Wow, this year has flown by! In our final “news from the startup front” of 2012, our code commandos have been thinking a lot lately about Lean Startups, nearshoring, and our upcoming workshop in Tamarindo, Costa Rica.  There’s lots of good stuff coming up here, so read on!

  • Patrick Vlaskovits joins AgilityFeat for a Customer Development webinar
  • For entrepreneurs, the world has to be vertical
  • Immersing in Silicon Valley at SiliconHouse.us
  • 3 things I learned at the WarmGun UX Conference
  • 2 Pivots and 3 Lessons at Lean Startup Machine San Francisco
  • Arin’s talk at Lean Startup Ignite on “Just Deploy It!”
  • Ford’s lessons from the Lean Startup Conference
  • 6 Lessons from the LeanStartup Conference
  • Links from the Lean Startup Conference
  • AgilityFeat is hiring an Agile Engineering Coach!

Join AgilityFeat’s Costa Rican Code Commandos on the beach and learn more about best practices in building your startup the lean way!

Patrick Vlaskovits joins AgilityFeat for a Customer Development webinar

Patrick Vlaskovits joined the AgilityFeat team for a webinar in November on Customer Development and his upcoming book The Lean Entrepreneur. The video’s not edited real well (my bad), but there’s lots of great content. Don’t forget you can join us in Tamarindo Costa Rica in January and get a brain dump from Patrick in person, while hanging out on the beach! See Patrick’s webinar and then check out DareToBeLean!

For entrepreneurs, the world has to be vertical

Outsourcing is always risky, and you should weigh that against the cost benefits. For entrepreneurs, the risk is greater since your business is so dependent on the success of the project, and yet you are also probably very cash sensitive. That’s why nearshoring is so compelling. By working vertically in nearby time zones, you are getting the best of both worlds. Read more


Immersing in Silicon Valley at SiliconHouse.us

David Alfaro and Arin Sime recently stayed at SiliconHouse in Silicon Valley, on our way to the Lean Startup Conference in San Francisco. It’s a very cool place where entrepreneurs from around the world are being hosted and getting connected into the valley network. Read more about our experiences

3 Things I learned at the WarmGun UX Conference
The WarmGun UX conference is hosted every year in San Francisco by the famous 500 Startups accelerator. It was a great conference with some inspiring and very funny talks on UX and design. We learned about humility, mobile awareness, and how to marry my customers. Read more on those 3 things.

2 Pivots and 3 Lessons at Lean Startup Machine San Francisco
After attending the UX conference, David and Arin headed over to the ultimate 2.5 day business workshop: Lean Startup Machine. If you haven’t heard of them before, you’ll definitely want to read this post. If you have heard of them, you’ll still want to read this and learn how we applied lean startup concepts to a language learning idea. Read the 2 pivots and 3 lessons.

Arin’s talk at Lean Startup Ignite on “Just Deploy It!”
Lean Startup Ignite was the lead-in event to the Lean Startup conference in San Francisco, and it was a blast. Hopefully we’ll have some video of the event available soon. Arin gave a talk on common anti-patterns that he’s seen in too many companies, and why they take so long to deploy code. Basically, he got to complain on stage a lot, but it seemed to strike a nerve with attendees. Check out the slides.

Ford’s lessons from the Lean Startup Conference
Ford was at the Lean Startup Conference too, and like the rest of us, it was an inspiring and eye opening experience. Check out what Ford learned

6 Lessons from the LeanStartup Conference
When you’ve got a conference filled with startup luminaries like Eric Ries, Steve Blank, Ash Maurya, and Marc Andreessen, you are bound to be inspired. And yet, there were so many awesome speakers that Arin’s favorite six lessons don’t even come from the big names (although they were great too). Read more to learn why Arin is preparing for a future of stupidity.

Links from the Lean Startup Conference
There were so many great ideas at the Lean Startup Conference that we didn’t have time to blog about them all. But we did at least make a list of links to go back and read more on. You can see the links too

AgilityFeat is hiring an Agile Engineering Coach!
Isn’t what we do cool? We get to use the latest agile and lean startup methods, we work with entrepreneurs, and our team regularly hangs out with our clients on the beach in Costa Rica! How’s that for a job description! If you have serious agile engineering chops and coaching experience, then we would like to add you to our team. Become an agile engineering coach at AgilityFeat

Join us on the beach in Costa Rica!
You’re still here? You actually read this whole edition of startup news! Then you must really be into this stuff. You should seriously consider going to our DareToBeLean workshop in Costa Rica in January. It’s not too late to book at ticket! Learn agile and lean startups at D2BL2013.com

Coming soon…
There’s so much more to say about what we’ve been up to the last month. Over the coming weeks, you can look for us to blog about a tour of Twilio, a great agile engineering interview with Sam McAfee from Change.org, and the marketing tool LaunchBit.com. Have a wonderful holiday season, a happy new year, and stay tuned for more news from the startup front!

Until 2013 and the next Startup News my friends … Viva la Startup!