Wrapping up a fabulous few weeks in New Zealand, where I had the privilege of attending some great events, like Kiwi Foo and Webstock; met some amazing entrepreneurs and inventors (yes, including a jet pack); and generally enjoyed a supportive and enthusiastic reception. I want to especially thank the dozens of Kiwis who acted as my guardians and escorts from place to place, even driving me around on the wrong side of the road

Every tourist will tell you that New Zealand is a beautiful country, and they are not kidding.
 


I would add that the people I met were extraordinarily welcoming, friendly, and humble. In fact, you have to learn to adjust to the humility. Quite a few Kiwis told me that they "didn't count" as entrepreneurs, even though they own their own business. Their supposed lack of ambition was belied by the many cool demos and startups I got to meet. If you're in Europe, for example, keep an eye out for the innovative YikeBike, a new kind of personal transport device. It was described to me as "what the Segway should have been." Overall, I came away from the experience optimistic about the potential of New Zealand to cultivate a significant startup hub. I look forward to seeing it happen. If anyone is interested, the Wellington Lean Startup Meetup is a good place to start.

Up next is an extremely brief stop in Australia. I'm particularly looking forward to inaugurating the Sydney Lean Startup meetup. We'll be kicking it off with an event featuring yours truly Monday March 1 at 6pm. If you're a Sydney entrepreneur, I hope you'll stop by. Last time I checked, there were still a few half-price tickets left. You can register here.

Most of the events I did here were private, so there aren't as many videos and slides available. For now, you'll have to make do with the slides from my keynote at Webstock:

2010 02 19 the lean startup - webstock 2010

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Hopefully, video of that talk will be available soon. For a preview, you can check out this "backstage pass" interview, which was recorded at Kiwi Foo a few days before.

I also did a radio interview on Radio New Zealand's Nine to Noon program. You can hear me attempt to explain the ideas behind the lean startup to the general public in MP3 or Ogg.

Webstock generated a lot of follow-on commentary, including a number of reviews. For a good synopsis of my talk (and the other keynotes), check out Idealog's blog. I also recorded an interview with them, which should be in the next issue of their extremely cool-looking print magazine. Other write-ups: NZ Herald, gianouts, Te Ara, Public Address, Bibliophile, BIB. Also, if you're an event organizer, check out some of the innovative ways the Webstock team encouraged attendees to interact with each other and with the speakers. Highlights for me were the Webstock Game and Webstock Bingo.

Last, if you didn't get a chance to see it, be sure to check out this video of the closing performance for Webstock (which was also an award show called the ONYAs). It was mind-expanding:


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I've been trying very hard to avoid turning this blog into a travelogue. Normally, I try to make my post-event writeups more than just a transcript, by including reactions and comments. On this speaking tour, that's been simply impossible, so I've decided to let the following collection of videos, podcasts, and slides batch up for a little while. If you're interested in more real-time updates during my speaking tour, please tune into my twitter feed.

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy all this multimedia content. In addition to some of my recent talks, you can learn more about the Startup Visa movement and enjoy two really interesting lean startup case studies.

My Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Seminar courtesy of Stanford Ecorner (audio podcast only for now, video coming soon):

if you'd like to follow along with slides, they are here:

2009 09 29 The Lean Startup At Stanford Entrepreneurial Thought Leader Seminar

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From high atop the BT Tower in London, this brief BT Tradespace interview:


Why do we need a Startup Visa? A Tale of 2 Erics:


Also in London, I took up a lot of airtime during day two of Seedcamp. You can read highlights on their blog, or watch this short video:


Seedcamp - Day 2 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.


Or watch my full #leanstartup presentation at Seedcamp in London:


And two bonus videos that are well worth watching (weally):

Timothy Fitz, who worked for me at IMVU, giving an in-depth presentation on the details of the continuous deployment system that we built there.


With accompanying slides:

Continuous Deployment

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pbWorks (formerly pbWiki) was one of the first companies that ever invited me to join their advisory board. I like to think that had some small part in causing their subsequent success. Judge for yourself by watching David Weekly's #leanstartup case study (pbWorks):


Thanks to everyone who has helped plan, organize, record and attend these many events!
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Last week, I had a unique opportunity to spend some time in Boulder at the behest of TechStars. It was a great experience to see a relatively new startup hub in action - and thriving. It's easy to take Silicon Valley for granted. The startup scene here can be ostentatious and serve as an echo chamber, amplifying the cool trend of the week into a deafening roar. But there's no denying the level of support for entrepreneurs that we enjoy. I've written a little bit about the origins of Silicon Valley because I think it's important for us to understand how we got here in order to make sure we preserve what is best about our community.

Traveling to Boulder I had the feeling of stepping back in time. It felt like I was watching a new startup hub in the process of being created. The companies I spoke to all agreed that the community there was extremely supportive, especially in the critical ulta-early-stage. That community is, by all accounts, relatively new - less than five years old according to several folks I asked. Even more impressive is that the culture there seems to have been the conscious creation of just a few people.

On my brief visit, the results were impressively on display. If you watch the video/audio below, you'll get to see some of the questions I was asked after my presentation. On the whole, I found them unusually sophisticated - and mostly rooted in the actual practice of entrepreneurship. I also did quite a bit of asking questions myself. I spent most of my time with TechStars, who were my hosts for the trip. Their model looks like a key ingredient in the startup brew there. Every summer, they bring approximately 10 companies to Boulder for an intense "accelerator" experience (don't call it an incubator, or you'll get dirty looks). They don't invest a lot of money; just enough to keep them going through the summer. They take common stock, not preferred, a fact that the entrepreneurs mentioned to me many times. And they expose the startups to a vast network of mentors, none of whom get paid for their involvement.

Some of the mentors are based in Boulder, but many are not. As a result, the companies get a lot of exposure to VC's, investors, and partners in larger, more traditional startup hubs. And, as one entrepreneur put it to me, "we understood that a big part of our responsibility in the program was to make sure the mentors have a good experience, by taking their advice to heart and giving them a feeling of being part of our evolution as a company." As a result, for a lot of these companies, Boulder is just a gateway to San Francisco. TechStars encourages them to go wherever opportunities take them. But even the companies that move on have had a taste of life in Boulder (it looks awfully nice). And every year, it looks as if one or two entrepreneurs from the program decide to stay.

That strikes me as a really smart formula for building a startup hub. First, pick a place that entrepreneurs (and other creative class-types) would love to live. Great weather, a strong university, outdoor sports, cafe culture, good restaurants - you get the idea. Then, create an encouraging environment for early-stage companies. You don't need massive amounts of capital available for VC investment - modest amounts will do. Accept that many successful companies are going to want to be backed by big-name firms in other cities. Instead, focus on getting them ready for that stage. Provide early seed capital, and be the ones to make those introductions. Make your city a gateway to other opportunities, so that entrepreneurs can increase their access by starting there. And do your customer development. If you talk to early-stage entrepreneurs who randomly landed in Silicon Valley, you'll hear just how hard it is to break into the scene here. Because you're not asking entrepreneurs to forsake those bigger cities, it's a no-brainer to give your city a shot.

Anyway, those are my thoughts after having spent only a few days in Boulder. You can see that it stimulated a lot of ideas; you'll have to evaluate the veracity of those ideas on your own. In the meantime, let me keep my promise of some multimedia. I did my best to capture video and audio; a YouTube playlist and Slideshare slidecast are below:



Slides (with audio):

2009 08 19 The Lean Startup TechStars Edition

View more presentations from Eric Ries.

And, as usual, I wanted to share some of the audience reaction with my commentary. These quotes are, as is my custom, straight from twitter.

My biggest thanks goes to the people who generously sponsored scholarships for others to attend the dinner and workshop, Thank you so much!

ericries: special thanks once again to @fancy_free and @KISSmetrics for sponsoring scholarships for the #leanstartup workshop in Boulder.

I'm also excited to share two long-form reviews from actual attendees. I'm always excited to see how these ideas are expressed by entrepreneurs in their own words:

petewarden: Another blog post, this one on the @ericries Lean Startup Workshop I attended: http://bit.ly/4UWuf #leanstartup

tmarkiewicz: Notes from the Lean Startup Dinner with @ericries http://bit.ly/80kKW #leanstartup

And I can never resist sharing some positive feedback. I hope you'll indulge me - I need to have a copy of these testimonials for the record:

neilsimon: Thanks @ericries for the #leanstartup tips last night. Articulate, inspirational.

jdegoes: Great talk from @ericries last night. Inspiring ideas: real-time biz metrics; safe continuous deployment; A/B split testing. #leanstartup

feverishaaron: @ericries thanks for droppin' facts at the #leanstartup dinner. Learned a lot and enjoyed the discourse.

KevinMSmith: Excellent discussion on #leanstartup w/@ericries. If you get a chance go see him. If you don't get a chance , MAKE ONE. He's that good.

lmckeogh: Best $50 I've spent in last yr as unempl. prod mgr. #leanstartup dinner Boulder full of useful info that I want to apply [echo @roger_tee]

ultimateboy: #leanstartup was the most invigorating event I've ever attended. Thank you @ericries for drastically altering my perception of agile startup

Thank you all so much for your kind words. I was really overwhelmed this time. Now for some actual content:

jeantabaka: Really liked @ericries answer to adding in quality while still a startup #leanstartup

If you want to hear the exact question and answer, check the video. This was a question about how we convinced our investors to "allow" us to invest in quality after we'd shipped the initial buggy version of IMVU. That's always a tricky relationship to navigate, but we found a way to get our investors on board with that program by practicing a form of radical transparency. When they could hear the customers' complaints in their own voice, it became clear when it was time to up the quality level. We also had the benefit of many lean practices that break out of the "time, quality, money - pick two" paradox. (You can learn more about that by reading The engineering manager's lament.)

Here are two more questions that I really enjoyed answering:

roger_tee: At #leanstartup dinner w/ Eric Reis. Asked where I find visionary early adopters who pay 4 buggy beta SW. Killer answer.Ask me. #bdnt

nbauman: When to split test? Anytime anyone on the team thinks it could make a macroscopic change. Define macroscopic change! #leanstartup

I could recap these - but just go watch the video already!

And one last specific practice that came up at this session:

feverishaaron: UI, design and programmers are all in the same department, all have the same title, and all are evaluated the same. #leanstartup

We organized our engineering team at IMVU to try and maximize cross-functional collaboration. That meant getting designers, programmers, and QA folks to cross-train and work together as peers. By expressing these values as part of the formal structure of our department as well as the formal evaluation system, I think we went a long way towards reducing the usual internecine conflict between these groups.

Let me close with one last thought. I think it speaks for itself:

peterhoskins: At least have the courage to make new mistakes. #leanstartup

Thanks to everyone who participated and helped make these great events!

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