Founder and developer at Bloco.
Member of Coimbr'a Pedal and departamento.co.
One of the principles of lean startups is ferocious customer-centric rapid iteration. To validate assumptions, data must be collected from users interacting with the product, a fact frequently forgotten by opinionated developers.
Here are two good presentations about metrics, one about business metrics for startups, and other specifically about web applications design metrics.
Tags: startups, metrics, design, presentation
SlideShare’s existing customers had needs that the company’s new product—along with its pricing and positioning—simply weren’t solving. Realizing it had taken a wrong turn, SlideShare rethought its approach to premium accounts and ultimately performed what we’d call a value capture pivot, one where the company changes the way it collects revenue from customers.
— Slideshare case study @ Lessons Learned: finding the right revenue model.
Tags: startups
Next on my reading list:
Finished reading The Art of Start and it’s really good. I’m lending it to my partner in crime, since it’s full of valuable pragmatic instructions.
Although some advices apply to large venture capital funding, most are universal to any startup. I specially liked the pitching tips (the 10/20/30 rule, take notes…) and the The Art of Schmoozing:
If you’ve seen Guy’s presentation and liked it, you will love the book.
I decided to give MongoDB a try on a brand new rails project. It was also a change to get a bit familiar with the upcoming Rails 3 (there’s a release candidate now \o/).
I found two MongoDB adapters for rails: MongoMapper and Mongoid. Here’s an article with a comparison (thanks Tomé Duarte). After trying out the two on a really simple use case, I preferred working with Mongoid for 3 reasons:
I also used MongoHQ to try out their free plan for cloud hosting service. It’s very easy to use, but I’m still waiting for a good MongoDB front-end for inspecting my databases.