{"id":319,"date":"2012-09-11T08:39:13","date_gmt":"2012-09-11T12:39:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.agilityfeat.com\/?p=319"},"modified":"2012-09-11T08:39:13","modified_gmt":"2012-09-11T12:39:13","slug":"leanstartup-circle-cville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/34.200.113.64\/en\/blog\/2012\/09\/leanstartup-circle-cville\/","title":{"rendered":"#LeanStartup Circle #Cville is off to a great start"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There is clearly a lot of interest in lean startups in Charlottesville!<\/h2>\n

Lean Startup Circle Charlottesville<\/a> held our first meeting last night and it was a great success, with around 25 people attending.\u00a0 Our Meetup group is now up to 42+ people, with basically no marketing of the group.<\/p>\n

The meeting was held at Hack Cville<\/a>. Hack Cville launched this summer with 15 projects, and was started by Spencer Ingram. There are mentors and student-run startups working hard in the heart of the UVa \u00abCorner\u00bb district. I think we’ll see some great things coming out of there soon!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

John Thomas has been the main organizer behind the group, and I’ve been happy to help how I can.\u00a0 John got a lot of deserved accolades from the group for his kickoff-night presentation, and for sharing his own personal experiences with startups with the group in a candid way.\u00a0 He’s set the tone for a group really focused on learning.<\/p>\n

John tells us a story<\/h2>\n

John started by telling a story about a failed startup he had.\u00a0 He just wanted to be better than ebay when he started shopcatching.com. His minimal research showed small businesses weren’t thriving because of the bigger fees on ebay. So he came up with an \u00abawesome no fee policy\u00bb and a list of great features.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>After coding for 5 months, finally launched it. Then he found out Amazon had already created something very similar right about that same time.\u00a0 As a one-man shop he couldn’t compete with Amazon head to head, and so this was really bad news.<\/p>\n

Next John decided to create a business plan, and he came up with the obligatory \u00abcha-ching\u00bb numbers. To implement this business plan, John decided to code for several more months. When he finally released in 2006, it was as he put it, \u00abtumbleweeds.\u00bb No one came to the site, and John realized he had wasted a year of his life.<\/p>\n

Learning from our mistakes<\/h2>\n

I think a lot of the entrepreneurs in the room, myself included, could sympathize with John at this point.<\/p>\n

John admitted he fell into a trap that a lot of startups do: \u00abIf I love it, then everyone who is like me will love it.\u00bb He spoke to no customers in advance, he did a single \u00abbig bang\u00bb release, and he built way too many features initially.<\/p>\n

After graciously confessing his \u00abstartup sins\u00bb, John talked about the principles of the Lean Startup movement, and gave a great introduction to the concepts espoused by Steve Blank and Eric Ries in their books on Customer Development and the Lean Startup.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

John Thomas, Ian Ayers, and Spencer Ingram<\/p><\/div>\n

The group had a great discussion, and there’s clearly a lot of entrepreneurial knowledge and energy in Charlottesville.<\/p>\n

I particularly liked one comment made by Owen: \u00abWhen you face an extreme amount of uncertainty, it makes sense to do as little work as possible to test those theories.\u00bb<\/p>\n

#Winning<\/h2>\n

John pointed out that to win in startups, you need to move faster than competitors. That means iterating on the business plan as well as the actual software, and getting lots of customer feedback along the way.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Where next?<\/h2>\n

As John’s intro to lean startups wound down, we started to talk about where we want this group to go and what it should do.\u00a0 John suggested adhering to a couple of principles:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Startups are not like big businesses<\/li>\n
  2. Startup is the search for a sustainable business<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Beyond that, we had a great discussion as a group about how best to incorporate case studies from our peers and industry, so that we can learn how to really apply lean startup techniques and not just talk in the abstract.<\/p>\n

    Next Meeting<\/h2>\n

    \"\"<\/a>Our next meeting will be on Monday October 22nd, from 6:30-8:00 pm at HackCville on 9 Elliewood Avenue in Charlottesville.\u00a0 Join the Meetup group if you’re interested!<\/a>\u00a0 It should be a great meeting and will be part of a big week in Charlottesville leading up to Cville’s 2nd Startup Weekend event<\/a>.\u00a0 The lean circle will be talking about lean startup techniques you can apply to get ready for Startup Weekend.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    There is clearly a lot of interest in lean startups in Charlottesville! Lean Startup Circle Charlottesville held our first meeting last night and it was a great success, with around 25 people attending.\u00a0 Our Meetup group is now up to 42+ people, with basically no marketing of the group. The meeting was held at Hack […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":""},"categories":[7,59],"tags":[75,32,66,79],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","yoast_head":"\n#LeanStartup Circle #Cville is off to a great start - AgilityFeat Panama Software Test Center<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/agilityfeatpanama.com\/en\/blog\/2012\/09\/leanstartup-circle-cville\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"#LeanStartup Circle #Cville is off to a great start - AgilityFeat Panama Software Test Center\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There is clearly a lot of interest in lean startups in Charlottesville! Lean Startup Circle Charlottesville held our first meeting last night and it was a great success, with around 25 people attending.\u00a0 Our Meetup group is now up to 42+ people, with basically no marketing of the group. The meeting was held at Hack […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/agilityfeatpanama.com\/en\/blog\/2012\/09\/leanstartup-circle-cville\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"AgilityFeat Panama Software Test Center\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-09-11T12:39:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/agilityfeat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/2012-09-10_18-54-18_764-300x168.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"3 minutes\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/34.200.113.64\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/34.200.113.64\/\",\"name\":\"AgilityFeat Panama Software Test Center\",\"description\":\"AgilityFeat Panama offers customized, multilevel web and mobile software testing for a variety of industries.\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/34.200.113.64\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/agilityfeatpanama.com\/en\/blog\/2012\/09\/leanstartup-circle-cville\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/agilityfeat.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/09\/2012-09-10_18-54-18_764-300x168.jpg\"},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/agilityfeatpanama.com\/en\/blog\/2012\/09\/leanstartup-circle-cville\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/agilityfeatpanama.com\/en\/blog\/2012\/09\/leanstartup-circle-cville\/\",\"name\":\"#LeanStartup Circle #Cville is off to a great start - AgilityFeat Panama Software Test Center\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/34.200.113.64\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/agilityfeatpanama.com\/en\/blog\/2012\/09\/leanstartup-circle-cville\/#primaryimage\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-09-11T12:39:13+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2012-09-11T12:39:13+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/34.200.113.64\/#\/schema\/person\/c8d60d597071526db386b2b8a4afac64\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/agilityfeatpanama.com\/en\/blog\/2012\/09\/leanstartup-circle-cville\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/34.200.113.64\/#\/schema\/person\/c8d60d597071526db386b2b8a4afac64\",\"name\":\"arin\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/34.200.113.64\/#personlogo\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/0.gravatar.com\/avatar\/cc498e210512c707ed769986dd745896?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"arin\"}}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/34.200.113.64\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/34.200.113.64\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/34.200.113.64\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/34.200.113.64\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/34.200.113.64\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/34.200.113.64\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/34.200.113.64\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/34.200.113.64\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/34.200.113.64\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}