scrap, new ideas at Etsy.

The Diesel Engine MVP | Cory Nelson

When you have long product cycles or you’re building big physical things–or both–you typically face significant risk, as a lot can go wrong between drawing board and customers. In theory, Lean Startup methods help you reduce that risk. But it’s not always obvious how you can apply them. Cory Nelson, Sr. Executive Product Manager at GE Distributed Power, talks with Eric Ries about how GE has used Lean Startup methods to develop a new diesel engine more quickly and with less risk than it had for similar products in the past.

Live, No Excuses Customer Development | Cindy Alvarez

When you have an untested concept, it’s easy to come up with reasons to avoid customer development or ignore the qualitative feedback you’re getting. Cindy Alvarez, author of Lean Customer Development and head of product design and user research for Yammer (a Microsoft company), leads several entrepreneurs through a live problem-solving session, highlighting actionable approaches to customer development challenges.

Design Your Way to Product/Market Fit | Christina Wodtke

Finding product/market fit is the key to success for new ventures. But it’s often elusive, and understanding the needs and desires of your potential customers is harder than many of us expect. Christina Wodtke, of Wodtke Consulting, shares design techniques to help you glean meaningful insights about your target market.

Bake In Cross-Functional Collaboration | Cheryl Contee

When you run a startup, it’s easy to assume that your small team necessarily works cross-functionally, because you all talk pretty often. But when you’re trying to move quickly, and lots of projects are run by just one person, you can inadvertently skip important collaboration across roles. Cheryl Contee, CEO at Fission Strategy and co-founder of Attentive.ly, talks about how her startups bake in cross-functional collaboration from the beginning, both to improve their products and to lay the groundwork for holistic product development as they grow.

Introducing Lean Startup In Your Corporation | Brant Cooper

Team leaders from Brant Cooper’s December 9 workshop, Introducing Lean Startup in Your Corporation, share real-time conference experiment results, giving you a chance to see what evidence-based decision making looks like.

What It Takes To Scale Up Quickly And Effectively | Bob Sutton & Eric Ries

How do successful companies grow? Bob Sutton, author of “Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More Without Settling for Less,” has done deep research in start-ups, pharmaceuticals, airlines, retail, financial services, high-tech, education, non-profits, government, and healthcare, and he’ll talk with Eric Ries about what it takes to scale up quickly and effectively.

Convince Colleagues To Use Lean Startup: The Stealth Approach | Blair Beverly

When a team at Google felt uncertain about which pieces of their work drove real value for customers and had an impact on the bottom line, Blair Beverly, a Manager in Google AdSense, suggested they try Lean Startup methods. He explains how he’s working to win over colleagues and management, using a counter-intuitive process to adopt the ideas.

An Experiment On Stage | Bill Gross

As the founder and CEO of Idealab, Bill Gross has started more than 100 companies, with MVPs of all kinds. This afternoon, he’ll share his best advice for making them successful–and this morning, as an experiment within the conference, he’ll share a preview of that talk from the main stage.

A Conversation With Ben Horowitz | Eric Ries & Ben Horowitz

As a well-known startup veteran, investor and author, Ben Horowitz brings unusually deep insight to the hard questions that entrepreneurs face. Eric Ries interviews him and gives you a chance to ask questions, too.

Use Experimentation To Build A Thriving Community | Anthony Frasier

Fostering an active local community is easier said than done. It’s hard to gain momentum, and people often say that they want something but then do the exact opposite. Anthony Fraiser, founder of The Phat Startup, teaches the experimentation process and metrics he used to build a vibrant entrepreneurship community in Newark, NJ, from scratch.

Test Your Way To The Right Answer | Anita Newton

Brand-new startups begin with almost zero customer data–a risky position from which to build a new product. But when you have very little money, how can you acquire critical information quickly? Anita Newton advisor, investor, and marketer at Mighty Handle, reveals how her bootstrapped, non-technical startup did clever customer development online, and rapidly tested its way into the customer insights it needed to sell its consumer packaged goods to the largest retailer in the world.

Launch A New Product That Doesn't Hurt Your Existing Brand | Andrew Homeyer

When established companies experiment, you have to figure out how to test ideas without harming your existing brand. Andrew Homeyer, Engineer and Intrapreneur at Rally Software, explains how his team launched a new product under a fresh brand and reached an entirely new customer segment.

Reinvent Decision Making At Established Institutions | Allison Dulin Salisbury

Higher education has legendarily long decision-making cycles, which create a real tension for teachers and administrators who want to test curriculum ideas in new digital markets. Allison Dulin, Special Projects for the President at Davidson College, explains how the 177-year-old college has shifted its decision-making processes and used experimentation to face down the uncertainty that’s rocking education markets.

Talk About Risk Without Causing Fear | Adam Josephs

Risk and uncertainty define startups–they’re the very qualities that make new initiatives different from established projects. But few of us have productive ways of discussing risk, and in fact, bringing it up can cause fear and undermine morale. How can we make coworkers comfortable addressing risk? Adam Josephs, Principal Consultant of Celerity Consulting, shares advice for discussing it early, often and constructively.

Alleviating Poverty One Iteration At A Time | Akash Trivedi

Akash will look at key challenges faced by non-profit organizations, including unclear or overabundant metrics, long feedback loops and limited resources. Then he’ll show how Kiva has tackled those problems in ways that other organizations can apply, too.

How Validation and Vision Coexist | Andres Glusman

Few companies have been as bold as Meetup in integrating Lean Startup practices throughout their product development cycle. Andres has been a leader in that process, bringing customer contact and experimentation to all levels of the organization, and he’ll examine how the company balances big-picture vision with everyday validation.

Working Closely With Customers On The Other Side Of Earth | Beth Kolko

Beth has incredible experience working with customers in the developing world. She’ll offer very practical advice for connecting with customers who aren’t anywhere near you and/or with whom you have little in common.

Jump-Starting Product Strategy In A Startup | Des Traynor

Des will cover key areas for product strategy in a startup: defining your mission; defining your product, scoping your product, analyzing usage, and iterating. Useful for startups at almost any stage, this talk will offer advice you can put to use immediately.

The Big Ideas Behind Lean Product Development | Don Reinertsen

People with a deep understanding of profitable engineering workflows often cite Don among the writers who have influenced them most profoundly. He’ll share insights not only for engineers, but for civilians, too, to help you better see the structure of Lean and apply it most effectively.

Cultivating Lean Startup Teams When People Don't Know What It Is | Emily Holmes

Cultivating Lean Startup Teams When People Don't Know What It Is (or Are Hostile to It) Often, a Lean Startup implementation has to start as a stealth initiative. Emily has snuck in the techniques in a number of ways, and she’ll describe several that have high success rates, which works best with which kind of internal audience, and where to learn more.

Crossing the Concierge Chasm | Khalid Smith & Nicole Tucker-Smith

Nicole and Khalid run Lessoncast, which builds software for educators. They’ve taken creative steps with their concierge MVP and will talk about concrete things small startups can do to learn from the concierge process and reach product-market fit with B2B customers.

Kiva

Kiva by Lean Startup

Rapid Iteration For Mobile App Design | Mariya Yao

The mobile app environment presents a lot of challenges for people who want to test ideas quickly. Mariya knows the tricks and will explain how to make rapid progress in the strategic design and prototyping phase of mobile app development. This session is specially created for non-technical designers, product managers and entrepreneurs.

Applying Lean Startup In A Regulated Environment | Mureen Allen

We hear often that Lean Startup principles can’t be applied in a regulated industry like healthcare. Mureen will challenge that idea with specific examples of the solutions and workarounds she’s found at Optum.

Can Lean Startup Advocates And Grizzled Veterans Work Together? | Nicole Bryan & Neelan Choksi

When you have an experienced team in place, one that hasn’t used Lean Startup principles, the ideas can sound like a lot of buzzwords at best and unnecessary change at worst. Nicole and Neelan–who were on opposite sides of the table initially–will discuss the conflicts they faced and the concrete steps that helped their company coalesce.

Running A Successful Innovation Center At A Fortune 50 Company | Preston Smalley

Established companies often have innovation teams dedicated to developing new products and new markets. But even those can be attacked by what Preston calls the antibodies of big companies. He has some great tips he’ll share on building a healthy innovation practice in that environment.

How Two Startups Used A Google Doc To Plan Their User Interface | Stephanie Hay

Stephanie knocked our socks off last year with a short talk on applying Lean Startup thinking to content strategy. We’ve brought her back this year to do a deeper dive and show some real-world examples of how text, deployed cleverly, can be a leading indicator of customer interest, before you’ve built anything else at all.

Keep Your Executives Close To Your Customers | Usha Viswanathan

As companies grow, senior staffers often lose contact with customers–a potentially dangerous gap. Usha’s company has taken unusual and clever steps to keep its customers close to its executives, and she’ll break down what they’ve done that’s worked.

Evolving And Growing With Lean Startup | Valerie Gofman

Sharethrough has been using Lean Startup methods since it was founded five years ago. Valerie will talk about the growing pains the company has faced as it has matured and how they’ve aimed to keep a Lean Startup approach very much in play.

Opening Remarks: The Lean Startup Conference 2013 | Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries

Opening Remarks: The Lean Startup Conference 2013 | Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries by Lean Startup

Experimenting On Experiments: Bringing Lean Startup To Scientific Research | Brian Frezza

Experimenting On Experiments: Bringing Lean Startup To Scientific Research | Brian Frezza by Lean Startup

Using Lean Startup To Do Plenty With Very Little | Kimberly Bryant

Black Girls Code is a fast-growing non-profit that started with the kernel of an idea in Oakland, CA and has been iterating its way across the country. Kimberly will talk about Lean Startup ideas have helped the organization meet its vision.

The Lean Startup Conference 2013 | Various Speakers

The Lean Startup Conference 2013 | Various Speakers by Lean Startup

What Works In Silicon Valley Doesn't Work Everywhere | Kevin Dewalt

Kevin Dewalt, What Works in Silicon Valley Doesn't Work Everywhere: How to Apply Lean Startup in Asia--and Win the Emerging Global Startup Wars--and Win the Emerging Global Startup Wars Kevin is one of the top experts on applying Lean Startup ideas beyond Silicon Valley. With experience on the ground in Asia and regular contact with entrepreneurs around the world, he’s in an unusually good position to share a global perspective.

Build A New Product, Infect A Whole Organization | Catherine Bracy

When Code for America started a new international initiative this year, the process pushed the whole organization to look at how it could run faster, with more experiments. Catherine will talk about launching, building and leading the new program, Code for All, the complexities of building a global network of civic hackers that fosters shared values while at the same time respecting local context, and the infectious effect the new program had on Code for America overall.

Toyota: From Lean Manufacturing to Lean Startup | Matt Kresse & Vinuth Rai

Toyota, the company that developed lean manufacturing practices, is today applying Lean Startup. Vinuth and Matt will talk about how they’ve convinced internal stakeholders at the company to respond to customer feedback and the proxies they’ve used for customer satisfaction in a research environment that prevents them from selling their products directly.

Jazz Engineering | Kent Beck

Organzitions go through predictable cycles. They begin by experimenting violently, but when they hit the hockey-stick curve, they need to execute on as few things as possible to meet demand–and then, as they attract competitors, they need to both at once. We know of nobody better than Kent to talk about the role programmers play in this cycle, and how can they up their game to support both execution and experiments.

An Interview With Reid Hoffman | Eric Ries & Reid Hoffman

A founder of LinkedIn and partner at Greylock, Reid has brings unusual depth to conversations about entrepreneurship. Eric Ries will interview Reid.

Jazz Engineering - The Deep Dive | Kent Beck

Kent will follow up his morning talk on the role of engineers in a hyper-growth company with an afternoon session that goes deeper into the topic and includes a meaty Q&A. Bring your questions for one of the people we’ve learned the most from on product development.

Beyond Landing Pages: Five Ways to Find Out if Your Idea Is Stupid | Laura Klein

A perennial favorite speaker at The Lean Startup Conference, Laura will make sure you know when and how to use not just landing pages, but also concierge tactics, Wizard of Oz setups and content strategies like blogs and email newsletters. You will leave her session smarter.

Overcoming Biases To Make Better Decisions | Trevor Owens

Based on his experience running thousands of experiments with entrepreneurs around the world, Trevor–founder of Lean Startup Machine–will discuss how to avoid biasing both your data and yourself.

The Biggest Implementation Of Lean Startup On Earth | Steve Liguori & Eric Ries

The Biggest Implementation of Lean Startup on Earth Stephen Liguori @stephenliguori GE Jeffrey Schnitzer GE ENERGY MANAGEMENT – INDUSTRIAL SOLUTIONS Eric Ries @ericries THE LEAN STARTUP Michael Mahan @michaelbmahan GE HOME & BUSINESS SOLUTIONS Sarah Broderick GE GE has been in business for more than 130 years in part because it has always been able to reinvent itself. The company has enlisted Lean Startup principles as one of the ways to harness its entrepreneurial spirit and improve the way it works. Steve Liguori, GE Executive Director of Global Innovation and New Models, will lead a conversation with three GE project leaders on how they’re using Lean Startup methods.

Acquiring Your First Users Out Of Thin Air | Kathryn Minshew

What’s the reality of building an audience for your product or company? Kathryn’s story of getting initial users when she needed feedback early on is instructive.

How To Build The Product When You're Not The User | Alexis Ringwald

How to Build the Product When You're Not the User--and You Don't Even Know Anybody Who's the User Alexis is interested in solving big problems, which means building products for people who face daily challenges very different from hers. She’s taken unusual steps to explore untapped markets and understand the users in them, giving her excellent insight into customer development.

Preparing for Catastrophic Success | Ari Gesher

Palantir is a traditional software company in that it ships software that runs on its customers' networks. That makes it hard to get direct feedback on which features need iteration. Ari will talk about the strategies the company has taken, ranging from the automated to the person-to-person, to gather the valuable information that guides their product–and company–development.

Evidence Based Entrepreneurship | Steve Blank

Steve is a perennial favorite at our conference–for good reason. A natural teacher and storyteller, he gives talks that always illuminate entrepreneurship in unique, useful ways.

Using Kickstarter To Run An MVP | Nikhil Arora & Alejandro Velez

Back to the Roots sells kits for growing edible plants. Their business involves physical products and isn’t one that obviously lends itself to intense experimentation. And yet, as we learned in a popular talk from Nikhil and Alex last year, they test everything. This year, they’re back to talk about a Kickstarter campaign they used as an MVP for a new product–during which they learned a lot more than they expected.

Learning To Be An Organization That Pivots | Keya Dannenbaum

ElectNext is a young startup that’s not only learning about its potential markets, it’s also learning how to learn. Keya will reveal the changes the organization has gone through to be able to move more quickly, with less friction and greater success.

The Human Side Of Continuous Deployment | John Goulah

Continuous deployment–small, frequent, and continuous changes to the production website–let marketplace giant Etsy iterate quickly and experiment with new features rapidly. But it’s not an approach that every engineer is comfortable with. John will talk about how Etsy does continuous deployment and gets the team behind it.

From Toyota City To Fremont To You | John Shook

With a long history at the Lean Enterprise Institute, John brings an incredibly rich view of innovation in the corporate world. As our community pushes Lean Startup ideas forward, he brings a valuable ability to ground our greater understanding.

The Medium Is The Message | Patrick Vlaskovits

Patrick is a longtime leader in the Lean Startup community. In this talk, he’ll redefine and explain growth-hacking in a way that takes us beyond SEO tricks and helps us understand patterns we can leverage for growth.

Lean Leadership Lessons | Brad Smith, Laura Fennell, & Hugh Molotsi

Intuit has been at the forefront of incorporating Lean Startup methods across a very large company. CEO Brad Smith will lead a conversation with two senior Intuit executives, Laura Fennell and Hugh Molotsi, about how they’ve fostered and rewarded an environment of experimentation and how they’ve transformed how decisions are made in their businesses.

Integrating Development, Design And Product Management To Deliver Great Products | Drew McManus

One of the top pieces of advice you can take when you’re trying to innovate more effectively is this: work in cross-functional teams. But most companies are structured in silos: design, development and product management work separately, with communication and collaboration relegated to weekly check-ins and designs and feature requirements thrown over the fence. Drew will talk about how to build cross-functional teams that actually function and can test ideas at market pace.

Frame Before You Build, Measure, Learn | Zach Nies

The key to running effective experiments is to first frame the experiment thoughfully. This takes time, but the investment pays off many-fold. Zach will guide you through the key steps of framing, which, when done properly, reward your brain–and your organization–with learning.

Getting Customer Feedback When Your Product Doesn't Live On The Web | Ari Gesher

Getting Customer Feedback When Your Product Doesn't Live On The Web | Ari Gesher by Lean Startup

Transitioning Teams to Lean | Cindy Alvarez & Ethan Gur-esh

When Microsoft acquired Yammer last year, one of employees it gained was Cindy, an expert in applied Lean Startup techniques. Cindy will be joined Microsoft principal program manager Ethan Gur-esh to talk about how they’re transitioning teams into a Lean Startup mindset and away from the three-year planning waterfall cycles of the past.

Using Lean Startup Principles To Close The Digital Divide | Navarrow Wright

A strong speaker last year, Navarrow returns with the origin story of his new initiative. He’ll talk about how using Lean Startup principles helped him understand how to engage new audiences and create more diverse teams within an organization.

An Interview With Marc Andreessen And Chris Dixon | Eric Ries, Marc Andreessen, & Chris Dixon

With unmatched experience as entrepreneurs and investors, Marc and Chris have insights to share that are directly useful for almost any business trying to innovate. Eric Ries will interview Marc and Chris.

Closing Remarks: The Lean Startup Conference | Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries

Closing Remarks: The Lean Startup Conference | Sarah Milstein & Eric Ries by Lean Startup

Bringing Lo-Fi To Wifi: Effective Brainstorming Via Video | William Donnell

Post-it Notes and whiteboards are basic office collaboration tools, supporting useful, well-established processes for group brainstorming. But when you’re not physically next to the same wall, the effectiveness of these tools crumbles. William Donnell, Founder of Sodium Halogen, an experience-design consulting firm, often works with groups of up to eight and will share the techniques he’s developed for ensuring lively, engaged virtual brainstorming.

Successfully Working From Home | Lynne Johnson, Elisa Batista, Raina Kumra, Keith Fahlgren

The Secrets of Successfully Working from Home Lynne d Johnson@lynneluvah LYNNEDJOHNSON.COM Elisa Batista @elisabatista MOMSRISING.ORG Raina Kumra @rainakumra JUGGERNAUT Keith Fahlgren @abdelazer SAFARI BOOKS ONLINE What happens when your “remote office” is a corner of your living room, and your colocated coworkers are a large mutt and a four-year-old human–or you have no colocated coworkers at all? This panel will explore approaches that make working from home actually work. From physical setups, to social arrangements, to personal productivity and more, this discussion will plumb topics that many of think about every day.

The Three Modes Of Collaboration And What They Mean For Distributed Teams | Teryn Rikert

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.

Deconstructing HR for the Distributed Workforce | Steven Yee

Is having a distributed workforce just a matter of letting people work wherever they like? It’s tempting to think so. In fact, once you let employees work remotely, the risks of legal employment, financial, and work-related misunderstandings amplify. Steven Yee, with more than 16 years of HR consulting and training experience, will talk about effective approaches and will provide examples of HR solutions redefined for virtual teams.

How A Daily Meeting Can Transform A Distributed Team | Sieva Kozinsky

When StudySoup implemented a mandatory, daily virtual standup meeting for its team of {number}, it saw a monumental shift in both the relationships between team members and their progress on projects. CEO Sieva Kozinsky will explain how the calls are structured, how long they last, who talks, the system for taking notes and how it’s transformed the company.

Tool Talk: Dashcube | Peter Armstrong

Peter Armstrong, founder of Dashcube, will show us a new communications tool.

Making Remote Workers Feel Like They’re In The Same Room | Paul Hepworth

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.

Where Is Everyone? Tools You Can Buy and Tools You Can Build for a Connected Team | Patti Chan

Being part of a kickass team is one of the great benefits of distributed work. But it’s hard to keep track of things like what everyone else is working on and who’s out on vacation, let alone tackle how you can get more done together. In this talk, Patti Chan will share insights from Intridea, a 50-person, 5-year-old, 100% distributed company that uses a number of third-party apps–but has also built its own internal communications tools. She’ll explore: What’s best left to third-party products? How do you know you’ve hit a wall with third-party apps and need to build your own? How do you think about developing tools if you’re not a dev shop? How do you ensure internal buy-in for new tools?

Opening Remarks: Office Optional | Sarah Milstein

Opening Remarks: Office Optional | Sarah Milstein by Lean Startup

Tool Talk: Popplet | Nicholas McGill

Nicholas McGill will show how Heroik, a consulting firm, uses Popplet for collaboration among up to 25 people.

Inside a *Really* Distributed Workforce | Lukas Biewald

We’re all familiar with the idea of remote, outsourced functions like customer service and web development. But a growing number of companies match workers around the globe with microtasks, allowing for a massively distributed workforce. With five million contributors from 208 countries, CrowdFlower is a leader in this area. Lukas Biewald, CEO, will share perspective on what it takes to work with millions of people you’ve never met.

No More Downtowns? What Does It Mean When We Work “Anywhere”? | Laura Crescimano

By nearly all measurements, remote work is growing rapidly. At the same time, leading companies are building new headquarters to bring their workers together. What do the trends of “work anywhere” and “everyone work here” have in common? And what are the implications for the places we work and live in? Urban designer Laura Crescimano will look at the trends for and questions raised by an increasingly distributed workforce.

Tool Talk: Mural.ly | Kailey Howell

Kailey Howell will show how McBeard Media, a 50-person, fully distributed creative agency uses Mural.ly to collaborate on content creation, including workflow, copy, graphics, layout and more.

Intense Remote Collaboration | Joe Moore

Pair programming is a key approach to simultaneously increasing focus, improving code, boosting morale and generating team cohesion, among other benefits. But, like most methods of close collaboration, it’s predicated on the idea that two people are sitting right next to each other. Joe Moore of Pivotal Labs–a leader in pair programming–will look at how the human interaction elements of the process can be used to effectively integrate remote team members into HQ or co-located teams, and can thus be applied to many kinds of intense, virtual collaboration.

Making Remote A Reality In Large, Established Organizations | Jared Goralnick

Many of the human challenges of remote setups are the same no matter the size, age or type of organization. But large, long-established entities face particular issues in introducing and encouraging virtual-work arrangements. Jared Goralnick, Innovation Fellow at the Department of Health and Human Services, Founder & CEO at AwayFind, and as of recently, Senior Program Manager at Microsoft Lync, will discuss the key elements to focus on when encouraging distributed teamwork in an organization with thousands or even hundreds of thousands of employees who are accustomed to working onsite

Office Optional Group Q&A #4

Office Optional Group Q&A #4 by Lean Startup

Office Optional Group Q&A #3

Office Optional Group Q&A #3 by Lean Startup

Office Optional Group Q&A #2

Office Optional Group Q&A #2 by Lean Startup

Office Optional Group Q&A #1

Office Optional Group Q&A #1 by Lean Startup

Hiring And Onboarding Approaches That Work | Frazier Miller

Hiring and onboarding new employees in person is among any company’s biggest challenges; doing those things remotely adds in several layers of difficulty. Frazier Miller, COO at Articulate, a 120-person, fully distributed e-learning software firm, will talk about what his company has learned in their 10 years of bringing on new employees. From screening candidates to establishing connections on a new employee’s first day, he’ll discuss specific steps you can take to ensure these critical tasks flow smoothly.

The Key Elements Of Effective Remote Communication | Everett Harper

Distributed teams require a higher standard of communication than co-located teams. Everett Harper, who leads customer development for Tetherpad, will focus on the example of sharing customer feedback with coworkers and will show how being explicit, embedding information appropriately, and providing habitual updates allow remote workers to stay connected over important issues–even when they aren’t time-sensitive.

Scaling Up On Distributed Teams | Eric Ries & Bob Sutton

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.

The Craft Of Group Chat | David Yee

Engineering teams commonly use group chat for shared communication. But it’s not limited to developers at all and can be super-useful for any team. David Yee, Co-Founder of Editorially (and author of numerous chat-bots, both useful and pointless), will talk about how his companies have used group chat and a surprising benefit to it for distributed teams.

Connect Knowledge Silos, Overcome Conflict, & Build Healthy Org. Culture | Sadie Honey & Aaron Pava

Sadie Honey and Aaron Pava will share how CivicActions, a 20-person firm, has built a culture of safety and trust, specifically addressing ways to overcome conflict avoidance and knowledge silos, both which can undermine distributed teams. They’ll provide specific techniques any team can use to deepen relationships and increase flow, along with advice for experimenting with new tools on an established team.

Experiments in Connecting Offices Eight Time Zones Apart | Christina Lucey

When Yammer established a new product group in 2013 with ten people in three different offices around the world, the team resolved not only to address potential communication problems, but to actively experiment with exciting ideas. With lessons from the bleeding edge, Christina Lucey, senior product lead, will detail what’s worked well, what hasn’t caught on and what they’ve learned about implementing new processes among far-flung offices.

The Purpose Of Purpose On A Virtual Team | Chris Byers

In any workplace, people need belonging, affirmation and meaning. But organization values and employees sense of purpose are even more critical for increasingly virtual teams. Chris Byers, CEO of Formstack, a 32-person company with 11 remote workers (including Chris), will explore why purpose is so important for distributed workers and will talk about how that’s played out at Formstack.

Team Communication Tactics That Work | China Brotsky

Many aspects of running virtual teams are deceptively self-evident: Of course you need conference calls and some kind of water-cooler interaction. But as so many of us know from inefficient team calls, awkward long-distance introductions and other common problems, the obvious needs of a distributed workforce don’t often have obvious solutions. China Brotsky, director of operations and finance for SumOfUs.org, a 20-person non-profit with team members stretching from California to Tel Aviv, will cover the particular tactics that her organization has refined for effective, satisfying communication.

Build Culture, Establish Trust | Cheryl Contee

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.

Alleviating The Chronic Pain Of Time Zones | Cass Phillipps

One of the most common and pervasive problems we all face is working across time zones. Cass Phillips will share concrete tips for successfully scheduling, communicating and managing across time zones.

Tool Talk: Trello | Anuj Adhiya

Anuj Adhiya will show how PlanitWide, a 3-person startup, uses Trello-rather than email–for tracking task management internally.

Lessons From The World’s Biggest Distributed Company | David Casali & Lori McLeese

Really big companies usually have workers in offices around the globe. But Automattic, the company behind WordPress, has its workers in home offices around the globe–with no central headquarters. At more than 230 employees in 30 countries and growing fast, the company is leading the way for fully distributed teams and has lessons for us all. Davide Casali, UX Redirector, will look at the key elements Automattic uses to support remote collaboration–not just the tools, but the way teams are organized and make decisions, all of which have evolved as the company has grown. Lori McLeese, HR Lead, will talk about the unusual, in-depth process that Automattic uses to hire people and ensure they’re a fit for a fully distributed team. Their talks will be followed by a joint Q&A with attendees.

Speed As A Competitive Advantage | Mark Little

Hear Mark Little, head of GE Global Research, and Lean Startup’s Eric Ries as they discuss GE FastWorks, an initiative at one of the world’s largest companies inspired by the Lean Startup method. Moderated by Mark Graban of KaiNexus.

From Lean Government To Lean Healthcare | Eric Ries & Aneesh Chopra

Eric Ries and Aneesh Chopra, the former CTO for the United States, discussed how Lean Startup is used in government organizations and healthcare companies to reform their services and improve how they do business. We covered: *A Lean Startup technique to deal with a massive customer issue when you know the system won’t be fixed overnight *How the government is implementing Lean Startup techniques (and if the national government can do it -- what is stopping you?) *An inside look at how the most “dysfunctional” rollout in history was turned around (hint: healthcare.gov) *Clean data in healthcare -- and what that really means

Cisco, How a 140,000+ Person Company Is Driving Innovation | Oseas Ramirez

As Senior Manager of Operations and L&D, Oseas Ramirez shares how Cisco continues to work toward creating a culture of experimentation. He discusses their Leadership Pipeline program and the future managers of Cisco, and talks Startup//Cisco and how to drive innovation in a company of 70,000 employees and 70,000 contractors in dozens of countries. Heather McGough interviews Oseas Ramirez. @leanstartup @Cisco @UrbanitySF

Cisco, How a 140,000+ Person Company Is Driving Innovation | Oseas Ramirez

As Senior Manager of Operations and L&D, Oseas Ramirez shares how Cisco continues to work toward creating a culture of experimentation. He discusses their Leadership Pipeline program and the future managers of Cisco, and talks Startup//Cisco and how to drive innovation in a company of 70,000 employees and 70,000 contractors in dozens of countries. Heather McGough interviews Oseas Ramirez. @leanstartup @Cisco @UrbanitySF

Practicing Lean When You’re Not A Startup | Rahim Adatia

Often there is a perception that Lean Startup methods are only for the inception phase of a product. The ‘startup’ part is a bit of a misnomer, it's not meant to be literal. Companies of all sizes can benefit from the principles by adopting a more customer-centric approach and engendering a culture supporting build-measure-learn. On this podcast, we will speak with Rahim Adatia who will share some of his experiences working with both startups and larger organizations to ship products using Lean methodologies. Rahim Adatia can be reached on Twitter (@funkstop), LinkedIn, or on his personal blog at www.theFunkstop.com Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF

Measuring Lessons With Dollars | David Binetti

Nothing strikes fear in the heart of an entrepreneur like the simple question, “What’s the ROI?” You have to answer or you won’t get funded. Answering using traditional approaches forces you to fabricate revenue assumptions that have no basis in reality — and you’ll be held accountable. It’s a no-win scenario that kills innovation. Lean Startup mentor and speaker David Binetti will focus on this specific issue at the Lean Startup Conference in November. In this webcast we preview his talk with a one-on-one discussion and learn how to get Product and Finance teams speaking the same language while achieving their individual objectives.

Common Startup Mistakes | Alan Lobock

Geared towards aspiring entrepreneurs and young startups, this podcast features Alan Lobock, a serial entrepreneur and angel investor best known for co-founding SkyMall. Learn common mistakes entrepreneurs make, how to put a realistic valuation on your business, where managers should focus their time, and advice on applying Lean Startup methods to management structures in building your company. Alan Lobock can be reached on Twitter @AlanLobock Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF

Product Hunt's Secret Weapons | Ryan Hoover

Founder of Product Hunt, Ryan Hoover (@rrhoover), is interviewed by Heather McGough (@UrbanitySF) of Lean Startup Company. In this podcast Hoover discusses the Product Hunt journey, lessons involving their users, how to scale an invite-only community, helping startups, and expanding into new verticals. Ryan Hoover can be reached on Twitter @rrhoover Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

Departing Corporate America For Startups & Storytelling | James Warren

Founder of Share More Stories, James Warren (@warrenjwric), is interviewed by Heather McGough (@UrbanitySF) of Lean Startup Company. In this podcast, James discusses having the courage to leave his corporate job to embark on a startup. He shares lessons around creating a prototype, testing and validating ideas, and discusses his early adopters. James Warren can be reached on Twitter @warrenjwric Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup James will also be speaking at the Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco, November 16-19th. www.leanstartup.co

Advice From A Google UX Researcher | Tomer Sharon

Google's Senior UX Researcher, Tomer Sharon (@tsharon) is interviewed by Heather McGough (@UrbanitySF) of Lean Startup Company. In this podcast, Tomer discusses incorporating Lean Startup methodology into his work, how to create a good user experience, identifying user needs, finding your user research group, what to do with the data, and more. Tomer Sharon can be reached on Twitter @tsharon Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

GE: How An Enterprise Makes Lean Startup Part of The Mindset And Culture | Janice Semper

Leader of GE Culture and co-founder of GE FastWorks, Janice Semper, is interviewed by Heather McGough (@UrbanitySF) of Lean Startup Company. In this podcast, Janice shares how to drive organizational change, the challenges in making a Lean Startup transformation, creating a culture of experimentation in a highly-regulated industry, using Lean Startup in non-tech, what they've learned from startups, and more. General Electric can be reached on Twitter @generalelectric Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

Turbocharge Your Path Towards Product Market Fit | Amy Jo Kim

Turbocharge Your Path Towards Product/Market Fit When: Thursday, September 10th 11 am PT / 2 pm ET Featuring: Amy Jo Kim It’s easier than ever to create a new, innovative product, game, app or service. But most innovative projects never take off and reach their intended audience. What differentiates the ones that DO? What do teams who create genre-defining hits do differently? In this webcast, Amy Jo Kim, social game designer, entrepreneur, and startup coach gives us a peek into what she’ll be talking about at The Lean Startup Conference. Based on her successful coaching program, she’ll discuss design hacks that can help you find and delight your aspirational audience. In this webcast you’ll learn: How to inject early product design with game design smarts What differentiates genre-defining products Design hacks that will delight your prospects

Turning Scientists Into Lean Startup Practitioners | Errol Arkilic

CEO of M34 private investment company, and founding and former lead program director for the National Science Foundation (NSF) I-Corps program, Errol Arkilic, is interviewed by Heather McGough of Lean Startup Company. He shares how scientists are using technology to get out of the lab and into the marketplace using Lean Startup methods. Errol Arkilic can be reached on Twitter @[heather waiting] Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

How the US Olympic Committee Practices Lean Startup Methods | Mounir Zok

Senior Sports Technologist with the US Olympic Committee, Mounir Zok, is interviewed by Heather McGough of Lean Startup Company. Topics include: how to approach developing technology for a human, build measure learn, minimum viable product, how technology is changing sports, and more. Mounir Zok can be reached on Twitter @mounirzok Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

How Highly-Regulated Industries Practice Lean Startup | Jeff Vietri

Looking for a Lean Startup practitioner working in a highly-regulated industry? Look no further. Director of innovation at AZ Central Credit Union, Jeff Vietri, is interviewed by Heather McGough of Lean Startup Company. He shares relatable tips, processes, tools and actionable-advice for anyone working in a highly-regulated industry. Topics include executive buy-in, legal, mvp, build measure learn, scaling, and more. Jeff Vietri can be reached on Twitter @jeffvietri Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

How Higher Education Is Using Lean Startup: Virginia Tech | Brian Mathews

If you thought libraries were going out of style, think again. Turns out, they're harbingers of innovation. Brian Mathews, Associate Dean at Virginia Tech Libraries, joins Heather McGough of Lean Startup Company to discuss the challenges that universities and libraries face as they move into the digital age. Brian shares how he incorporated Lean Startup into VA Tech culture, to develop new products to create a cutting edge experience for his customers -- the students. Topics include: build measure learn, minimum viable product (MVP), pivoting and education Brian Mathews can be reached on Twitter @brianmathews Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

The Lean Startup And The Golden Age Of Entrepreneurship | Eric Ries & Leslie Bradshaw

Published on Oct 12, 2015 The Lean Startup methodology has disrupted businesses everywhere. As a result of a more innovative, entrepreneurial-based economy, business leaders have been forced to take a fresh look at growth opportunities and the type of organization they need to build in order to stay competitive. Born out of the startup culture, Lean Startup provides the pathway to business transformation. So, how can businesses of all sizes apply Lean Startup principles to modernize and foster continuous innovation? In this special event, Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup and the Kickstarter-backed Leader’s Guide, sits down with entrepreneur Leslie Bradshaw, Managing Partner of MadebyMany, to discuss next generation leaders, what it really takes to innovate, and how to create a culture that will sustain. The Lean Startup Conference was proud to partner with General Assembly for this broadcast. You can check out GA here: GA Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/gnrlassembly GA Twitter- https://twitter.com/GA GA LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/company/gene... GA Online- https://generalassemb.ly/

Eliminate Your Ego: How An On Demand Meal Service Found Product-Market Fit | Gagan Biyani

Listen to the co-founder of Udemy and advisor for Lyft discuss his newest startup called Sprig. Gagan Biyani joins Heather McGough of Lean Startup Company to discuss finding his target market, challenges faced while scaling quickly, continuous product improvement, and more. Social: Gagan Biyani can be reached on Twitter @gaganbiyani Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

Building Products That Customers Love | Tom Nguyen

Ahead of his talk at The Lean Startup Conference, Tom Nguyen chats with us about the lessons he learned introducing Lean Startup to create one of Adobe’s most successful mobile apps, Adobe Voice. It was also named by Apple as one of the best apps of the year. We’ll chat with Tom about how empathetic design, radical simplicity, and iteration will help you build products that bring people joy. View the live webcast here: http://leanstartup.co/webcasts/

How An Accelerator Is Infusing Lean Startup: Techstars | Zach Nies

What happens when one of the most renowned startup accelerators in the world infuses Lean Startup methodology? Zach Nies, Managing Director at Techstars Boulder program http://www.techstars.com/programs/boulder-program/, joins Heather McGough of Lean Startup Company to discuss how they're helping entrepreneurs, use Lean Startup thinking to overcome challenges. Zach shares what techniques large organizations can learn from an accelerator and more. Zach Nies can be reached on Twitter @zachnies Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

Creating & Protecting an Innovation Swat Team | Garrett Dunham

Hear an uncut interview with Garrett Dunham of Singularity University as he's interviewed by Heather McGough of Lean Startup Company. Dunham shares stories from his diverse professional background, talks experimentation, failure, and about what enterprise organizations and startups really need to know about how to work together. Garrett Dunham can be reached on Twitter @GarrettDunham Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

Leveraging Tech to Improve Customer Communication | Jeff Gothelf

Jeff Gothelf, organizational designer and co-author of the best-selling Lean UX and the forthcoming book Sense and Respond, joined us on for a conversation about leveraging technology to improve customer communication. As consumers come to expect 24/7 responses from businesses, the companies that embrace continuous communication with customers gain a competitive edge. Jeff will discuss his insights on the value of platforms that enable real-time responses. He’ll also explain why management should support cross-functional development between product strategy, development, and design teams. View the webcast here: https://youtu.be/NTnrdMcrEdw

Turning An Experiment Into A Lifestyle Brand | Matt Brimer

Startup Story: Discussing the genesis of Daybreaker and General Assembly with Matt Brimer Back in 2013, Matt Brimer decided to try an experiment. He wanted to find out if people would show up for an early morning dance party in the middle of the week, before work. And they did. 150 people bought tickets to the first event, and the community grew at a rapid pace. Daybreaker now gets 500+ people at each event and has spread to cities around the world. The concept for Daybreaker replicated the genesis of General Assembly, which also began as a social experiment. Brimer and three friends wanted to create a place where people could come together for entrepreneurship, collaboration, and learning. Since its inception in 2011, General Assembly (GA) has turned into a global education company that offers classes and workshops focused on in-demand skills, like technology, design, and business, that helps its students get jobs and entrepreneurs start businesses. In this Lean Startup webcast, we’ll talk to Matt about how he built General Assembly into a powerful education community and how he’s turning Daybreaker into a global lifestyle brand. Watch the webcast here: https://youtu.be/_lpHJ…

The 5 Experiments You Need To Find Product Market Fit | Justin Wilcox

Why is finding Product-Market Fit so overwhelming? Because the tools available today leave us with more questions than answers. In this hands-on, online workshop, Justin won’t give you more theory about why Product-Market Fit is important – he’ll show you how to find it. In this preview of the workshop he’s running during this year’s Lean Startup Week, Justin will shift the way you think about Product-Market Fit from testing an overwhelming set of assumptions, to running an optimized set of just 5 experiments. You’ll leave this workshop knowing: The 5 experiments you need to find Product-Market Fit Which experiment your startup needs to run next How to run that experiment Watch the video webcast here: https://youtu.be/FizgHbhNkDM

Scaling Lean | Ash Maurya

You’ve probably “gotten outside the building” and talked to customers. You’ve identified problems that need solving, and maybe even built a Minimum Viable Product. But how do you tell whether your idea represents a viable business? In this webcast, Ash Maurya, author of Running Lean and creator of the Lean Canvas, shares techniques for ballparking and measuring the output of a working business model using a handful of key metrics. Watch the webcast here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHXqMjOQ6Gw

How Meeteor Was Created To Help People Hold Productive Meetings | Mamie Kanfer Stewart

Founder of startup Meeteor shares her pivot story, discusses first hires, talks features, customers, pricing, product cycle, customer feedback, and shares her most important Lean Startup takeaways. Meeteor's web and mobile apps help you spend less time in unproductive meetings and more time moving work forward. http://www.meeteor.com/ Mamie Kanfer Stewart can be reached on Twitter @mamieks Follow Meeteor @meeteorHQ Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup

A Case Study of Lean Startup in Healthcare | Eric Ries & Geeta Wilson

On July 22nd, Eric Ries is joined by Geeta Wilson, director of Consumer Experience at Humana, to discuss Lean Startup in the health and wellness industry. In this webcast, brought to you in partnership with Humana, Eric and Geeta will talk about the issues facing companies in regulatory environments, and the unique position that leaders must take in order to implement lean startup. They’ll discuss the successes (and struggles) that Humana has faced, as well as challenges in the healthcare industry that other companies can learn from, such as: lean startup to empower different parts of the value chain, innovation in a professional environment, bringing new products to market, and more. The discussion is moderated by Phil Dillard, a lean startup expert and trainer. Presented by Humana.

How Farmgirl Flowers & Meeteor Launched Their Startups | Christina Stembel & Mamie Kanfer Stewart

In 2010, Farmgirl Flowers’ Christina Stembel quit her gig at Stanford to launch a startup aimed at personalizing the cookie-cutter flower delivery industry. Her locally-sourced, artistically arranged, and totally gorgeous bouquets took off with a customer base craving naturally vibrant flowers. Now Christina is a successful founder who has grown her business from a bike-delivery service in San Francisco to a national destination for on-demand bouquets picked from American farms. Christina is one of two female founders we’ll be chatting with in our next Lean Startup webcast focusing on the specific strategies of next level CEOs. Our other guest on Aug. 31st is Mamie Kanfer Stewart, who is doing the brave work of killing off unproductive meetings through her company Meeteor, which helps organizations use meetings to drive productivity and collaboration rather than being massive time and soul-sucks. The two founders will talk with Lean Startup expert Aubrey Smith about the companies they’re building and the Lean Startup methods that helped them get their businesses off the ground.

Combining User-Centered Design & Lean Startup To Build Better Products | Laura Klein

A Q&A with Product Expert Laura Klein When: Thursday, September 15th at 10am PT / 1pm ET. Featuring: Laura Klein, Principal at Users Know Most companies trying to incorporate Lean Startup into their product development process run into similar issues. There’s the question of where good design, user research, and product management fit into the Build, Measure, Learn loop. There’s the challenge of building something people love while shipping code 50 times a day. How do you build something great today while also planning for what to build tomorrow? And should you focus on user acquisition or making your current users happy? Bring your questions, problems, and frustrations to this webcast with product expert Laura Klein. She’ll help you figure out how to create a user-centered, data-informed product cycle that lets you build, measure, and learn more effectively. Moderated by Phil Dillard, Lean Startup Co. Faculty

General Electric’s Secret to Empowering Employees to Work Smarter | Janice Semper

In transforming the way they work, GE knew it was time to rethink the performance process. Old performance management systems don’t work in a fast-changing market. The old way restricts them and doesn’t allow for the innovation critical for companies to remain relevant today. Join us in learning how to redefine and rebuild your company’s culture during an interview with Marilyn Gorman, Senior Faculty for Lean Startup Co.’s Education Program, and Janice Semper the Culture Leader for General Electric.The Lean Startup approach goes beyond building products and can be a toolkit used for the entire company, fundamentally changing the way we work and think. Email us: [email protected] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF

How to Spur Growth & Increase Innovation in Large Organizations | Tendayi Viki & Janet Bumpas

For many established organizations, the problems are clear: disruption from more nimble startups, waterfall processes that waste time and resources, and a culture that rewards playing by inflexible rules over running customer-driven experiments. The solutions are less obvious. How do organizations launch and scale internal startups? How do you systemize intrapreneurship? How should you change the way you hold employees accountable to encourage continuous innovation? Our Lean Enterprise experts Tendayi Viki and Janet Bumpas have actionable solutions to these questions and many others haunting Lean Enterprise practitioners. In this webcast, which will be moderated by six-time entrepreneur David Binetti, Tendayi and Janet will share case studies and actionable takeaways and answer your burning questions.

Office Hours with Eric Ries: London | Eric Ries & Dave Cunningham

Groups of attendees crowd the stage after every conference we host, hoping to get a minute with Eric to ask his advice. To help get as many of the questions plaguing your business or organization answered by Eric as possible, we hosted a “Live Q&A with Eric Ries” in London. For this 30-minute session, moderated by Dave Cunningham, Eric answered your questions via Skype about applying Lean Startup with your teams. He discussed not only how to resolve your internal issues, but also the challenges your peers in related industries are struggling with too.

Netflix and LeanStartup Experimentation | Jim Cook

In this webcast Jim Cook, the current CFO of Mozilla, discusses his influential experiences running many of the early Netflix experiments. There were challenges every day, and data collection was rigorous. He is interviewed by Lean Startup Co. Corporate Education Program faculty member, Hugh Molotsi. www.leanstartup.co.

How Enterprise Companies Can Use Product Analytics To Move Fast | Justin Bauer

Partner Webcast: How Enterprise Companies Can Use Product Analytics to Move Fast When: Thursday, August 17 at 9am PT/noon ET Featuring: Justin Bauer, VP of Product at Amplitude Product leaders at enterprise companies face a variety of challenges to moving fast. They come up against issues such as a lack of urgency to learn, decision making formed by opinions instead of metrics, and a lack of accountability to and ownership of metrics. In the current “age of the customer,” making decisions and iterating quickly is critical to staying competitive. Justin Bauer, VP of Product at Amplitude, will discuss how leading product organizations are using product analytics to spur innovation and increase decision velocity. By decentralizing decision-making and using metrics to ensure alignment and accountability across large teams, enterprise companies can use product analytics to empower those closest to customers’ problems. Justin will be interviewed by David Binetti, a Senior Faculty member with Lean Startup Co. Corporate Education Program and a six-time entrepreneur.

Office Hours With Eric Ries: New York | Eric Ries and Jason Ashlock

Groups of attendees crowd the stage after every conference we host, hoping to get a minute with Eric to ask his advice. To help get as many of the questions plaguing your business or organization answered by Eric as possible, we’re hosting a “Office Hours with Eric Ries” in New York. For this 30-minute session moderated by Jason Ashlock, Eric will be available via Skype to answer your questions about applying Lean Startup with your teams. You’ll learn not only how to resolve your internal issues, but also hear more about the challenges your peers in related industries are struggling with too. You’ll be asking your questions via the simple audience interaction app Slido, making for easy upvoting when those really pressing queries roll in.

Disrupting The Disruptor: Citi FinTech | David Kidder & Carey Kolaja

Bionic CEO David Kidder sits down with Carey Kolaja, the Global Chief Product Officer of Citi Fintech, to discuss how this juggernaut of bank is changing the way it works and building disruptive fintech solutions like a startup. Kidder and Kolaja will delve into not just what Citi Fintech is focused on but how they built a program for growth that combines the Lean Startup methodology with growth boards, which manage the investment and support of new ideas so they aren't prematurely killed or (equally problematic) prematurely scaled.

Getting Teams to Move Fast | Amy Neuman, Ken Skistimas, Amee Mungo & Courtney Hemphill

In this participatory, fishbowl-style panel, Lean Design experts discuss how Lean systems allow teams to more quickly iterate upon and scale their ideas. Panelists Courtney Hemphill (Carbon Five), Ken Skistimas (GE Digital), and Amy Neuman (Autodesk) will cover the process, infrastructure, and team configurations inherent to Lean Design. Expect solid takeaways on how to incorporate these practices into your organization, and the chance to ask questions of our panelists. Moderated by Amee Mungo (GoKart Labs).

How Microsoft Is Making The Culture Change From Traditional To Lean | Cindy Alvarez

How do you make the culture change from traditional to Lean work? It requires changing behaviors and building new habits and competencies. In this breakout session, Cindy Alvarez will share strategies that Microsoft's Cloud & Enterprise division has employed to help its 8,000+ employees learn new skills, build new habits, and change behaviors. You'll learn the pros and cons of various approaches, what initial investments they required, and which situations they've worked best in. If your leadership is looking to you to recommend a Lean strategy, this session will help you make a recommendation that works best for your organization.

Unlocking Your Company's Innovation Capital | Jim Hornthal

Large companies employ a variety of methods to develop new products, services, and processes that are critical to their future. We typically refer to these as “innovation,” but what we really mean is growth. Continuous and sustainable growth requires repeatable, scalable business models that create long-term competitive advantages. Every large company has a track record for innovation, that’s how they became large in the first place. “Innovation Capital” is the combination of a company’s talent, ideas, and culture, leveraged by their institutional knowledge, and fused with a capacity for rapid data acquisition. When combined with a system of real-time innovation metrics, innovation portfolio management is informed by data, maximizing returns and market position. Launchpad Co-Founder and Executive Chairman Jim Hornthal will discuss the components of Innovation Capital, how to find and share your company's existing assets, and how to create a culture and process that maximizes use of Innovation Capital.

The Innovation Stack: Five OD Practices | Mark Raheja

The Innovation Stack: Five OD Practices to Unleash the Creative Potential of Lean Enterprise Teams Eventually, every successful business struggles to produce their next killer product or service. A strong business model might work miracles for decades, but it too will stumble in the face of perpetual shifts in technology and culture. Innovation paralysis in enterprise is no mystery – rather, it’s the direct consequence of how we’ve designed large organizations and their teams. During this talk, Mark Raheja will share classic (and, at times funny) examples of the five most common inhibitors to Lean Enterprise innovation, and introduce The Innovation Stack – a holistic set of five practices designed to jumpstart the innovative capacity of any team implementing Lean Startup.

Lean Innovation, FAT Company: What's A Disruptor To Do | Bob Dorf

When, where, and how does Lean innovation work best in not-very-lean Fortune 1000 companies? Why is Lean Startup so powerful in some situations, and a waste of time and resources in many others? Bob Dorf will explore the challenges Lean innovators face in oft-stodgy, bloated big corporations that can’t and won’t take the do-or-die risks so common among Lean startups. He’ll discuss the “lean 4x4:” four key challenges when putting Lean to work in a large-scale enterprise, and four pillars of Lean innovation success.

Lean Concepts That Helped The Design Transformation At Nordstrom | Jyoti Shukla

Nordstrom is in the process of modernizing its digital properties—web/mobile web/in-store digital/app—as well as redefining the design and processes across the UX organization. When Jyoti Shukla began supporting the UX team, she noticed a number of large scale, heavy processes in place that did not necessarily yield a direct return on investment, nor did they delight and excite the customer. Jyoti focused on leading the team to develop a lean approach in delivering software to exceed the expectations of Nordstrom customers. Although there are always big challenges with process change, there is a lot of excitement to move the needle using newer/leaner methods. Jyoti will discuss some of the peaks and valleys of the experience she has had at Nordstrom in using lean concepts to drive the UX organization.

100 Startups In 100 Days | Brant Cooper

How many startups does it take to launch a unicorn? 100? 1,000? How many internal startup teams do you need to replace your growth engine? Breakthrough innovation is the result of collaboration among a diverse group of people, all working in a different way. Organizations can’t just leave it up to a couple of hand-chosen innovation teams. In this talk, Brant Cooper will take you through a framework you can use to make entrepreneurial action the norm throughout your organization. It’s a bold initiative to launch 100 startups in 100 days. Brant will go through each of the impact levers to show you how you can roll out a similar initiative within your own organization, one that lays the groundwork for innovation transformation (even if you don’t actually get to 100 in 100 days!)

Building And Scaling Smaller Startups Within Etsy | Emily Smith & Rachana Kumar

Founded in 2005, Etsy has grown into a public company with over 1,000 employees. It's no longer a startup (in the traditional definition), but in many ways, Etsy still thinks and builds like one. This presentation will walk through examples of how Etsy takes Lean Startup approaches to smaller, startup-like products within the company, including how these smaller teams are formed, how their work is tested, and how they exist within the larger company ecosystem to allow for constant iteration and innovation by the brand. Included here will be tips for supporting internal startups within established companies.

UNICEF Venture Fund And The Financing Of Equity | Christopher Fabian

UNICEF's Venture Fund is the first financial vehicle of its kind in the United Nations—allowing for $50-100K investments in open source technology companies in the countries where UNICEF works. Chris Fabian will discuss the importance of new approaches to solving the world's most pressing problems, and how creating prototypes and provocations to industry has helped situate UNICEF as a leader in identifying, financing, and scaling solutions that have never before been realized. More on the award-winning UNICEF Office of Innovation here: www.unicefstories.org and www.unicefinnovationfund.org.

Turning The Ship: Bringing Faster Leaner Technology To Government | Dominic Berg

The NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications is undergoing a major shift, using new technologies and unconventional approaches to better serve City partners and the millions of New Yorkers who depend on them. This presentation will shed light on the ways that an enormous government organization is working to become more agile, responsive, and contemporary to better get the job done. Following the presentation, NY1’s Josh Robin will conduct an on-stage interview with Dominic to learn more about these challenges and successes.

Turning The Ship: Bringing Faster Leaner Technology To Government | Josh Robin and Dominic Berg

The NYC Department of Information Technology & Telecommunications is undergoing a major shift, using new technologies and unconventional approaches to better serve City partners and the millions of New Yorkers who depend on them. This presentation will shed light on the ways that an enormous government organization is working to become more agile, responsive, and contemporary to better get the job done. Following the presentation, NY1’s Josh Robin will conduct an on-stage interview with Dominic to learn more about these challenges and successes.

From Sketches To Shareholders: How Starting Lean Helped Me Hack The World | Laurence Kemball-Cook

Starting a new business is hard enough, but creating a new technology has unique challenges. From how to deploy early funding, to hiring from a community that you trust, Laurence Kemball-Cook, founder and CEO of Pavegen, gives his insights into how applying Lean Startup principles helped his company become the global leader in harvesting energy and data from footfall.

Turning Large Corporations Containerships Into Nimble Startup Speedboats | Janet Bumpas

Large organizations are often like containerships—big, reliable, and efficient, but they can’t turn quickly. They often see startups as fast speedboats—responsive and nimble operations. Janet Bumpas is the Managing Director for one of StartupBootcamp/Innoleaps' corporate accelerator programs. She works with corporate teams to transform them from containerships into speedboats. They learn to move fast, using Lean Startup principles to validate customer needs and risky assumptions with market-based data. In her talk, she’ll outline strategies for enterprise organizations to spark and sustain nimble innovation, including how to avoid the most common causes of stalling out in the process.

Using Product Design Sprints To Strengthen Your Product/Market Fit | Laurie Young

Both Product Design Sprints and Lean techniques allow teams to move toward and iterate upon ideas quickly, helping companies build better products faster. Although the two processes are complementary, Product Design Sprints run at a different pace than the Lean process and offer different value to teams. In this talk, thoughtbot’s Development Director Laurie Young explores the Product Design Sprint, Design Thinking, and how to help teams transition from the learning in their early experiments to a strong product/market fit.

GE's FastWorks Journey Engaging In A Cultural Transformation | Sinead Clarkin & Heather McGough

GE's adaptation of the Lean Startup program, called FastWorks, has been well documented thus far. But what are the specifics of the ongoing journey of the FastWorks mindset and methodology, as it makes its way through the organization in an effort to drive innovation and shift GE’s culture? How is GE building and scaling FastWorks across the company? How has GE measured its success to-date, and what does the future of FastWorks look like? In a conversation with Lean Startup Co. co-founder Heather McGough, GE’s FastWorks Skills Director, Sinéad Clarkin, will discuss GE’s learning journey with FastWorks. Sinéad will take us through the pain points, skill requirements, and roadmap for this landmark program.

Leading The Lean Charge: POD Points Approach To Accelerated Innovation | Erik Fairbairn

Cleantech startup POD Point has become one of Europe’s leading providers of electric vehicle supply equipment, offering a range of intelligent charging points. The firm has shipped over 30,000 points and boasts a publicly accessible network of over 2,500 charging bays. CEO/founder Erik Fairbairn will share how he’s used Lean Startup practices across the company to become one of the UK’s 100 fastest growing tech companies for the past two years running.

Adopting Lean Startup Within A Larger Telecom Enterprise | Veli-Matti Mattila

Finnish telecommunications company Elisa has been on a transformational journey—particularly since 2006, and in regards to its digital business transformation, where the focus has been driven by customer insight instead of technological prowess. The first step was developing a program for broadly discovering customer frustrations and business opportunities therein. This evolved into a separate department for new services and markets, generating several new digital businesses. Even though agile methods took firm hold in the technology development, the business mindset was still more about trying to scale fast than fail fast. Telecom companies need to ensure technical quality and make big investments in mature business areas, which is often the opposite of rapid experimentation. At the moment, Elisa has pivoted development of its new international businesses into strategic domains, which rigorously follow the Lean Startup principles. This means dedicated startup teams and using innovation accounting to guide regular pivot or persevere meetings and funding decisions. This keynote will share key learnings from Elisa's adoption of the Lean Startup methodology.

Fireside Chat: Pernod Ricards "Project Ingenuity" Transformation | Bridget Gardner & Elvin Turner

In 2013, the UK arm of global drinks business Pernod Ricard embarked on a 1,000 day business transformation journey called “Project Ingenuity.” Driven by Lean Startup approaches, the strategy resulted in growth in both profit and market share, 95% employee engagement scores, and record low staff turnover rates. This year Pernod Ricard UK also entered The Times top 100 places to work rankings. In this fireside chat, Pernod Ricard’s Head of Employee Development, Bridget Gardner, will share the process, as well as the cultural and leadership lessons learned along the journey. Bridget will be in conversation with innovation adviser Elvin Turner from ETA.

A Practical Guide To Innovation Accounting | Tendayi Viki

This talk will cover how innovators can track and measure success using the right tools and metrics. It will explore how teams in the trenches can track the success of their business models via the experiments they will be running, as well as how innovation accounting can be done at the management and strategy levels. Learn how leaders at management level can make ongoing investment decisions of whether to double-down or divest from specific innovation projects. At the strategy level, learn how company leaders can measure the impact of innovation on their company as whole. Practical tips and guides, as well as examples from several companies, will be provided.

From Small Experiments To Big Cultural Changes Lessons | Francine Stevens

Organizations don’t innovate, people do. Modern leaders make the necessary business changes to remain competitive by using small, constant cycles of experimentation and iteration as opposed to moving the entire beast in one go. Francine Stevens will share lessons from the enterprise and startup worlds on how to think big but start small to foster an innovative culture that’s sustainable for the long term.

The Innovations That Impact Lives At DFID And Cancer Research UK | Nick Noreña

Despite the stereotype of the not-for-profit and government sectors being slow moving and mired in bureaucracy, innovation leaders at top UK research and aid agencies are taking pages from the private sector and running experiments that directly impact lives. The Department for International Development (DFID) and Cancer Research UK are two examples of organizations taking on Lean Impact tactics of testing and applying new technologies to development and fundraising issues. In this fireside chat with TriKro innovation coach Nick Noreña, members of DFID and Cancer Research UK share the strategies for and struggles around implementing Lean Startup in the Lean Impact sphere.

Fireside Chat: Startup Innovations In Fintech | Diane Perlman and Anne Boden

Diane Perlman, entrepreneur and former Global CMO of startup accelerator Mass Challenge, interviews Anne Boden, CEO of mobile-only challenger bank Starling Bank. They’ll discuss Starling’s approach to innovation and experimentation in a highly regulated industry, the biggest challenges for fintech in 2017, and how to best disrupt the holds big banks have on customers.

Keeping The Disrupter DNA Alive In Corporate Fintech | Janne Zengerink, Bob Jansen, & Georgia Hanais

Firmhouse has been one of the active founders of the Dutch Lean Startup movement. They’ve helped the majority of Dutch startup accelerators with education, mostly focused on experimentation. After startup acceleration programs were brought into the corporate paradigm, Firmhouse began helping enterprise organizations execute the same practices in vastly different contexts and under vastly different constraints. In this fireside chat, Janne Zengerink (ING) and Bob Jansen (Firmhouse) will discuss how experimentation changes from the startup to the corporate environment.

Adopting An Organizational Culture Code | Lynn Johnson

You have a vision for how your venture is going to change the world. But how do you align that big picture with the practical elements of running a business? Lynn Johnson will speak about the importance of creating a “Culture Code” as a framework for integrating your vision and values into every aspect of your day-to-day business operations.

ExecCamp: Break The Model. Reinvent The Business | Barry O'Reilly

Hear how business leaders from multi-billion dollar organizations are getting outside their comfort zone to take part in a transformational experience and embrace Lean Startup practices and principles that leave a lasting impact on individuals and their organizations.

How Lean Startup Principles Saved Magoosh Tens Of Thousands Of Dollars | Bhavin Parikh

Magoosh, a company that creates web and mobile apps to help students prepare for standardized tests, embedded Lean Startup principles into its core values to great success. CEO Bhavin Parikh will provide a concrete example of how those values helped an individual on his team use Lean Startup to invalidate a feature hypothesis.

Disrupting You: Applying Lean Startup Principles To Define, Own, And Engage | Charu Manchanda Nair

Charu Manchanda Nair explains how her company pushed the frontier of personal diversity mapping using Lean Startup principles. #ignite

A Lean Startup Approach To Screenwriting | Dikran Ornekian

After the economic collapse of 2008 and a devastating writers strike, selling an original screenplay in Hollywood became a more difficult proposition than ever before. Dikran Ornekian and his partner Rylend Grant will talk about how this harsh environment pushed them into trying something different — testing their script ideas as short stories — and how this new approach opened more doors for them than any screenplay ever had.

Selecting To Win: How To Choose Internal Teams For Innovation | Janet Bumpas

The team behind a new product is the most important ingredient to its success. But how do you pick the right team? What do you look for? And if you are in a large enterprise looking to field multiple innovation teams, how do you maximize your chances for success? This talk looks at the lessons Janet Bumpas learned running selection processes for internal innovation efforts at large enterprise companies.

Combining The Old & New School: Scaling Lean Within A Retail Giant | Cindy Peterson & Janel Wellborn

Learn how Macy’s, a 150-year-old retail giant, went from testing one Lean team to funding 22 Lean teams in two years. The retailer’s journey is one of eating its own dog food – continuously testing, learning, and using build-measure-learn cycles, customer feedback, and business results to make believers out of even the most skeptical stakeholders and partners. Cindy Peterson and Janel Wellborn will share their top ten learnings that you can apply to scaling Lean in a large enterprise.

Lean Resources Development, From Guam To DC | Monty Campbell

By running a Lean hackathon for underprivileged communities in Guam and DC, Lean Mobile Apps was able to maximize visibility for their idea. By tapping into their team resources to implement no-nonsense strategies with measurable results, they brought in relevant users—who then provided solid data that appealed to would-be investors and sponsors.

Fail Shot For The Win | Nicole Shephard

Infusing Lean Startup into a large organization is hard. This lightning talk with Travelport Labs’ design manager Nicole Shephard highlights the screw-ups, successes, and insights gleaned from years spent testing and refining a Lean Startup-centered innovation program at the $2B travel technology company.

Making Room For Baby | Beth Sordi

Creating space for innovation to thrive in an existing business is challenging but possible with communication and patience, not unlike raising children. Learn how BabyCenter’s Beth Sordi has led her team to seek out, test, and validate new business models using testing dashboards, two-factor tests, and well-constructed consumer interactions without disturbing her company’s core business.

Lean Local Government: Using Lean Startup Principles To Empower Government Employees | Kelly McAdoo

For most people, local government is something you don’t think about unless there’s an emergency. But civic organizations touch more lives than local businesses. So why then do so many local governments get stymied by organizational cultures that publicly punish mistakes and reward safety instead of following any semblance of modern business practices? Kelly McAdoo shares the story of how the City of Hayward, California has applied Lean Startup to improve resident satisfaction, empower employees, and prioritize scarce resources while also providing the ability to measure the impact of their actions on the community.

How To Get $100k In 30 Days | Tami Reiss

Just Not Sorry is an international sensation used by people in over 200 countries. Its creator, Tami Reiss, attributes the company’s incredible growth to the Lean principles they employed when building the Gmail plug-in. Learn how they validated their idea, defined their MVP, and iterated their way to success during development and after launch in everything from the name and functionality to the tweets and landing page messaging.

Opening Remarks At Lean Startup Week 2016 | Eric Ries

Opening Remarks At Lean Startup Week 2016 | Eric Ries by Lean Startup

The Lessons Of Steve Jobs | Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki, former chief evangelist of Apple, explains the lessons he learned from Steve Jobs and how they apply to startups.

The Hustle | Sam Parr

Sam Parr is founder of Hustle Con Media, one of the fastest growing media companies in the U.S. Sam joins Lean Startup Co. contributing editor Jennifer Maerz to talk about how he grew his brand to 3 million readers in eight months, and how he continues to push the boundaries through experimentation and relentless community development.

How DIY Beverage Hint Water Became A Multi-Million Dollar Company | Kara Goldin

Kara Goldin, founder of the multi-million dollar company Hint Water, shares the story behind Hint’s phenomenal growth. She’ll explain how she’s managed to turn her business into a social mission, what she’s learned from Silicon Valley, and she’ll share advice for entrepreneurs.

Meeting Practices That Support Innovation | Mamie Kanfer Stewart

Your company culture comes to life in your company meetings. How you plan, run, and follow-through on your team sessions impacts almost every aspect of how your people work together. Mamie Kanfer Stewart, founder and CEO of Meeteor, describes how to align your meeting practices with a Lean Startup mindset to support a culture of innovation and collaboration.

Scaling Lean: Projects, Program, Portfolio | Jeff Gothelf

When Lean-curious companies get stalled implementing the practice, they’ll often cite organizational complexities, politics, and dependencies as insurmountable obstacles. The methodology can be scaled, though — not just as culture and philosophy, but as tactical process. In this practical presentation offering detailed case studies, Jeff Gothelf (author of Lean UX and the upcoming Sense and Respond) will share several methods for scaling Lean Startup techniques in large organizations. Jeff will cover knowledge management, intra-team dependencies, infrastructure requirements, and several other elements of ensuring successful Lean Startup practices in companies of any size.

Design and The Self | Irene Au

Design has the power to shape how we think and feel. It’s also the tangible manifestation of intention. Conversely, how we create and what we design are the culmination of who we are as individuals coming together to make something for others. In this talk, Irene Au, Design Partner at Khosla Ventures, explores how our inner state manifests in design, and why the best thing we can do to become better designers may be to work on ourselves.

Why 40 Hours Is Enough: Lessons From Basecamp | Jason Fried

Jason Fried, co-founder & CEO of Basecamp, joins us to talk about leading business teams in a way that supports the Lean Startup practice – collaborative, productive, efficient.

Design Thinking and Lean | Phil Gilbert

IBM is on a mission to create a sustainable culture of design and to bring a human-centered focus to its thousands of products and services. Since 2013, the company has hired over 1,100 designers to work alongside engineers and business leaders across the company. In this multidisciplinary setting, how does the Lean Startup approach interplay with design thinking? How can teams bridge the gap between user experience insights and real business opportunities? Phil Gilbert, General Manager of IBM Design, will discuss how IBM’s approach to continuous innovation at a global scale is transforming the way the company works.

Designing Collaboration With Watson | Ethan Geyer

Design Thinking–with its focus on user outcomes, constant reinvention and empowered teams–has revitalized product development at IBM. In this Ignite Talk, you’ll see how IBM Design Thinking fueled the creation of a breakthrough new collaboration product giving IBM Watson intelligence to everyday professionals.

Treat Everyone Like It’s Their Birthday | Caterina Rizzi

“I feel great when I’m treated badly,” said no one ever. People are the nucleus of any successful business. Breather Co-Founder and CCO, Caterina Rizzi, talks about why your business is nothing without the people who use your product and why treating them like it’s their birthday is the secret sauce to a strong, relatable and memorable experience. At Breather, they’ve built empathy, humility and service into their core brand values and have found that the more you give, the more you get.

Applying Lean In Intercultural Environments | Melinda Jacobs

Melinda Jacobs, co-founder of Lucent Sky, gathers sales and product feedback from customers on three continents. She’ll describe the impact cultural customs and norms have on how feedback and customer development take place, with a focus on how to adapt Lean methodologies into diverse cultural settings.

12 Years Building Moz: What I'd Change, Keep The Same & Don't Yet Know | Rand Fishkin

The years you spend creating a startup is often time filled with regret, joy, pain and — hopefully someday—success. In this presentation, Rand Fishkin, founder and former CEO of Moz, will talk about how his company, which started as a personal blog while he was deeply in debt, evolved into a $40m+ revenue/year software business. Rand won’t pull punches or hide the truth. Instead he’ll offer an unvarnished, transparent look inside the hardest and rarely-talked-about aspects of building a company.

From Games To Education To Morning Dance Parties | Matt Brimer

Matthew Brimer is a social entrepreneur, community builder, and general mischief instigator with a penchant for turning experiments into businesses and art projects into global movements. He’ll share his entrepreneurial journey and lessons learned from building GoCrossCampus, General Assembly, the global Daybreaker dance party series, and beyond.

A Dozen Reasons Why Missionaries Build Better Businesses | Tren Griffin

As Tren Griffin will explain, the entrepreneurs founding startups with the biggest impact are missionaries who are laser focused on implementing the insight at the core of their business. Mercenaries are driven by monetary rewards and fame. Mercenaries seldom have the necessary desire to change the world, a desire that would otherwise enable them to persevere through hardship and create a world-changing business.

Sprints: How To Build and Test An Idea In Just 40 Hours | Jake Knapp

Looking to save your team countless hours and dollars? To get unstuck? Learn how the design sprint can give you a superpower: the ability to build and test nearly any idea in just 40 hours. The sprint—a five-day process for answering critical business questions through designing, prototyping, and testing ideas—is a “greatest hits” of battle-tested business processes any team can use. Sharing this shortcut to learning and innovation is Jake Knapp, creator of Google Ventures’ sprint process, co-creator of Google Hangouts, and author of The New York Times bestseller Sprint.

The Art Of Sustainable Growth | Wendy Gonzalez

Across industries, the ability to grow your business without overinvesting resources is of utmost importance. Nonprofits face a unique challenge in being forced to run a lean ship without the safety net of VC money. The Sama team has turned constraints in resources into lessons on being mindful in how they run and build their business. Wendy Gonzalez, SVP & Managing Director of Samasource, explains how to apply nonprofit tactics to ensure the long-term success of your company, regardless of your funding source or the type of business you run.

Applying Lean Startup In Big Government | Hillary Hartley

Hillary Hartley joins us to deliver an update on how 18F is applying Lean Startup to innovate and change government, and the key lessons that any organization can learn from their examples.

A Conversation On Lean Startup Innovation | Michelle Lee

Conference emcee Thuy Vu has a fireside chat with Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Michelle Lee about driving innovation in the US and why Lean Startup is a critical methodology for entrepreneurs and organizations.

The Future Of Lean Startup | Eric Ries

Eric sits down with Lean Startup Labs faculty member Phil Dillard to discuss the state of Lean Startup, what every organization should be thinking about as it moves into the next decade and beyond, and the influence a long term innovation strategy has on the way products get built today.

How To Grow New | Viv Goldstein

In this opening presentation, Viv Goldstein, director of Innovation Acceleration and co-founder of FastWorks at GE, pulls back the curtain on how she and her team led a 124-year-old company through a revolutionary culture change.

80/20 Rule In User Experience Is Personalization | Peter Szanto

How do you create meaningful relationships with your most loyal customers? By measuring and learning about their needs in order to build the right product. For B2C, one of the best ways to measure in the early days of product development is by using social analytics. The data collected can help you understand your target better, deliver the right message, and develop a tailored experience.

Roundtable Discussion With Female Founders | Lindsey Gray

Lindsey Gray, senior director of the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute, leads a discussion with successful startup founders—Christina Stembel, founder of Farmgirl Flowers and Huda Idrees, founder of healthcare startup Dot Health.

Building The Right Team For The Future Of Your Business | Mark Reheja

Mark Raheja, founding partner of organizational design firm August, discusses what it means to build and lead a team in an era of startups, digital nomads, and a gig economy.

Disrupting The Grocery Industry: Kolonial.no | Karl Munthe-Kaas

Join Kolonial.no’s Karl Munthe-Kaas as he shares the story of the online grocery he co-founded. Launched three years ago, Kolonial.no has achieved unparalleled growth in an underserved segment of the Norwegian e-commerce market. By using an aggressive Lean Startup approach, the company has grown to become the largest full assortment online grocer in Norway.

Tips For Applying Lean Startup In A Large Organization: A Case Study | Susana Jurado Apruzzese

Susana Jurado Apruzzese, an innovator at Telefonica R&D, will outline the main challenges large organizations face when they apply Lean Startup. She’ll share key tips for speeding up the innovation process and doing more with less while staying focused on company strategy, customers, and the market.

The Vision Before The Experimentation: Applying Lean Startup To Creative | Stuart Eccles

Lean Startup is often characterized as a scientific methodology, while the innovation process requires creative leaps of imagination. How do you reconcile these two worlds, let alone get them to exist in harmony? The intersection of these two concepts is the Grand Unifying Theory of product development. Stuart Eccles, co-founder of innovation studio Made by Many, will show you how to use Lean Startup to go beyond the testing of ideas and into the active generation of them.

Salesforce Lightning | David Colby, Tatyana Mamut, Shawna Wolverton, & Pratima Arora

When Salesforce set out to re-design our Core Products, we faced a daunting challenge. To move fast, a cross-functional team worked closely together to define, design, test, and iterate. We will talk about what this collaboration entailed, and lessons learned for design thinking & doing at enterprise scale. Guest speakers: Pratima Arora, Shawna Wolverton, and David Colby (Salesforce).

The Team/Startup Fit: An Overlooked Assumption | Philippe Boulanger

The attitude of the team that will work on a startup project is a critical first success factor, way before finding the product/market fit. Through a quick experiment and sharing an analysis of key startup activities, Philippe will demonstrate the value of some specific soft skills of any startup team.

Tips For Applying Lean Startup In A Large Organization, A Case Study With Pearson | Sonja Kresojevic

Over the last 10+ years we have seen a number of large enterprises experiencing (near) Kodak moment and struggling to drive growth as they navigate through long term disruption to their business. In this talk Sonja will share learnings from award winning innovation program at Pearson and will outline how principles and practices of Lean Product Lifecycle and active portfolio management can help companies navigate disruption, increase innovation and transform their portfolios and why mindset, leadership and cultural changes are key to success.

Innocent Interventions That Create Cultural Change In Traditional Organizations | Bob Sutton

Despite all the moaning and groaning about how difficult it is to bring about constructive change in large organizations, it can and does happen. We tell three true stories of such successful change, all of which were propelled, at least in part, in design thinking methods taught at the Stanford d.school. And none of which were instigated by top executives. The stories that we will tell, dissect, and discuss with the audience are about the San Francisco Opera, JetBlue Airways, and a social services agency called the Golden Gate Regional Center. Each of these interventions resulted in enduring changes that reduce hassles and enhance dignity and delight for employees and customers.

Platforms For The Future Of Work | Roger Dickey

Automation, innovative management practices, and real-time communication tools are creating new models for skilled work. Every professional relies on software to structure and assist their work, and as that software becomes more intelligent it will gradually play a larger role in day-to-day tasks. Eventually, AI-powered platforms will facilitate complex work (from taxes to lawsuits) as easily as Uber calls a cab. Roger Dickey, the founder and CEO of freelance developer platform Gigster, will discuss how marketplaces and intelligent software can combine to improve and accelerate professional work, while making it more fulfilling, more profitable, and more accessible.

Sourcing Funding For Your Business | Charles Hudson

Charles Hudson is an entrepreneur who recently founded his own VC firm. He’ll provide real world perspective on what it means to source funding for your business. He’ll also talk about how his firm, which often invests in very early stage ideas, approaches working with startups.

Running A Lean Startup For Social Good | Michel Gelobter

Lean Change CEO Michel Gelobter leads a panel discussion on what it means to run a non-profit organization or agency of social change with a Lean Startup foundation.

Designing Behavior Change For Health | Kelvin Kwong

The decisions that we make in a given day are driven by numerous cognitive biases designed to save us time and energy. Often, these mental shortcuts serve us well, but occasionally, they lead us astray and drive us to make poor decisions — and this is particularly true about our health. Jawbone’s Kelvin Kwong will discuss the psychology behind decision making and how his team applies behavioral science research to build a product that changes how we move, sleep, and eat.

The Future Of The Workforce Diversity And Inclusion | CeCe Cheng

Future-thinking companies are operationalizing diversity of thought and redefining how they harness and retain talent. In this panel, guest speakers from Upwork, Code2040, and Andela debate and discuss the changing work environment with Lean Startup’s Melissa Moore, as well as what they’ve learned as they’ve built their organizations from the ground up. They’ll cover some of the key issues surrounding the future of the workplace, from hiring on-demand talent to providing an environment that allows employees to share their views, opinions, and authentic selves.

Using Lean Startup Inside A Big Company | Oseas Ramirez Assad, Alex Goryachev & Stephen Liguori

What happens when a small group of mavericks decide to launch an unauthorized version of Lean Startup inside a huge multinational firm like Cisco? Over 1,100 new organic-growth ideas, including a surprise Shark Tank-like ending. Presented by Steve Liguori, (Founder Liguori Innovation and former GE Exec Director of Global Innovation) with Alex Goryachev (Cisco Senior Director Innovation Strategy and Programs) and Oseas Ramirez Assad (Cisco Senior Manager, Business Development and Innovation Enablement.)

How Staying Lean Made Us Big | Michael Perry

Michael Perry, founder of the innovative virtual employee Kit, grew his business from a small team housed in a 200-sq ft space (in the back of a law firm) to a company acquired by Shopify. He leads a dynamic presentation about what it’s been like on both sides of the table.

Radical Simplicity: Solving The Right Problems To Build Products With Impact | Tom Nguyen

We all want to make product decisions backed by good data. But you can’t just A/B test your way to success: Whether you’re just incubating a new project and starting from zero, or you’re spinning wheels feeling mired in too much noise, learn how to leverage empathetic design to find and focus on needs your customers care about – and build exceptional products. Tom Nguyen, Principal at Adobe and co-creator of Adobe Spark, shares real-world examples and actionable best practices to help you apply constraints, powerful stories, and a growth mindset to align your team and spark success for your organization.

Lean Startup Week 2016 Highlights

Lean Startup Week 2016 Highlights by Lean Startup

How Lean Startup Co. Coaches Support Department Of Defense Innovation | Erin Bugg & Marilyn Gorman

Gone are the days when Lean Startup was used only by two guys in a garage. The methods have gone mainstream and are being practiced in industries across the globe. To date, our Lean Startup Co. Education Program Faculty have coached more than 30 teams from intelligence agencies including the NSA and NGA. In this webcast, hear from Erin Bugg of the NSA, their Lean Startup Co. coach Marilyn Gorman, and Co-Founder of Lean Startup Co., Heather McGough, who discuss the transformation of the Agency culture around the pillar of innovation. Topics include: getting stakeholder buy-in and challenges in facing bureaucracy, making decisions at speed underpinned by data, delivering value to customers, translating the method across disciplines, and more. Email us: [email protected] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup Follow Department of Defense @DeptofDefense Heather McGough can be reached on Twitter @UrbanitySF www.leanstartup.co/education

Part One: Lean Startup In The Hard Sciences | Aidan Mouat & Carsten Boers

We recently hosted a conversation between Hisham, Aidan, and Carsten about how Lean Startup is applied in the hard sciences. This is part one of a new mini-series we’re doing with Rhapsody Venture Partners. Our first conversation focuses on the startup, Hazel Technologies. Carsten Boers is Managing Partner of Rhapsody Venture Partners, and Aidan Mouat is Co-Founder and CEO of Hazel Technologies. Their two companies meet at the intersection between science and entrepreneurship. Rhapsody is a venture capital firm that specializes in startups in the hard sciences, and Hazel Technologies makes products that improve the shelf life and quality of produce when stored. They spoke with Lean Startup Co. faculty member, Hisham Ibrahim about how they work together as “a well-oiled machine,” as Carsten puts it, and the lessons that have emerged from the process. Email us: [email protected] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup https://leanstartup.co/education/

How Moving To A Startup Can Be Rocket Fuel For Your Career | Jensen Harris

We recently hosted a conversation between Jensen and Elliot focused on taking the leap from a big company to launching a start-up and the differences between those two company cultures. In 2014, Jensen Harris had a conversation with Kieran Snyder about their mutual dissatisfaction with writing software. “Here we are, 40 years into the post typewriter era, and still, all the software [we have] to write [does] the same thing a typewriter did,” he says. So, sixteen years into his career at Microsoft, Jensen Harris decided it was time to set out and try something new: launch his own startup. “Although I loved much of what I was doing...I felt like it was time to make a change,” he says. So Jensen and Kieran decided to go for it. They quit their big corporate jobs and set out to raise seed money for Textio - augmented writing software that uncovers meaningful patterns in language to help you know how your words are going to work and guides you to stronger communication in your writing. “It’s the biggest advance in writing since the computer,” Jensen says. Now three and a half years into their venture, Textio co-founder and CTO Jensen Harris spoke with Lean Startup Co. faculty memb…

Part Two: Lean Startup In The Hard Sciences | Jeff Uhrig & Jason Whaley

We recently hosted the second episode on a mini-series we’re doing with Rhapsody Venture Partners on Lean Startup in the hard sciences where we spoke with Jason Whaley, General Partner at Rhapsody and Jeff Uhrig, CEO of Sirrus. Rhapsody is a venture capital firm that specializes in startups in the hard sciences, and Sirrus is a Cincinnati-based developer of novel chemicals that will reduce the time, energy requirements and environmental footprint of many manufacturing processes. They spoke with Lean Startup Co. faculty member, Hisham Ibrahim about how they were able to take smart steps to successfully build - and sell - Sirrus in just five years and how believing in themselves is an important part of the process. Email us: [email protected] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup https://leanstartup.co/education

How To Build A Community Centered Product | Mikael Cho

We recently hosted a conversation between Mikael Cho, Co-Founder & CEO of Unsplash, and Elliot Susel, Faculty Member at Lean Startup Co., about how Unsplash put community at the center of their product. In Elliot and Mikael’s conversation, they discuss: - How starting with something small and high quality can lead to something much bigger. - How to encourage your community to participate in your product design. - Why it’s important to make “being useful” your first priority instead of making money. - The importance of trusting your intuition but also seeking feedback. - And much, much more... Co-Founder & CEO of the photo-sharing startup, Unsplash, Mikael Cho, spoke with Lean Startup Co. faculty member, Elliot Susel, about how a simple problem with photo access filled the needs of a community of photo lovers. The most successful startups often tap into an unfulfilled need that nobody has gotten around to filling. Unsplash did just that in the photography space. Mikael, who comes from the design industry, saw a problem that needed solving before he ever planned to start a company from the solution. When building the website for his design business, Crew, Mikael quickly realiz…

The Skinny On Lean Education | Matt Candler

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Matt Candler, Founder & CEO of 4.0 Schools, and Marilyn Gorman, Faculty Lead at Lean Startup Co., about how lean principles are being used in education. In Marilyn and Matt’s conversation, they discuss: - How early assumptions about what your customers want can hurt your credibility and waste time. - Why it’s important to know the problem you are trying to solve, and then having the courage to experiment in a small way. - The importance of building something for a customer segment rather than a one-size-fits all product for everyone. And much, much more... Seven years ago, 4.0 Schools founder and CEO Matt Candler set out to change the future of schooling. As a lifelong educator, he recognized that innovations in education were few and far between and that the people who were best able to come up with new, groundbreaking ways to reach and teach the students, parents, and members of our communities, were the educators themselves. So 4.0 Schools was created and launched in order to fund and guide educational entrepreneurs and help them launch new charter public schools in the south east. Unfortunately, their efforts didn’t chur…

Innovate Better By Listening To Your Customers | Sonali Shetty

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Sonali Shetty, Entrepreneur & Founder of Kova Digital and Elliot Susel, Faculty Member at Lean Startup Co., focused on innovation and why it’s so important to speak to your customers early and often. In Elliot and Sonali’s conversation, they discuss: - The three major types of innovation. - The importance of making it someone’s job in your company to work on innovation. - Why it’s important to speak to your customers early and often to learn about what they want and need. And much, much more… About ten years ago, Sonali Shetty recognized an approaching shift in the way companies could interact with their customers. Apple had just opened the app store, social media was on the rise, and Facebook had opened up their API to third party app developers. All of a sudden, companies could now directly communicate with their customers and client base. It was a new frontier. “I wanted to...educate [startups and corporations] on what this change meant for them and how they needed to prepare for it,” Shetty says. So Kova Digital was launched. At the time, they were a third-party app developer on Facebook. But the digital world took off qui…

Life Lessons We Can Learn From Founders | Noam Wasserman

Our Lean Startup Conference is just a few weeks away, and this week we were lucky enough to host a conversation with one of our keynote speakers, Noam Wasserman, author of the bestselling book The Founder’s Dilemmas, and the author of the new book Life Is a Startup. Noam spoke with Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, Elliot Susel, about the overlap in founder and life lessons and the importance of proactively tackling those issues in our business and personal lives. In Elliot and Noam’s conversation, they discuss: - Why focusing on people decisions is just as important as product. - Key business lessons we can learn from founders and how we can apply those same lessons to our personal lives. - The importance of doing research well. And much, much more… It was still early in his career when Noam Wasserman recognized the importance of focusing on the people around you. He was just starting out as an engineer when he noticed a pattern. “If we focused on anyone besides ourselves….it was the customers, and a key thing is we then neglected to think about the team we’re building with.” Around the same time, Noam came across an article about venture capitalists by Bill Solomon. In th…

Lean Product Development And How To Choose The Right Value Proposition | Lars Lofgren

We recently hosted a conversation between Lars Lofgren, Senior Director of Growth at I Will Teach You To Be Rich, and Elliot Susel, Faculty Member at Lean Startup Co., about implementing lean product development into your organization and how to choose the right value proposition. In Lars and Elliot’s conversation, they discuss: - How Lars moved the company from a rigid waterfall product development process to a more lean approach. - Why the most important part of the product development process is choosing the right value proposition. - How to choose the right value proposition through customer interviews, surveys, and AB testing. And much, much more… When Lars came on to I Will Teach You To Be Rich, the company was engaged in a waterfall approach to product development where they released a bunch of courses at once and hoped they’d make “a bunch of money,” he said. The process had some hits, but just as many misses, and he knew it was time to make some changes. As his role shifted from generating new leads to product development, he realized that it was important to drive new products to maintain the growth of the company but the process had to be significantly refined towa…

How To Turn Data And Metrics Into The Right Kind Of Action | Mark Graban

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Mark Graban, Author, Professional Speaker, and Consultant, and Marilyn Gorman, Faculty Lead at Lean Startup Co., focused on the importance of metrics and how visualizing data can help foster better learning and more improvement for your organization. In Marilyn and Mark’s conversation, they discuss: - Why you shouldn’t react equally to every uptick or downturn in a business metric. - How to distinguish between signal and noise in metrics and respond accordingly, which includes not overreacting. - How to use “Process Behavior Charts” to make better management decisions. And much, much more... The Lean Startup Conference 2018 is sold out but you can still catch all the keynote talks with our free live stream (Nov 14-16). Sign up here: https://lsp.formstack.com/forms/livestream_registration_2018 For the past twenty years, Mark Graban, author of the book "Measures of Success: React Less, Lead Better, Improve More" and senior advisor to the software company KaiNexus, has been paying attention to how companies and startups use and react to metrics. “Everybody’s got goals and objectives and targets and the action or reaction — or may…

Part Three: Lean Startup In The Hard Sciences | Chris Thoen & Jason Whaley

We recently hosted the third webcast episode of a mini-series we’re doing with Rhapsody Venture Partners on Lean Startup in the hard sciences where we spoke with Jason Whaley from Rhapsody and Chris Thoen, former CTO of Givaudan, the world’s largest flavor and fragrance company and former Managing Director of Open Innovation at Procter & Gamble. They spoke with Lean Startup Co. faculty member Hisham Ibrahim. In Hisham, Chris, and Jason’s conversation, they discuss: - How to bring the small startup mentality to big corporations - The importance of ambidexterity in leaders so they can maintain the right balance between managing the core business and continuing to innovate - The importance of open innovation in order for companies to grow in today's fast-paced marketplace And much, much more... Chris Thoen spent nearly the entirety of his 32-year career working in science and innovation, and he’s done so while deftly balancing between working for large corporations and small startups - often finding ways to work with both types of companies at the same time. When he was fresh out of college, Chris’ first job was at a small biotech startup in Belgium. It was not only a good tran…

How To Build A Nonprofit Using The Lean Startup | Kris Newcomer

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Kris Newcomer, Executive Director at The Firefly Sisterhood, and Marilyn Gorman, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Lead, on using Lean Startup methods to launch a successful non-profit as well as make positive changes outside of the business world. In Kris and Marilyn’s conversation, they discuss: - How Kris found The Lean Startup book and then used it to launch The Firefly Sisterhood nonprofit. - How the methodology helped her move forward and make decisions despite not knowing all the information. - How they used “Pivot or Persevere” as they were building their organization. And much, much more… Kris Newcomer is the first to admit that she became the Executive Director of Firefly Sisterhood — a non-profit organization that connects women recently diagnosed with breast cancer with inspirational survivors — by being in the right place at the right time. The idea for the non-profit originally came from an internal competition at General Mills called “The Big Bold Idea.” Yoplait, a brand under General Mills, has always done work with breast cancer, so they pitched an idea called (at the time) “Big Sister, Bigger Sister” which won the c…

How To Use Lean Analytics In Mobile Game Development | Aviv Stern

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member Elliot Susel, and Aviv Stern, Chief Data Officer at Social Point, a gaming company, to discuss using lean analytics in mobile game development. Don’t have time for the full webcast now? Catch the webcast highlights and tips from their conversation in our companion blog below. Aviv got started working for Fortune 100 companies in a corporate environment in data back when data analytics was called “business intelligence,” he said. No matter what you call it, Aviv said the goal of analytics is finding a way to use data to benefit a business. Aviv praised the Lean Startup method for being intrinsically data driven, a good selling point when you’re trying to convince founders or a small product team to invest in data analytics. “Each of the stages, like build, measure, learn, has integrated into it [a] data-intrinsic approach,” Aviv pointed out. Convincing product development teams to do A/B testing early on—in which you put out two versions of a product or service and see which version is better—can be a challenging battle, Aviv said, so Lean Startup is a great approach to take. Aviv came to L…

Applying Lean To Marketing And Brand Strategy | Jessica Korthuis

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Jessica Korthuis, Founder and Chief Brand Strategist at SOHUIS, and Elliot Susel, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, to discuss how you can incorporate lean into your marketing and brand strategy. In Jessica and Elliot’s conversation, they discuss: - What companies should do before making the decision to rebrand. - Tools and exercises that can help you execute a successful brand strategy. - How to validate the brand strategy you implemented actually worked. And much, much more… Jessica Korthuis started her first company with her husband after her corporate dream job was eliminated. She didn’t have a ton of experience helping entrepreneurs brand themselves but she had a lot of experience in marketing communications and a can-do spirit. “We built this super-crappy website and then poof, we just started our first agency,” Jessica said. The agency grew organically to include such clients as TED Women, Red Bull and Stanford University, but was completely bootstrapped. “It was this absolutely scrappy thing,” Jessica said. Through the local business ecosystem in Orlando, Florida she learned about Lean Startup, which is where she got i…

Get The Most From Your People By Being Open, Honest, And Direct | Aaron Levy

We recently hosted a webcast conversation where Elliot Susel, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, spoke with Aaron Levy, Founder and CEO of Raise The Bar about the need for better leaders, unlocking potential, and psychological safety in today's shifting marketplace. In Aaron and Elliot’s conversation, they discuss: - How leaders are made and not born, meaning good leadership is a trainable skill. - The iteration process Aaron went through to develop a product focused on leadership development. - Why an environment of emotional safety is so important and how to create this in your workplace. And much, much, more… Aaron Levy has always been intrigued by human behavior. Specifically why, when we [as humans] know better, why don’t we do better? “People don’t go from knowledge to action,” Aaron says, “and that’s always baffled me.” This observation and led Aaron to study the science of behavior change and how it applied to the world around him. In work and in life, he constantly observed and studied people, both leaders whom he had an opportunity to work with and his friends — that is to say, millennials — who were figuring out their career paths in their respective industries. The …

How A Film Composer Uses Lean Startup | Giovanni Rotondo

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Giovanni Rotondo, Film Composer & Editor In Chief at Film Scoring Tips, and Marilyn Gorman, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Lead, on how Lean Startup methodologies directly translates into working in the world of music and composition. In Giovanni and Marilyn’s conversation, they discuss: - How Giovanni discovered The Lean Startup and began applying it to his work composing music scores - How he applied the MVP concept to a Minimum Viable Cue - How he uses A/B testing to submit work to directors And much, much more… As a film and television composer, Giovanni Rotondo is not in a line of work traditionally associated with startups or Lean Startup initiatives. That all began to change when he joined a startup in London called The Rattle. “[The Rattle] is [both] a career incubator for artists and a startup incubator for musical startups,” Giovanni explains. Initially, he joined as an artist, but Giovanni was intrigued and inspired by the startup culture and started having ideas of his own that applied to the world of music. He shared his idea with the co-owner and co-founder of The Rattle, Chris Howard. Chris suggested the book The Le…

Startup Outlook: What’s Currently On The Minds Of Entrepreneurs? | Theron McCollough

We recently hosted the first episode of a six-part webcast series we’re doing with Silicon Valley Bank. In episode one, Elliot Susel, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, spoke with Theron McCollough, Managing Director of Silicon Valley Bank’s Early Stage Practice about the 2019 Startup Outlook US Report they just released. You can read the report here: https://bit.svb.com/2GzYO4e In Theron and Elliot’s conversation, they discuss: - The challenges that companies are facing in finding and hiring talent - The growing number of women in leadership positions - Why some startups are finding it easier to raise funds - The most promising new technology sectors And much, much more… In 2004, Theron McCollough joined a startup and never looked back. He has remained in the startup space ever since. Now, as the Managing Director of the Early Stage Practice at Silicon Valley Bank (SVB), his main job is “just helping startups.” He gets to connect companies and people together and help make the introductions that specifically match with what startup founders are building. “It’s what makes me wake up every day,” Theron says, “and I’m excited to come to work.” In his role at Silicon Valley Bank…

The Importance Of Staying Close To Your Customers | Jason VandeBoom

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Jason VandeBoom, CEO and Founder of ActiveCampaign, and Hisham Ibrahim, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, focused on the importance of leaning into your customers and learning from them in order to grow your business. In Jason and Hisham’s conversation, they discuss: - The importance of letting customer feedback guide the product development - How to scale up while staying close to your customers - The key lessons learned as Jason looks back on the startup story of ActiveCampaign And much, much more… When Jason VandeBoom launched ActiveCampaign in 2003, he wasn’t trying to start a business or grow a company. He was just trying to make some money to pay for college. All of his customers were small businesses and they all started wanting the same thing: to communicate with their customers. At the time, the options for small businesses to implement something like this was somewhat limited. Instead of building one-off tools and products for each company, Jason decided to create a contact management package and sell that instead. “[I had] no idea of what that could be,” Jason says, “and then as someone bought it, I just glued onto …

Does Lean Startup Work In Politics? | Pete Oliver-Krueger & Jim Damato

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Pete Oliver-Krueger, Agile, Lean, and Teal Managing Consultant; Jim Damato, Agile Specialist; and Heather McGough, Lean Startup Co. CEO & Co-Founder focused on how Lean Startup is applied in politics. In Pete, Jim, and Heather’s conversation, they discuss: - Why it’s so important to apply Lean Startup in the political arena and how it can be done. - The key lessons learned from Jim’s former startup, TruthinessCheck, which used crowdsourcing to do fact checking. - The future of innovation in politics. And much, much more… Email us: [email protected] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup https://leanstartup.co/education

Using Lean Startup To Launch And Scale Political Campaigns | Dante Vitagliano

We recently hosted a webcast conversation between Dante Vitagliano, Political Consultant at Pinnacle Campaign Strategies, and Marilyn Gorman, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Lead, focused on how Lean Startup can be used to run political campaigns. In Dante and Marilyn’s conversation, they discuss: - The similarities between startups and running political campaigns. - The 3 major phases in the political process where using a Lean Startup approach can help campaigners. - How to do experimentation and learning inside a political campaign. And much, much more… When it comes to political campaigns, Dante Vitagliano wants to build a better business model. When he and his partners started Pinnacle Campaign Strategies, they set out to solve some of the problems they consistently saw happening in political campaigns. To Dante, applying the Lean Startup methodology to their campaign efforts made sense. “There are so many similarities between the startup landscape and what we as [...] campaign professionals face on the day-to-day,” he says. Email us: [email protected] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup https://leanstartup.co/education

Building Better Learning Tools By Learning From Your Customers | Chris Cochella

We recently hosted a conversation between Chris Cochella, Founder & Co-Owner at Brackitz, and Marilyn Gorman, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Lead, focused on how the desire to find better engineering toys for his son turned into an idea to create a toy to help promote STEAM learning in young children. In Chris and Marilyn’s conversation, they discuss: - What problem drove Chris to start Brackitz. - The process Chris went through to test his early assumptions with his customers (teachers and students). - The importance of letting your curiosity fuel you. And much, much more… Like many new product beginnings, the idea behind Brackitz came out of a personal need. After he started a science program at his kids’ elementary school, Chris Cochella, founder and co-owner of Brackitz toys, realized that there wasn’t a lot of hands-on science or engineering tools available for young children. To Chris, this was a problem. Right now, the National Science Foundation says that the declining interest in STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) is a national concern. As Chris was looking more into the issue, he discovered that spatial play and spatial reasoning is a very strong pr…

Bringing Biotech To The Masses | Julie Legault & Justin Pahara

We recently hosted a conversation between Julie Legault and Justin Pahara, Co-Founders of Amino Labs, and Hisham Ibrahim, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, focused on building a product designed to bring biotechnology — an area of science typically only accessible to experts in the field — to non-experts and beginners. In Julie, Justin, and Hisham’s conversation, they discuss: - How they discovered the problem with bringing biotechnology to beginners and how that led to the creation of Amino Labs. - The iterative process they used to build a product that served their customer’s need, not their want. - How they wrote a book about genetic engineering for beginners using an iterative process. And much, much more… When Julie Legault was a masters student at the MIT Media Lab, she was encouraged to try new things and to do things she wouldn’t normally do. So when Justin Pahara’s first startup, Synbiota, put on a workshop about a new technology called synthetic biology, Julie gave it a try. For her, it was a game changer. “I just discovered something amazing and I can make projects with this,” she remembers thinking. She and her fellow grad students got really interested in synthet…

Innovating The Writing Process: How Change Is Coming To The Publishing World | Bec Evans

We recently hosted a conversation between Bec Evans, Co-founder of Prolifiko and author of "How to Have a Happy Hustle", and Elliot Susel, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, focused on the similarities between the world of writing and publishing and the world of startups. In Bec and Elliot’s conversation, they discuss: - The traditional, old-school practices of the publishing industry and why change is needed. - How Bec utilized a Lean Startup approach to writing her new book. - Current innovations happening in the publishing world and what the future of publishing looks like. And much, much more… There are few industries as steeped in traditional, old-school practices as publishing. Many of the major publishing houses have been around for tens (if not hundreds) of years and still haven’t really changed their business structures or publishing methods. But for Bec Evans, that just means there’s a lot of potential for things to become a bit more interesting. Bec has spent her entire career working in and around the world of writing and publishing. She was managing a writer’s retreat when she had an idea for an app that would help writers complete their writing projects. By digg…

The Realities Facing Female Founders | Claire Lee & Liz Curtis

We recently hosted a conversation between Claire Lee, Head of Early Stage at Silicon Valley Bank, Liz Curtis, CEO & Founder at Table + Teaspoon, and CJ Legare, Lean Startup Co. Chief of Staff, about the realities facing female entrepreneurs today. In Claire, Liz, and CJ’s conversation, they discuss: - Why Liz decided to start Table + Teaspoon, a “Rent the Runway, but for table settings.” - What Claire calls the “Single Digit Club” and what we can do to change it. - The importance that mentors have played in both Liz and Claire’s career. And much, much more… Liz Curtis didn’t always intend to be an entrepreneur, least of all in the world of entertaining. In fact, she was studying to become a lawyer when she started Table + Teaspoon — a blog that featured decorating ideas, entertaining tips and recipes. The blog was initially just a creative outlet for Liz as she pursued her career as a corporate litigator, but eventually, it became a much bigger idea that she launched into a business. In 2013, while she was still practicing law, Liz decided she wanted to build something “rather than tearing things apart,” the latter of which she felt she was doing as a lawyer. Liz pivoted on…

Using Lean To Decrease Youth Unemployment In South Africa And Beyond | Maryana Iskander

We recently hosted a conversation between Maryana Iskander, CEO at Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator, and Ann Mei Chang, Executive Director of Lean Impact at Lean Startup Co., focused on the pioneering work of Harambee Youth Employment Accelerator in South Africa and their efforts to tackle the global youth unemployment crisis. In Maryana and Ann Mei’s conversation, they discuss: - How Harambee focused their efforts on solving problems for two customers - young people looking for a job and businesses needing to hire. - How they used data to guide their problem solving efforts and what some of the key learnings were. - Their efforts to scale their work to Rwanda and what the key challenges have been. And much, much more… South Africa has a big problem on its hands. Even though they make up less than 1% of the world’s population, they have one of the highest youth unemployment rates in the world. It’s a problem that’s compounded over time. Every year, nearly two-thirds of young people who enter the job market end up unemployed, resulting in a population of between six and nine million unemployed young people. It’s a problem not easily solved. It’s not just a matter of not…

Helping Business Owners Find Loans: The Startup Story Of Lendio | Brock Blake

We recently hosted a conversation between Brock Blake, Founder & CEO of Lendio, and Marilyn Gorman, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Lead, focused on the decision to pivot one successful company into another that served a completely different niche of the market while embracing the importance of accountability. In Brock and Marilyn’s conversation, they discuss: - How Brock got started in the world of entrepreneurship and decided which problem to focus on. - How a pivot from his first idea eventually led to Lendio. - The “be the CEO of your job” mentality and how this builds accountability for Lendio employees. And much, much more… Brock Blake stumbled into the world of entrepreneurship when he was still attending college at BYU. He was studying finance and won an entrepreneurship competition that awarded him $50,000 to start a business. The only problem was that he didn’t exactly know what he wanted to do, much less how to go about launching into the business world. Instead of diving in headfirst into the first idea or opportunity that presented itself, Brock decided to learn about the business of going into business. If he was going to be successful, he knew he needed to know how …

Reduce Uncertainty and Increase Winning | Chris Cochella

We recently hosted a conversation between Chris Cochella, Executive Business Coach at Sequoia Group, and Adam Berk, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, about the value and application of mental models for extremely uncertain Lean Startup situations. In Chris and Adam’s conversation, they discuss: - What is a mental model and how can they help you? - What is first conclusion bias and how can it help and/or hurt you? - Three critical mental models that can help the Lean Startup entrepreneur subvert the first conclusion bias. And much, much more… Lean Startup methods are intended to reduce uncertainty in a highly uncertain environment. Warren Buffett likes to say, “I don’t look to jump over 7-foot bars, I look around for 1-foot bars that I can step over.” As entrepreneurs, we are looking to lower the height of the uncertainty hurdle while making decisions and moving forward. Another way to look at this approach is to create a situation where: heads, I win; tails, I don’t lose much. The Lean Startup approach is all about using all available tools to reduce the hurdle height and increase the likelihood of winning. It’s about stacking the odds in your favor. Lean Startup is a toolbox…

How Parenthood Sparked a Business | Sarah Paiji Yoo

We recently hosted a conversation between Sarah Paiji Yoo, Co-Founder & CEO at Blueland, and Chris Guest, Lean Startup Co. Advisor, about how becoming a mom led Sarah to create a company that is reimagining how we consume household products to eliminate the need for wasteful plastic packaging. In Chris and Sarah’s conversation, they discuss: - How Sarah got the idea for Blueland and why she felt so compelled to solve the problem of wasteful plastic packaging. - How the team developed and tested their first product idea: toothpaste - How they took these initial learnings and pivoted to cleaning spray products. And much, much more… When serial entrepreneur Sarah Paiji Yoo became a new mom, she wasn’t looking to find her next business idea. She had made the conscious decision to step back from work to find a balance between being a new parent and being a businesswoman. But it was the very act of being a mom that gave her the idea for what would eventually become her company, Blueland. Sarah was horrified to discover how many microplastics are in the water she was using to mix formula for her baby — the very same water that we all drink. She discovered that all of the plastic w…

An Honest Account Of An Entrepreneur’s Pivot: Part One | Ryan Caldbeck

We recently hosted a conversation between Ryan Caldbeck, Founder & CEO at CircleUp, and Chris Guest, Lean Startup Co. Advisor, about how to navigate through a major pivot. This episode is part one of the conversation with Ryan and part two is coming up next week. Even more exciting, Ryan is also speaking at the Lean Startup Conference this week in San Francisco. Tickets to the conference are still available at LeanStartup.co. Email us: [email protected] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup https://leanstartup.co/education

An Honest Account Of An Entrepreneur’s Pivot: Part Two | Ryan Caldbeck

We recently hosted a conversation between Ryan Caldbeck, Founder & CEO at CircleUp, and Chris Guest, Lean Startup Co. Advisor, focused on what it’s like as a CEO to take your company through a major pivot. This episode is part two of their conversation. In Chris and Ryan’s conversation they discuss: - How to create a culture that gives support to people that want to be vulnerable and authentic for the benefit of the company and for themselves. - The unique challenges CEO’s face and how they can build a support system for themselves. - How Ryan has utilized Lean Startup methodologies as an entrepreneur. And much, much more… Email us: [email protected] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup https://leanstartup.co/education

Advice From An Entrepreneur, Intrapreneur, Investor And Advisor | Theron McCollough

We recently hosted a conversation between fiifi Founder & CEO, Theron McCollough, and Lean Startup Co. Advisor, Chris Guest, focused on Theron’s experiences working in the world of startups and his recent return to the role of an entrepreneur as he launches his new venture.  In Chris and Theron’s conversation, they discuss: - Given Theron’s background advising and investing in hundreds of startups, what insights has he taken with him as he re-enters the world of entrepreneurship? - And now that he is a player again, does he follow the advice he would have given when he was a coach? And much, much more… For more than a decade, Theron McCollough has been working in the world of startups. Fairly early on in his career — when he was working with Pivotal Software — he began to notice how Lean Startup techniques could help a business scale. And while he took note of the usefulness of testing, iterating, and failing, one of the biggest things he learned was the importance of asking customers what they think. The simple act of reaching out to the customer can be incredibly helpful and enlightening. “You would be amazed at what you find out,” Theron says. It’s one of the things th…

Building A Startup For Long-Term Success | Eric Ries & Alton McDowell

This conversation between Alton McDowell, Co-head of Technology and Disruptive Commerce at J.P. Morgan, and Eric Ries took place at the Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco. Eric and his team are known for creating a movement within the startup community and have helped companies make lasting impacts and experience sustainable growth. In this conversation, he talks with Alton about startup trends, lessons he’s learned along the way, and best practices entrepreneurs can follow. Email us: [email protected] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup https://leanstartup.co/education

Analysis Paralysis And Other Innovation Blockers | Michael Barlow, Lucas Dickey, & DeMarcus Williams

We recently hosted a conversation between Michael Barlow, Co-Founder & CEO at Fernish, Lucas Dickey, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer at Fernish, DeMarcus Williams, Director of Silicon Valley Bank Early Stage Practice, and Hisham Ibrahim, Lean Startup Co. Faculty Member, about six rookie mistakes that block growth in early stage startups. In the conversation, they discuss: - How to implement good hiring and retention practices to ensure you’re surrounding yourself with the right team. - The importance of maintaining a consistent company narrative. - Tips to avoid getting stuck in analysis paralysis. And much, much more… Fernish’s founders Lucas Dickey and Michael Barlow have prime backgrounds in product management, engineering, design, sales, and finance. Their collective resumes include time in the trenches at Amazon and J.P. Morgan. When it came to launching their subscription service for home furnishings, though, they often traded expertise for proof of concept. Dickey and Barlow are methodical about ensuring each course of action boosts growth, regardless of what their egos may be telling them. This attitude is working in their favor. In the two years since they founded …

Knowing When To Say, "Next!" | Ralph Morales III

We recently hosted a conversation between Ralph Morales III, Head of Innovation Practice at SmartOrg, and David Binetti, Innovation Consultant, about solutions for some of the trickier innovation puzzles facing intrapreneurs. This conversation was recorded during the 2019 Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco and we’re excited to make it available to you as a podcast. In the conversation, they discuss: - Testing a range of assumptions and knowing when to move from one to the next. - The importance of taking a lot of smaller bets to help you find and be ready for the big opportunity. - Scoring each risk with ignorance and value ratings to show executives the uncertain value. And much, much more… Ralph Morales III is a unicorn intrapreneur. He began his career in finance and ended up in innovation, a rare trajectory. More specifically, he worked at HP during what he calls the “sunshine moment for new business innovation,” moving from his role as financial marketing analyst to eventually becoming the Director of Innovation, where he was scouting and incubating innovations in virtual reality, IOT solutions, and industrial 3-D printing. He’s currently Head of Innovation Practice…

Name The Category, Own The Market | Christopher Lochhead

We recently hosted a conversation between Christopher Lochhead, bestselling author and #1 charting podcaster, and Chris Guest, Lean Startup Co. Advisor, about why category design is so powerful, how to best wield it, and why entrepreneurs should naturally embody it. In the conversation, they discuss: - What is category design and who are some companies that have successfully implemented it. - How category design gets you out of the comparison trap. - What it takes as an entrepreneur and intrapreneur to implement category design. And much, much more… Christopher Lochhead values standing out over fitting in. He wants entrepreneurs to create markedly different products, not just better versions of old standbys. His #1 charting podcasts, "Follow Your Different" and "Lochhead on Marketing," and bestselling books Niche Down: How To Become Legendary By Being Different and Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets instruct entrepreneurs on developing and dominating new categories of products and services—and shifting consumer paradigms in the process. Lochhead eschews conventional marketing wisdom and evangelizes “category design,” which he calls “…

There Is Value In Diversity And This Company Is Diving Into The Movement | Christina Greenberg

We recently hosted a conversation between Christina Greenberg, Co-Founder of Edgility Consulting, and Chris Guest, Lean Startup Co. Advisor, about how Christina recruited to build a diverse and inclusive organization and how you can do the same. In the conversation, they discuss: - The founding story of Edgility Consulting and why they decided to focus on helping youth-serving nonprofits and education organizations find, hire, and keep talent. - How they examined their own recruiting methods and what they could do to create an environment where all different kinds of people would want to work for them. - Specific plans and strategies you can implement to recruit for a diverse and inclusive staff. And much, much more… Christina Greenberg is an expert in pivoting outside her comfort zone. The co-founder of Edgility Consulting has branched out, business-wise, multiple times in service of a larger vision. In her case, that vision involves supporting a diverse and inclusive industry standard. Her Oakland-based firm helps youth-serving nonprofits and education organizations find, hire, and keep talent. Before co-founding Edgility, Greenberg worked in fundraising, policy, and nonpro…

Combining Passion And Necessity To Create A Business | Jesse Thomas

We recently hosted a conversation between Jesse Thomas, Co-founder & CEO of Picky Bars, and Chris Guest, Lean Startup Co. Advisor, about the impact of passion, patience and a focus on growth that led to consistent, year-over-year growth for the energy bar company. In the conversation, they discuss: - How Jesse struggled to find balance in his life while working for a VC-funded startup. - How a personal need from Jesse’s athletic training led to the creation of Picky Bars. - The benefits of self-funding and keeping expenses low. And much, much more… Jesse Thomas is the co-founder & CEO of Picky Bars, not to mention a professional triathlete and two-time ironman champion. Born and raised in Bend, Oregon, Thomas excelled in track and field while at Stanford University and later narrowly missed earning a spot on the U.S. Olympic team, largely due to an injury he suffered during steeplechase trials. After he shifted to cycling, Thomas ultimately put a stop to his athletic career when a fall while biking left him with a broken neck. Rather than give up, however, he shifted his focus to the startup world. Email us: [email protected] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup http…

A New Era Of Work | Brianne Kimmel

We recently hosted a conversation between Brianne Kimmel, Founder & Managing Partner at Work Life Ventures, and Chris Guest, Lean Startup Co. Advisor, about entering this new era of work and business. Brianne Kimmel shares her experiences on how our current accelerating speed is impacting startups and what it means for enterprise organizations and government. Email us: [email protected] Follow Lean Startup Co. @leanstartup https://leanstartup.co/education