The Lean Startup in ActionA Case Study on KISSmetrics

Hiten ShahCustomer Driven Design & The Lean Startup • November 3rd, 2010

Build stuff people want to buy

Failure attracted me to the Lean Startup

Lean Startups are Built to Learn

Dave McClureSean Ellis Eric Ries

Lean Startup Heroes

The Startup PyramidThe Race to the Top

Product / Market Fit

Transition to Growth

Growth

Sean Ellis: Startup-Marketing.com

1. ACQUISITIONCustomers come from various channels

3. RETENTIONCustomers come back multiple times

AARRR Created by Dave McClure - 500startups.com Designed by

4. REFERRALCustomers refer others

2. ACTIVATIONCustomers use product for first time

YOUR PRODUCT

5. REVENUECustomers make your business money

Minimize TOTAL time through the loop

Eric Ries: StartupLessonsLearned.com

Learn Faster

Split Tests

Customer Interviews

Customer Development

Five Whys Root Cause

Analysis

Customer Advisory Board

Falsifiable Hypotheses

Product Owner

Accountability

Customer Archetypes

Cross-functional Teams

Semi-autonomous Teams

Smoke Tests

Split TestsClear Product OwnerContinuous DeploymentUsability TestsReal-time MonitoringCustomer Liaison

Build Faster

Unit Tests

Usability Tests

Continuous Integration

Incremental DeploymentFree & Open-Source

Components

Cloud ComputingCluster Immune System

Just-in-time Scalability

RefactoringDeveloper Sandbox

Minimum Viable Product

IDEAS

CODEDATA

LEARN BUILD

MEASUREMeasure Faster

Funnel AnalysisCohort Analysis

Net Promoter ScoreSearch Engine Marketing

Real-Time AlertingPredictive Monitoring

Build Faster

• Test Driven Development (TDD / Unit Tests)

• Continuous Deployment

• Continuous Integration

• Just-in-time Scalability (Amazon Web Services)

On average we deploy new code fifty times a day.”Timothy Fitz, IMVU

“

• Poorly designed features

• Inflexible, short-sighted code

• Half-done features

• Known bugs

• Crappy code with major performance issues

We have purposefully deployed:

Measure Faster

• Funnels & Cohort Analysis (KISSmetrics)

• Feedback (NPS, Surveys, KISSinsights)

• Usability Testing (UserTesting, Mockups, etc...)

• Split Tests (A/B Testing) (KISSmetrics + Internal)

It's about changing customer behavior -- for the better.”Eric Ries, The Lean Startup

“

“Measure the Macro” - Eric Ries

Learn Faster

• Fake it till you make it (Smoke Tests)

• Five Whys Root Cause Analysis

• Falsifiable Hypotheses

• Customer Development (Customer Interviews)

Customer Development will help you – force you – to make better decisions based on tested hypotheses, rather than untested assumptions.”The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development, CustDev.com

“

Our hypothesis is that product manager type people have a problem doing fast/effective/frequent customer research.”

“

Original Hypothesis for KISSinsights

Lean Startup Process

? ☼Problem Team Solution Team

No Departments, Just Two Teams

What are the most important

problems to solve?

Find theminimum solution for a given problem.

15 - 45 minute team meetings (M,W,F)

“Your Focus Needs More Focus”

Lean Startup Lessons Learned

Speeding can lead to crashes

that f*cking green light next to a task for 7 days is really depressing.”KISSmetrics Engineer

“

The team becomes more accountable

The only path to perfection is iteration

Thank You!hshah@kissmetrics.com