Meet Ash Maurya

Agile Vancouver will be welcoming Ash Maurya at the Lean Startup Conference, which is being held at the Hilton Vancouver Airport, 5911 Minoru Blvd, Richmond, BC on May 5th and 6th, 2011.

About Ash Maurya

Ash Maurya (@ashmaurya) is the founder of USERcycle. Since bootstrapping his last company seven years ago, he has launched five products and one peer-to-web application framework. He has been rigorously applying customer development and lean start-up techniques to his products, which he frequently writes about on his blog www.ashmaurya.com and recently turned into a book: Running Lean. Ash resides in Austin, Texas, with his wife, two children and two dogs.

Session – "Instrumenting for Speed, Learning, and Focus"

We have all been beaten over the head with mantras like "release early, release often", "listen to your customers", and "measure everything". But what do they really mean and more importantly how do you apply them? Ash Maurya will explain why simply listening to customer feedback or relying on analytics and metrics is NOT enough. He'll outline a process for getting your product ready for launch and one that lays the groundwork for maximizing your future iterations for speed, learning, and focus. Register now to attend the conference. See all the session descriptions in the conference agenda.

Tutorial – "Running Lean Workshop - Getting to Release 1.0"

Running Lean is about focusing on the right stuff and reducing waste. It is “right action, right time.” This hands-on workshop focuses on applying bootstrapping, customer development, and lean start-up techniques to your existing or next product. This workshop will cover the first step towards building a successful product – validating whether you have a problem worth solving. You will leave knowing how to define and measure your success metrics and have a set of actionable next steps to get your product on a strong footing. Workshop participants will receive a PDF version of Ash Maurya’s recently released book, Running Lean, and early access to the companion business model validation tool, Lean Canvas (www.leancanvas.com).

  • What will you learn?
  • What is customer development?
  • What is a lean start-up?
  • How do I document my business model?
  • How do I find early customers?
  • How do I interview customers?
  • How do I test my business model?
  • How do I build and measure what customers want?

Register now for this tutorial and to attend the conference. Check out all the tutorials at the conference.

Meet Rob Walling

Agile Vancouver will be welcoming Rob Walling at the Lean Startup Conference, which is being held at the Hilton Vancouver Airport, 5911 Minoru Blvd, Richmond, BC on May 5th and 6th, 2011.

About Rob Walling

Rob Walling is a serial entrepreneur and author of Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer’s Guide to Launching a Startup. His blog, SoftwareByRob.com, is a top 20 startup blog, and he runs the Micropreneur Academy, an online learning community of like-minded founders designed to get a startup from zero to launch in six months. Rob runs a dozen one-man technology businesses and has been building web applications professionally for 11 years.

Session – "Lessons Learned Moving from Developer to Entrepreneur"

Rob will be presenting one of the sessions on the first day of the conference. In "Lessons Learned Moving From Developer to Entrepreneur" Rob shares some of his experiences and things that he has learned along the way. As a software developer turned entrepreneur I’ve learned most things the hard way. Years of trial and error have unearthed a laundry list of false assumptions, missed expectations and times when “best practices” were far from the best approach to a problem. Using stories from my experience I will share lessons I’ve learned over the past several years, each of which has had a profound impact on my ability to run my company. Register now to attend the conference. See all the session descriptions in the conference agenda.

Tutorial – "From Zero to Launch: A Step by Step Blueprint"

If you want more detail than a session presentation provides, Rob will also be giving a tutorial on the second day of the conference. "From Zero to Launch: A Step by Step Blueprint" will be an in-depth look at how to take a bootstrapped a product from zero (meaning not even a product idea) to launch day. Through a mixture of presentation, group discussions, demos and worksheets we’ll cover what I call the “first half” of product development, which ends the day you launch to the world. This session will contain 20% theory and 80% practical, hands-on techniques. If you’re looking for a product idea to bootstrap, or you have an idea and are looking to validate and launch it, this session will provide you with the tools to do so. Topics include:

  • Generating product ideas
  • Evaluating a product idea
  • Measuring Demand without spending a dime
  • Testing an idea for under $100
  • The art of pricing
  • Creating a killer sales website
  • How to start marketing the day you start coding
  • Your launch day
  • And more…

Register now for this tutorial and to attend the conference. Check out all the tutorials at the conference.