Lean Startup

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.